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Apple of Sodom
By Mary Hoffman. 2015
Emily Crawford, a young American wife and mother, seeks a long-overdue self-respect in this absorbing and dramatic portrait of an…
expatriate family experi-encing life in an exotic Arab culture at the start of the 1960s. Revelatory episodes unfold against the enter¬tainments of the well-to-do and influential, among the lives of ordinary citizens, and during explorations of ancient cities in the Holy Land and beyond.And After Many Days
By Jowhor Ile. 2016
An unforgettable debut novel about a boy who goes missing, a family that is torn apart, and a nation on…
the brink During the rainy season of 1995, in the bustling town of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, one family's life is disrupted by the sudden disappearance of seventeen-year-old Paul Utu, beloved brother and son. As they grapple with the sudden loss of their darling boy, they embark on a painful and moving journey of immense power which changes their lives forever and shatters the fragile ecosystem of their once ordered family. Ajie, the youngest sibling, is burdened with the guilt of having seen Paul last and convinced that his vanished brother was betrayed long ago. But his search for the truth uncovers hidden family secrets and reawakens old, long forgotten ghosts as rumours of police brutality, oil shortages, and frenzied student protests serve as a backdrop to his pursuit. In a tale that moves seamlessly back and forth through time, Ajie relives a trip to the family's ancestral village where, together, he and his family listen to the myths of how their people settled there, while the villagers argue over the mysterious Company, who found oil on their land and will do anything to guarantee support. As the story builds towards its stunning conclusion, it becomes clear that only once past and present come to a crossroads will Ajie and his family finally find the answers they have been searching for. And After Many Days introduces Ile's spellbinding ability to tightly weave together personal and political loss until, inevitably, the two threads become nearly indistinguishable. It is a masterful story of childhood, of the delicate, complex balance between the powerful and the powerless, and a searing portrait of a community as the old order gives way to the new.From the Hardcover edition.The Mothers
By Jennifer Gilmore. 2006
Poignant, raw, and insightful, Jennifer Gilmore's third novel is an unforgettable story of love, family, and motherhood. With a "voice…
[that is] at turns wise and barbed with sharp humor" (Vanity Fair), Gilmore lays bare the story of one couple's ardent desire for a child and their emotional journey through adoption. Jesse and Ramon are a loving couple, but after years spent unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turn to adoption, relieved to think that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parent-hood they will have a happy ending. But nothing has prepared them for the labyrinthine process--for the many training sessions and approvals; for the constant advice from friends, strangers, and "experts"; for the birthmothers who contact them but don't ultimately choose them; or even, most shockingly, for the women who call claiming they've chosen Jesse and Ramon but who turn out never to have been pregnant in the first place. Jennifer Gilmore's eloquence about the human heart--its frailties and complexities--and her razor-sharp observations about race, class, culture, and changing family dynamics are spectacularly combined in this powerful novel. Suffused with passion and fury, The Mothers is a taut, gripping, and satisfying book that will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.My Angel: A Story of Salvation and Love In Two Parts
By Tetiana Brooks. 2014
If you read My Angel, you will be transformed. My Angel and two other titles were first published in Ukraine…
in Russian and Ukrainian. Tetiana says, "We are all people living on the Earth with the same feelings, the same problems, and the same joys."The Parable Book
By Per Olov Enquist, Deborah Bragan-Turner. 2013
"The love that dare not speak its name . . ." Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a…
garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of?Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to "come out" - but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write.This poignant memoir of love as a religious experience - as a modern form of the Resurrection - is also a deeply felt reflection on the transitoriness of friendship, the fraught nature of family relationships, and the importance of giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. A parable as hauntingly intense as any Bergman film.Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-TurnerThe Unknown Kerouac (LOA #283)
By Jack Kerouac, Todd Tietchen, Jean-Christophe Cloutier. 2016
