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The Hatbox Letters
By Beth Powning. 2021
In this beautiful and deeply moving novel, a young widow struggles to come to terms with her solitary life in…
the rambling Victorian house she shared until recently with her husband and children in semi-rural New Brunswick.It is in this house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, that Kate Harding, 52, faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. Her children, now grown, are living away, and Kate is truly on her own. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters and other ghostly ephemera, recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents’ 18th-century Connecticut house. Their sweet mustiness tinges the air and makes Kate dream of her childhood and of her beloved grandparents. She remembers the sense of permanence and refuge that she felt in their apple-scented world, as well as, more recently, with her husband. As she begins to read the hatbox letters, she discovers that what to a child seemed a serene and blissful marriage was in fact founded on a tragic event. As Kate’s eyes clear to the truth of the past, a new tragedy unfolds, and her own house, filled with the shared detritus of marriage and motherhood, becomes the refuge where Kate can connect the strands of her unravelled life.In The Hatbox Letters — which is both sad and exhilarating, touching and illuminating — Beth Powning offers readers an unforgettable story of love, grief and renewal, both past and present, as well as her extraordinary perceptions of the natural world.Excerpt from The Hatbox LettersThe birds rise with a muted thunder, their wings serrate the light. For an instant, a peregrine falcon zigzags through the flock. Then it drops from the belly of the rising bird-cloud. In its talons is a sandpiper, crumpled like a ball of paper. It is hard to decide which drama to observe, the escape of the falcon with its prey or the flock’s display as the birds rush seaward like a single entity, a ballooning flame that rises and falls, expands and implodes, one instant silver and the next black. The flock speeds back towards the beach, passes close to the watchers, makes a dazzling turn, fast as thought. Then, with a diminishing roar, the birds waver, their legs drop, stretch. They touch down. They fluff their feathers, Kate observes, the way humans pull coats up around necks after a shock. Trying to put ourselves back as we were.Falling out of time
By David Grossman. 2014
Walking Man announces to his wife that he is setting out in search of their son, who has died. As…
Walking Man travels, other townspeople join him in search of their own loved ones. They all question whether death is truly the end of a person. Translated from Hebrew. 2014Las profecías mayas (Best seller (Debolsillo (Firm)))
By Maurice Cotterell, Gilbert Cotterell. 2010
An author and a scientist explore the Mesoamerican civilization of the Maya. They analyze Mayan history, cosmology, and astronomy, with…
an emphasis on concepts of time and the predictions that the world will end in 2012. Translated from English. Spanish language. 2009Dirt road: A Novel
By James Kelman. 2016
The story of a teenage boy, who travels with his father from Scotland to Alabama to visit with relatives after…
the death of his mother and sister, and becomes swept up into the world of zydeco and bluesOn our own: independent living for older persons (Golden Age Bks.)
By Ursula A Falk, Falk, Ursula A. Falk. 1989
Americans cherish their independence, and so it is difficult when age raises the spectre of dependence. Falk suggests ways in…
which older people can continue to live successfully on their own. She outlines meal programs, alternative living arrangements, family support systems, leisure activities, and employment opportunities. 1989Les devoirs d'edmond
By Hugo Léger. 2022
« Ma maman est morte. Je le dis comme c'est arrivé, brusquement. Quelques minutes avant que la mer l'avale, on…
s'amusait tous les deux. Elle était le requin, j'étais le surfeur. On l'a retrouvée le lendemain, comme la boîte noire d'un avion. On ne meurt pas en vacances. C'est pas juste. On peut pas être très heureux et très malheureux la même journée. C'est trop rapproché. » De retour d'un voyage au dénouement malheureux, le jeune Edmond doit apprendre à vivre sans sa mère, pendant que son père essaie de cacher sa peine et que sa soeur ne semble pas vraiment comprendre que leur maman ne reviendra pas. Edmond tente de venir en aide à sa famille en faisant des grilled cheese (avec du beurre des deux côtés, comme sa maman) et toute sortes de petites tâches quotidiennes. Il en vient à se dire qu'il pourrait trouver un boulot... Il n'a peut-être que dix ans, mais ça lui permettrait de faire sa part. Sur le chemin du travail, Edmond rencontrera Raymond et son chat Dali. Au fil de leurs échanges et de sa première expérience professionnelle, il découvrira que rien ne sert de précipiter les choses, qu'il peut encore attendre avant d'être un adulte et qu'il peut prendre le temps d'être un enfant et de vivre son deuil avec ses proches.As my parents age: reflections on life, love, and change
By Cynthia Ruchti. 2017
Escarpolette (Rose)
By Sylvie Drapeau. 2022
Depuis le grave accident qui l’a plongée dans le coma, la mère de Rose ne bouge plus, ne parle plus.…
Ses yeux restent toujours fermés. Mais le docteur Chevalier croit que, peut-être, elle peut entendre. Alors Rose lui lit à voix haute des pages entières de son journal intime. Elle lui raconte tout : son école, ses peurs, ses peines, ses défis. Un soir, pour lui changer les idées, le père de Rose l’emmène au théâtre voir Le petit chaperon rouge. Rose est émerveillée. C’est le plus beau spectacle au monde! Soudain, la vie retrouve ses couleurs. C’est décidé, elle fera du théâtre! Sylvie Drapeau est une grande comédienne et une auteure. Avec Escarpolette, elle signe son premier roman pour la jeunesse.18% Gray
By Angela Rodel, Zachary Karabashliev. 2008
After Stella disappears, Zack sets off on a trip across America with his memories, a camera, and a duffle bag…
