Book Bag

Here in Red Hook

By Andy Vernon-Jones

Apartment 7 Press

Former Amherst resident Andy Vernon-Jones, who graduated from Amherst Regional High School in 2000, spent most of the past five years living in the district of Red Hook in Brooklyn, N.Y. while he was working as a counselor at an alternative high school. In an effort to get a better sense of the pulse of his adopted neighborhood, he began strolling the streets and taking photographs, learning the stories of many of the people he met.

Book Bag

Open Field: Poems From Group 18

Open Field Press

www.openfieldpress.org

Group 18 is the name of a poetry workshop group that has operated out of Northampton since 1985, and this collection offers 85 poems from people who have been part of the organization and engaged in its "vigorous exchange" during the past 25 years.

Book Bag

A Swift River Anthology

By Dorothy Johnson

Haley's

Edgar Lee Masters made his literary reputation in 1915 when he published "Spoon River Anthology," a collection of free-form poems about people in a fictional Illinois town. Now New Salem writer and dramatist Dorothy Johnson has taken a page from Masters in fashioning her new book, "A Swift River Anthology," in which she celebrates the lives of imagined people, some of whom lost their homes during the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s.

Book Bag

Lola's Fandango/The Wise Fool: Fables from the Islamic World

By Anne Witte/Shahruhh Husain

Illustrated by Micha Archer

Barefoot Books

www.artmicha.com

These two children's books, both published by Barefoot Books of Cambridge, are illustrated by local artist Micha Archer, who lives in Leverett. "Lola's Fandango," which comes with vocal narration of the story on CD, tells the tale of Lola, a young city girl who envies her older sister's pretty hair, painting ability and clutch of friends. Then she discovers a mysterious pair of shoes in her parents' closet and learns her mother was once a flamenco dancer.