In On the Road and other iconic works, Jack Kerouac created a quintessentially American voice and a revolutionary prose style.…
This remarkable gathering of previously unpublished writings reveals as never before the extraordinary literary journey that led to his phenomenal success—a journey with deep roots in the language and culture of Kerouac’s French Canadian childhood.Edited and published with unprecedented access to the Kerouac archives, The Unknown Kerouac presents two lost novels, The Night Is My Woman and Old Bull in the Bowery, which Kerouac wrote in French during the especially fruitful years of 1951 and 1952. Discovered among his papers in the mid-nineties, they have been translated into English for the first time by Jean-Christophe Cloutier, who incorporates Kerouac’s own partial translations.Also included are two journals from the heart of this same crucial period. In Private Philologies, Riddles, and a Ten-Day Writing Log, Kerouac recounts a brief stay in Denver—where he works on an early version of On the Road, reads dime novels, and even rides in a rodeo—and shows him contemplating writers like Chaucer and Joyce and playing with riddles and etymologies. Journal 1951, begun during a stay in a Bronx VA hospital, charts, in ecstatic, moving, and self-revealing pages, the wave of insights and breakthroughs that led Kerouac to the most singular transformation of American prose style since Hemingway. This landmark volume is rounded out with the memoir Memory Babe, a poignant evocation of childhood play and reverie in a robust immigrant community, in which Kerouac uncannily retrieves and distills the subtlest sense impressions. And finally, in an interview with his longtime friend and fellow Beat John Clellon Holmes and in the late fragment Beat Spotlight Kerouac reflects on his meteoric career and unlooked for celebrity.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.Ursula K. Le Guin: and Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series)
By Ursula K. Le Guin, David Streitfeld. 2019
“Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.” —Ursula K. Le Guin…
When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, a science fiction and fantasy author in an era that dismissed “genre” literature as unserious, and a westerner living far from fashionable East Coast publishing circles. The interviews collected here—spanning a remarkable forty years of productivity, and covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to Le Guin envisioning the end of capitalism—highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature.The Secrets of Roscarbury Hall: A Novel
By Ann O'Loughlin. 2015
A bestseller in the UK, this moving debut novel is a modern Philomena story of love, both lost and found.Secrets…
can’t last forever. . . . In a crumbling mansion in a small Irish village in County Wicklow, two elderly sisters, Ella and Roberta O’Callaghan, live alone in Roscarbury Hall with their secrets, memories, and mutual hatred. Long estranged, the two communicate only by terse notes. But when the sisters are threatened with bankruptcy, Ella defies Roberta’s wishes and converts the mansion's old ballroom into a café. Much to Roberta’s displeasure, the café is a hit and the sisters are reluctantly drawn back into the village life they abandoned decades ago. But gossip has a long life. As the local convent comes under scrutiny, the O’Callaghan sisters find themselves caught up in an adoption scandal that dates back to the 1960s and spreads all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Only by overcoming their enmity and facing up to the past can they face the future together—but can they finally put their differences behind them?Among the Lesser Gods: A Novel
By Margo Catts. 2017
For fans of authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Leif Enger, a stunning new voice in contemporary literary fiction."Tragedy and blessing.…
Leave them alone long enough, and it gets real hard to tell them apart." Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child, to her mother's abandonment, and now to an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Driven to the high mountains surrounding Leadville, Colorado by her latest bad decision, she's intent on putting off the future. Perhaps there she can just hide in her grandmother's isolated cabin and wait for something–anything–to make her next choice for her. But instead of escape, she finds reminders of her own troubles reflected from every side–the recent widower and his two children adrift in a changed world, Elena's own mysterious family history, and the interwoven lives within the town itself. Bit by bit, Elena begins to reconsider her role in the tragedies she's held on to and the wounds she's refused to let heal. But then, in a single afternoon, when threads of cause and effect tangle, Elena's fragile new peace is torn apart. It's only at the prospect of fresh loss and blame that she will discover the truth of the terrible burdens we take upon ourselves, the way tragedy and redemption are inevitably bound together–and how curses can sometimes lead to blessings, however disguised.A Man in Love: A Novel
