CURATED MICRO-COLLECTIONS: KITTY LIT

A Serbian immigrant living in Manhattan believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves will turn her into a feline predator.

Physicist Paul Halpern tells the little-known story of how Einstein and Schrödinger searched, first as collaborators and then as competitors, for a theory that transcended quantum weirdness. This story of their quest, which ultimately failed, provides readers with new insights into the history of physics and the lives and work of two scientists whose obsessions drove its progress.

The Pridelands are a small slice of heaven, ruled by Mufasa, the Lion King. His son Simba is preoccupied with life and all its potential, and neglects the lessons Mufasa tries to impart. Scar, Mufasa's brother has lived his adult in the shadow of his better looking, more successful, universally adored sibling. Capitalizing upon Simba's youthful exuberance and reckless abandon, Scar manipulates his nephew into playing the key role in his ascension to power, and believing himself guilty of Mufasa's death. Simba flees from his home and family in shame and disgrace, never to return. Years of abuse and neglect under King Scar begin, and the Pridelands are devastated, and lionesses are hunting far outside their boundaries. One such is Nala, who discovers the exiled Simba, who must face the ghosts and demons of his past to save the ones he loves.

In this latest collection of poems, Charles Simic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, brings us startling new visions of the haunted landscape that has been his oeuvre, where the surreal and the mundane, the sacred and profane, are indistinguishable, a world where "everything is teetering on the edge of everything/With a polite smile." A man waits at a bus stop for the love of his life, a woman (Lady Luck?) he's never met. The world's greatest ventriloquist who sits on a street corner uses passersby as dummies and speaks through us all. Hamlet's ghost walks the hallways of a Vegas motel. Sunlight streams through a windowpane of fire. Mary Magdalene cruises Santa Monica Boulevard. Flies from a slaughterhouse leave bloody tracks across the pages of a book. Jesus panhandles in a weed-infested Eden.