The Museum of Natural History (Lynx House Book)

Julie Gamberg's award-winning book is a collection with edges: a strange recurring character named Max, a sky that "looms heavy as steel-toed boots," tectonic plates that "feel by water, glide by feel," all illuminated by a frank erotic blaze. Although it is her first, the book as the texture and thematic subtlety of mature work -- a repository of assertions that rise like searing iconic objects against the backdrop of an imaginative natural history.