By Martin Walser. 2018
For readers of Colm Toibin’s The Master and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, a witty, moving, tender novel of impossible love…
and the mysterious ways of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is so famous his servant auctions off snippets of his hair and children and adults recite from his many works by memory. When he was a young poet, his first novel, a story of love and romantic fervor ending in suicide, was an international blockbuster that set off a wave of self-inflicted deaths across Europe. Now seventy-three, sought after and busy with scientific pursuits and responsibilities to the Grand Duke, he has fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old, Ulrike von Levetzov. Infatuated, at the spa in Marienbad, he seeks her out. They exchange glances, witty words. In the social swirl, they find each other. On the promenade, they parade together arm in arm. Time spent away from her is sleepless, and when they kiss, it is in the “Goethian” way, from his books: a matter of souls, not mouths or lips. And yet, his years fail him. At an afternoon tea party, a younger man tries to seduce her. At a costume ball, he collapses. When he proposes nonetheless, Ulrike and her mother are already preparing to leave. Caught in a storm of emotion and torn between despair and unwillingness to give up hope, he begins an elegy in his coach as he pursues her: “The Marienbad Elegy,” one of his last great works.You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here
By Frances Macken. 2020
AN IRISH TIMES, IRISH INDEPENDENT and SUNDAY INDEPENDENT 'TITLE TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2020' Katie, Maeve and Evelyn –…
friends forever, united by their childhood games and their dreams of escaping the tiny Irish town of Glenbruff. Outspoken, unpredictable and intoxicating, Evelyn is the undisputed leader of the trio. That is, until the beautiful, bold Pamela Cooney arrives from Dublin and changes Glenbruff forever... Told from Katie's witty, quirky perspective, Frances Macken's debut beautifully captures life in a small town and the power of yearning for something bigger. Filled with unforgettable characters and crackling dialogue, You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here takes a keen-eyed look at the complexities of female friendship, the corrosive power of jealousy and guilt, and the way that life can quietly erode our dreams unless we're willing to fight for them.Creating Anna Karenina: Tolstoy and the Birth of Literature's Most Enigmatic Heroine
By Bob Blaisdell. 2020
The story behind the origins of Anna Karenina and the turbulent life and times of Leo Tolstoy.Anna Karenina is one…
of the most nuanced characters in world literature and we return to her, and the novel she propels, again and again. Remarkably, there has not yet been an examination of Leo Tolstoy specifically through the lens of this novel. Critic and professor Bob Blaisdell unravels Tolstoy&’s family, literary, and day-to-day life during the period that he conceived, drafted, abandoned, and revised Anna Karenina. In the process, we see where Tolstoy&’s life and his art intersect in obvious and unobvious ways. Readers often assume that Tolstoy, a nobleman-turned-mystic would write himself into the principled Levin. But in truth, it is within Anna that the consciousness and energy flows with the same depth and complexities as Tolstoy. Her fateful suicide is the road that Tolstoy nearly traveled himself. At once a nuanced biography and portrait of the last decades of the Russian empire and artful literary examination, Creating Anna Karenina will enthrall the thousands of readers whose lives have become deeper and clearer after experiencing this hallmark of world literature.Necropolis (Russian Library)
By Vladislav Khodasevich. 2019
Necropolis is an unconventional literary memoir by Vladislav Khodasevich, hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as “the greatest Russian poet of our…
