Seven Days writers can't possibly read, much less review, all the books that arrive in a steady stream by post, email and, in one memorable case, a loomery of loons. So this regular feature is our way of introducing you to a handful of books by Vermont authors. To do that, we contextualize each book just a little and quote a single representative sentence from, yes, page 32.

Traveling, Traveling

Nadell Fishman, Finishing Line Press, 77 pages. $19.99.

But Mom and Dad would forever be / the pioneers of traveling, / traveling, as family legend would have it.

The third collection from Vermont poet and educator Nadell Fishman, Traveling, Traveling meditates on travel in all its forms, from major migrations to minor turns of the self through space and time.

Most of the poems in the collection stand out more for their memorable storytelling than for formal invention. A few are organized into deliberate, patterned stanzas, while most read as free verse.

In crisp, considered language, Fishman invokes puberty and marriage, religion and television, diners and dentist's offices. She roots herself in Eastern Europe and modern America, rendering a borderless family history that is germane to the Jewish diaspora. She also interrogates the motif of travel through contrast. Illness immobilizes, death terminates and memory fades. In "Happy Marriage," Fishman writes, "A blizzard buries us / My dog's legs are short / and he can't climb the high ridges." This paralysis is a foil, though, for a truer sort of motion that roils at the center of the collection.

— Abigail Sylvor Greenberg

Fakists

John Y. Flanagan, Onion River Press, 200 pages. $16.99.

Lang was only half hungover, though the three-story climb to his office elicited temporary dominance of the queasier half.

Tom Landsaw is a talented young artist with an embarrassing specialty: He's an ace at copying other artists' work. Starksboro author John Y. Flanagan's debut novel opens with Landsaw leaving prison and then rewinds to show us how he got there: a series of misadventures stemming from a romantic rivalry with his college instructor, a perpetually drunk and deliciously pompous abstract painter.

Fakists is long on colorful characters and settings, short on plot, and easily read in an afternoon. Flanagan's assured descriptions and beautifully terse comic dialogue pulled this reader right in. The novel's satire of the academic art world crackles: Having ordered students to draw lines that contain "[a]n entire universe in every stroke," the professor "walked from student to student, drawing his own apparently profound lines beside those that failed to capture the entirety of existence." Along the way, Flanagan raises deeper questions about the nature and value of artistic authenticity. His own talent is no fake.

— Margot Harrison

The Beat, the Scene, the Sound: A DJ's Journey Through the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of House Music in New York City

DJ Disciple and Henry Kronk, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 231 pages. $32.

Despite his dedication to drumming in church, Disciple heard the call of the radio studio.

David Banks witnessed the birth of house music in the 1980s at its epicenter, New York City. A devout Christian who played drums in his church band, he rechristened himself DJ Disciple and, with a collection of promoters, musicians and fellow DJs, helped launch the genre in legendary clubs such as Zanzibar, Paradise Garage and Studio 54.

Disciple and Burlington writer Henry Kronk recount how the combined forces of the crack/cocaine epidemic, HIV, homophobia and mayor Rudy Giuliani all but destroyed the nascent house scene. Through anecdotes, archival photographs and extensive research, the book details how the scene launched, how it almost died and how house music eventually roared back as electronic dance music moved into the mainstream in the 2000s. The cowriters balance passion for the history of a seminal American music scene with an exacting academic eye for detail.

— Chris Farnsworth

Addicted: Our Strength Under the Influence

Annie Augustus Rose, CCE Publishing, 186 pages. $14.99.

Give every opportunity a chance, leave no room for regrets, and don't forget the power of the struggle.

Brattleboro author Annie Augustus Rose will never forget the day in 1998 when she learned that her adult daughter, Jamie, was addicted to heroin. Ten days later, Jamie ended her first stay in rehab, beginning a yearslong cycle of relapse and recovery. Rose and her partner found themselves caring for Jamie's two children — and, later, raising a third.

Meanwhile, Rose discovered that her son was also grappling with substance-abuse disorder. As she writes in this wrenching memoir with a self-help slant, "addiction is a family disease." The founder of her local chapter of Nar-Anon Family Groups, Rose offers advice for affected families alongside her own story. First-person accounts from her husband, children, grandchildren and others supply valuable insight and counter the stigma attached to addiction. The book testifies to one family's resilience at a time when, as Rose writes, "The path of destruction is plowing right through our own neighborhoods — yours and mine."

— Margot Harrison

The Wisdom of Winter

Annie Seyler, Atmosphere Press, 286 pages. $24.99.

Winter is a mountain of muscle; Oliver is a dollop of whipped cream on top.

Much of Annie Seyler's debut novel, The Wisdom of Winter, takes place in her home state of Vermont, but the title doesn't refer to ski season. Winter is a beautiful white horse, the sort that young protagonist Beatrice has always dreamed of riding — until, on a ranch ride, the animal startles and gives her family the scare of their lives.

Beatrice is the narrator of Seyler's elegant coming-of-age novel, which follows her from age 6 into adulthood. From this terrifying incident, she learns a powerful lesson: how to keep on loving a horse — or a person — without ignoring their "cracks and flaws."

It's potent wisdom for a girl who grows up in a household of secrets and silences, with an exuberant artist mother who nurses a deep frustration with domesticity. Using lyrical present tense to evoke all the senses, Seyler weaves a touching narrative of her heroine's seemingly magical childhood, her adolescent disillusionment and her adult struggle to build a meaningful life.

— Margot Harrison