NORTHERN NEW MEXICO poet John Brandi traverses three continents and 40 years in A Luminous Uplift: Landscape & Memory (White Pine Press). Brandi divides his tome into travelogues of places he’s visited, near and far, plus a preamble called “Young Blood” that sums up the 1960s-era literary and artistic influences that first fueled the author’s wanderlust. The book spans genres from essay to poetry. In New Mexico, where he has lived for more than 50 years, he dives into the art of Japanese haiku. “The practice demands that you slow down,” he writes gorgeously, “bring … your nose to crushed juniper berries after a hard rain, your ears to a beetle whittling out a nest in an adobe wall.”

Read more: Anne Hillerman's "Lost Birds," the ninth in her series, weaves together the search for a missing Navajo woman and a Diné woman's quest for her roots.