time.” In each of the book’s nine chapters, Khodasevich memorializes a significant figure of Russia’s literary Silver Age, and in the process writes an insightful obituary of the era.Written at various times throughout the 1920s and 1930s following the deaths of its subjects, Necropolis is a literary graveyard in which an entire movement, Russian Symbolism, is buried. Recalling figures including Alexander Blok, Sergey Esenin, Fyodor Sologub, and the socialist realist Maxim Gorky, Khodasevich tells the story of how their lives and artworks intertwined, including a notoriously tempestuous love triangle among Nina Petrovskaya, Valery Bryusov, and Andrei Bely. He testifies to the seductive and often devastating power of the Symbolist attempt to turn one’s life into a work of art and, ultimately, how one man was left with the task of memorializing his fellow artists after their deaths. Khodasevich’s portraits deal with revolution, disillusionment, emigration, suicide, the vocation of the poet, and the place of the artist in society. One of the greatest memoirs in Russian literature, Necropolis is a compelling work from an overlooked writer whose gifts for observation and irony show the early twentieth-century Russian literary scene in a new and more intimate light.The boy who would not weep. The true face of bullying
By José Antonio Jiménez-Barbero. 2018
To Santiago, everyday life has become an unbearable punishment and the idea of suicide, fascinating and terrible, comes up to…
his tortured mind frequently... Everything changes when he meets Lucía, the new girl. Friendly, intelligent and gifted of great sensibility, she’s the only one capable of discovering the entreasured inner self of the strange and lonely boy. Something extraordinary starts to happen to Santiago. He hides, under his apparent shy surface, an unexpected strong, indomitable and sometimes dark personality. But the cruel chasing continues, each time more obsessive and violent; but Santiago has decided to not let himself to be defeated, he endures it in silence, without complaining... without crying. Until that this nightmare also reaches his only friend and the fragile sanity of the boy ends up breaking in a devastating and terrible way. The boy who would not weep: the true face of bullying constitutes one of the first novels that present the cruel and true face of bullying. With a straight forward and austere language, Jiménez-Barbero brings a shocking story, with no cracks, straight to the point, whose mission, being read and understood by all audiences, is perfectly fulfilled since the narrative rhythm allows a complete immersion, without flourishes, in a story that sometimes can be read as a documentary. Ultimately, that’s what the novel is about, a cry of alarm issued by someone who has lived in the first line of fire. The author has worked as a police officer in a problematic that’s neglected by a culture obsessed by violence in all its forms. That being said, The boy who would not weep: the true face of bullying is a must read to all parents whose children are teenagers, but also to those that think that this problem keeps them at borders and comprehend up to which point a boy’s darkness can reach up, making him even deny the tears.How to be Nowhere
By Tim MacGabhann. 2020
Life is finally on the right track for reporter and recovering addict Andrew: he is slowly coming to terms with…
the murder of his photographer boyfriend Carlos, pursuing sobriety and building a new home with a new partner. Andrew has almost forgotten about the story that ruined his life - but that story hasn't forgotten about him, and a series of deadly threats forces him into helping the very man whose gang murdered his boyfriend and left him homeless.A literary take on the classic chase movie, HOW TO BE NOWHERE is the sequel to Tim MacGabhann's genre-busting and critically-acclaimed debut CALL HIM MINE, and a blistering thrill-ride deep into the fog of Central America's murky present and tragic future.Betty: The International Bestseller
By Tiffany McDaniel. 2020
'Breahtaking'Vogue'So engrossing! Betty is a page-turning Appalachian coming-of-age story steeped in Cherokee history, told in undulating prose that settles right…
into you'Naoise Dolan, Sunday Times bestselling author of Exciting Times 'I felt consumed by this book. I loved it, you will love it' Daisy Johnson, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Everthing Under'I loved Betty: I fell for its strong characters and was moved by the story it portrayed' Fiona Mozley, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Elmet 'A girl comes of age against the knife.' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.Despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.A heartbreaking yet magical story, Betty is a punch-in-the-gut of a novel - full of the crushing cruelty of human nature and the redemptive power of words. 'Not a story you will soon forget' Karen Joy Fowler, Booker Prize shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves 'Shot through with moonshine, Bible verses, and folklore, Betty is about the cruelty we inflict on one another, the beauty we still manage to find, and the stories we tell in order to survive' Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow ChildFear: A brilliantly gripping and twisty psychological thriller
By Dirk Kurbjuweit. 2017
The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Irish Times Book of the Year.'Something we've not seen before in contemporary crime fiction' GUARDIAN'[An]…
