2.18.2026
BOOK COVER REVEAL
If you were a tween girl or had a tween daughter in the late 1990s, there’s a good chance you remember Pepper Ann, protagonist of the Disney TV series by the same name. As it happens, the unmistakably distinctive cover art for Mercy was commissioned from none other than the great Sue Rose, creator and producer of Pepper Ann.
Mercy, forthcoming from Monday Editions, is the third collection by Rachel Custer, NEA Poetry Fellow (2019) and author of The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017) and Flatback Sally Country (Terrapin Books, 2023). Mercy takes us into the hearts and minds of a hardscrabble town’s residents as they engage with the books they borrow from a Little Free Library (sometimes throwing shade at Ruth and Naomi, the women who set the library up).
In my world, a new book by Rachel Custer is an event. Publication day for this limited edition, signed and numbered by the author, is February 25. You can wait, or you can preorder a copy today. I wouldn’t wait.
This is a beautiful book, musical and full of surprising turns of phrase.
—Francesca Bell, author of Bright Stain and What Small Sound
Rachel Custer had me weeping with her introduction to Mercy, and I kept weeping as I read the poems. Only rarely has a book caused me so much grief and joy at the same time.
—Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, War Dances, and ten collections of poetry
NOTE
Monday Editions is a radically author-centered micropress. In the Monday Editions model, the publisher pays all publishing expenses, readers buy books directly from authors, and authors keep 100 percent of revenue.
Ordered! So looking forward to this collection.
Ordered my copy!