In honor of National Poetry Month, all the books in our poetry section will be 10% off for the month! Saturdays in April, if you can answer our poetry trivia question, we’ll give you a copy of either 101 Great American Poems or English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology (limit one per customer, while supplies last).

Here’s a poem to whet your appetite, the first in Rita Dove’s three-part cycle of poems on adolescence.

Adolescence–I

In water-heavy nights behind grandmother’s porch
We knelt in the tickling grasses and whispered:
Linda’s face hung before us, pale as a pecan,
And it grew wise as she said:
“A boy’s lips are soft,
As soft as baby’s skin.”
The air closed over her words.
A firefly whirred near my ear, and in the distance
I could hear streetlamps ping
Into miniature suns
Against a feathery sky.

“Adolescence–I” can be found in Rita Dove’s Selected Poems, along with the poems that won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1987.

First there was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, then Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Later this month, Quirk Classics will release a prequel to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies called Dawn of the Dreadfuls, which will give the backstory of the zombie plague and how Elizabeth Bennett became a “savage slayer of the undead.” In June, Quirk will depart from Jane Austen with the publication of Android Karenina.

Now other publishers are venturing into the arena of mash-up lit. Del Rey will release Little Women and Werewolves in May. We are expecting Grand Central Publishing’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author Seth Grahame-Smith, to arrive tomorrow. Below is a graphic book trailer featuring honest Abe, a vampire, and an axe. (Don’t watch it if you’re squeamish!)

Following the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Quirk Books has announced a follow-up by Jane Austen and Ben Winters. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a humorous take on the Austen classic, featuring most of the original text. Quirk Books describes it as “The Classic Regency Romance–Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!” This new volume in the Quirk Classics series will follow the same format, but this time the menace on polite society isn’t zombies. Take a look at this book trailer recently released by Quirk:

The IndieBound website now has cute spring e-cards. The dog pictured here is an example, but the actual e-cards are animated.

The winners of the 2009 Indies Choice Book Awards, which are voted on by owners and booksellers of ABA member book stores, were announced this week. The winners are:

Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)

Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction): The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead)

Best Author Discovery: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (Ecco)

Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book (Fiction): The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

Best New Picture Book: Bats at the Library, by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin)

Most Engaging Author: Sherman Alexie