uncomfortably close-to-home thriller' SUNDAY TIMES CRIME CLUB'As intellectually stimulating as it is gripping' DAILY TELEGRAPH, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018'Takes you right into the heart of darkness' MAIL ON SUNDAY'A must-have new read' DAILY EXPRESS'Wonderfully sinister' THE OBSERVER'Frightening' THE TIMES'Addictive' INDEPENDENT'Terrific' JOANNE HARRIS'Brilliantly done' FIONA BARTON'A great achievement' HERMAN KOCH'Claustrophobic and unsettling' BBC NEWS'[A] creepy tale of obsession' SUNDAY MIRROR'An unsettling tale of merciless self-scrutiny' RENEE KNIGHT'A terrifying study of a family threatened by the tenant living downstairs' WOMAN & HOME*********How far would you go to protect your family?Family is everything. So what if yours was being terrorised by a neighbour - a man who doesn't listen to reason, whose actions become more erratic and sinister with each passing day?You go to the police, but they can't help you. You become afraid to leave your family at home alone. But there's nothing more you can do to protect them.Or is there...?FEAR is a brilliantly grippling, original psychological thriller - for fans of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW, ANATOMY OF A SCANDAL and THE DINNER.-------------------------FEAR is translated from the German by Imogen TaylorI Did a Bad Thing: Now It’s Back to Haunt Me
By Linda Green. 2010
'A funny, dark read' Closer 'Smart, witty writing' ElleA heartbreaking and poignant novel of love and loss, from the no…
1 bestselling author of WHILE MY EYES WERE CLOSED.Sarah Roberts used to be good. Then she did something bad. Now, years later, she's living a good life. She works as a local newspaper reporter and lives with her saintly boyfriend Jonathan. She has no reason to think her guilty past will ever catch up with her.Until Nick, the man she was prepared to risk everything for, walks back into her life. And suddenly, what's good and bad aren't so clear to Sarah any more . . .****Readers are LOVING I Did a Bad Thing...'What an inspiring novel' *****'A great read. dark and funny and will pull at the heart strings' *****'I absolutely loved this book!' *****'Another triumph for Linda Green' *****The Parable Book
By Per Olov Enquist. 2013
"The love that dare not speak its name . . ." Sweden, 1949. A boy of 15, cutting across a…
garden, chances upon a woman of 51. What ensues is cataclysmic, life-altering. All the more because it cannot be spoken of. Can it never be spoken of?Looking back in late old age at an encounter that transformed him suddenly yet utterly, P.O. Enquist, a titan of Swedish letters, has decided to "come out" - but in ways entirely novel and unexpected. He has written the book that smoldered unwritten within him his entire life. The book he had always seen as the one he could not write.This poignant memoir of love as a religious experience - as a modern form of the Resurrection - is also a deeply felt reflection on the transitoriness of friendship, the fraught nature of family relationships, and the importance of giving voice to what cannot be forgotten. A parable as hauntingly intense as any Bergman film.Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-TurnerSee Me: A stunning love story that will take your breath away
By Nicholas Sparks. 2015
The stunning love story from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of The Notebook, The Lucky One and The Longest Ride. Nicholas…
Sparks is one of the world's most beloved authors.____________________Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot.At twenty-eight, he's focused on getting his teaching degree and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his past. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when he crosses paths with Maria Sanchez one rainswept night, his carefully structured life is turned upside down. And when Maria, a hardworking lawyer, meets Colin she begins to question every notion she has ever had about herself and her future - and what truly makes her happy. Before the couple has a chance to envision a life together, menacing reminders from events in Maria's past start to surface. And as the threat of violence begins to shadow her every step, she and Colin will be pushed to breaking point. A story of obsession, reinvention and a love that defies every expectation, See Me is a incredible love story from multi-million-copy bestselling author Nicholas Sparks.____________________*The breathtaking new love story from Nicholas Sparks, Every Breath, is available now*Praise for multi-million-copy bestseller phenomenon, Nicholas Sparks:'When it comes to tales about love, Nicholas Sparks is one of the undisputed kings' Heat'An absorbing page-turner' Daily Mail'A fiercely romantic and touching tale' Heat on The Longest Ride'An A-grade romantic read' OK! on Safe Haven'This one won't leave a dry eye' Daily Mirror on The Lucky One