of dope. Through the lens of the old camera, he starts rediscovering himself by photographing an America we rarely see. His journey unleashes a series of erratic, hilarious, and life-threatening events interspersed with flashbacks to his relationship with Stella.The Obese Christ
By Sheila Fischman, Larry Tremblay. 2014
The asocial, sexually repressed Edgar, kneeling in grief at his mother's graveside, turns abruptly to witness a terrifying and life-altering…
event: the brutal rape of a young woman. Compelled by muddled instinct (and ingrained religious conviction), our hero bears the unconscious victim home, solemnly pledging to care for her - and to act as her saviour. As winter closes in, the captor's neuroses are revealed and his behaviour becomes increasingly violent, allowing the victim only one escape.With The Obese Christ, Larry Tremblay squarely situates himself within the realm of Hitchcock, Polanski, and Stephen King. A brilliant exercise in unease and paranoia, The Obese Christ demonstrates Tremblay's powerful ability to evoke dead and fear, while immersing the reader in a wrapped and putrid world told from Edgar's sanctified point of view.A Matter of Gravity
By Howard Scott, Phyllis Aronoff, Hélène Vachon. 2014
A Matter of Gravity is a playful and touching treatment of illness and tragedy, in which an enigmatic manuscript brings…
together two disparate male characters. Black humor and compassion brilliantly illuminate their tragic encounter.Hélène Vachon is the author of two novels and more than twenty works of children's literature. Her books have been nominated for many prizes, including the Governor General's Literary Award and the Mr. Christie's Book Award.Howard Scott is a Montreal literary translator who specializes in the genres of fiction and nonfiction.Phyllis Aronoff is former president of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada.First Love Again
By Kristina Knight. 2015
Some loves deserve a second chance... Coming back to Gulliver Island after a ten-year absence to take care of his…
father should have been simple. Emmett Deal would fix and sell the family home, and return to Cincinnati with his ailing father in tow. Yet something compels him to stay a little longer. The beautiful, bright eyes of Jaime Brown. Ten years ago, traumatic events changed the course of Jaime's life forever, catching her in a small-town life she can't escape. Emmett's return stirs up the memories she wanted to ignore...and dreams she had forgotten. Now she finds herself with a rare opportunity-a second chance. Only this time, it's not just for love...Rochester Knockings
By Jennifer Grotz, Hubert Haddad. 2015
"Hats off to one of the most inventive writers of French literature. . . . Hubert Haddad concocts a colorful…
novel, funny and inventive, as clever as the Fox sisters themselves."--Jean-François Delapré, Saint Christophe bookstoreThe Fox sisters grew up just outside of Rochester, NY, in a house that had a reputation for being haunted, due in large part to a series of strange "rappings" or "knockings" that plagued its inhabitants. Fed up by whatever was responsible for the knockings, the youngest of the sisters (who was twelve at the time) challenged the ghost and ended up communicating with the spirit of Charles Haynes, who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar.Thanks to the enthusiasm of one Isaac Post, the Fox sisters became instantly famous for talking to the dead, launching the Spiritualist Movement in the US. After taking Rochester by storm, the sisters moved to New York where they were the most famous mediums of the time, giving séances for hundreds of people.Then, it all fell apart, and the sisters were exposed as frauds. Nevertheless, even today the Fox sisters are considered to be the founders of Spiritualism, one of the most popular religious movements of the past couple centuries (consider the success of Long Island Medium and the hundreds of thousands who visit Lily Dale every year).Rich in historical detail, Rochester Knockings novelizes the rise and fall of these most infamous of mediums. Hubert Haddad was born in Tunisia, and is the author of dozens of works, including the novels Palestine (winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie), Tango chinois, and La Condition magique (winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres).Widow
By Michelle Latiolais. 2011
BELIEVER BOOK AWARD FINALIST"In prose shimmering with intelligence and compassion, Michelle Latiolais dissects the essentials of everyday life to find…
the heartbeat within."-Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones"Widow is a hymn to reverence, simultaneously heartbroken and celebratory. Michelle Latiolais has given us the rarest item, a splendidly articulated masterpiece." -William Kittredge"In this luminous collection of stories, the gifted Michelle Latiolais writes of loss in all its surprising manifestations. Widow is a devastation and a wonder." -Christine Schutt"There is something mysterious about this book, as there always is in the writing that matters most. It eludes explanation. It illumines terrifying realities. Only because these pages seem nakedly willing to take the imprint of every emotion, no matter how ugly, do they possess this great beauty." -Elizabeth TallentThe stories of Widow conjure the nuances of inner sensations as if hitting the notes of a song, deftly played across human memory. These meditations bravely explore the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail-reminding us that the inner life is best understood through the medium of storytelling. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the ineffable pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout this collection, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompany life's most transformative chapters.Michelle Latiolais is the author of Widow: Stories, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, and two previous novels, including A Proper Knowledge, also published by Bellevue Literary Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.I Was There the Night He Died
By Ray Robertson. 2014
"Ray Robertson is an irrepressible voice, with brass balls, and a heart of gold. I Was There the Night He…
Died is a hilarious, moving, insightful, and timely piece of modern realism, delightfully void of literary pretension. Here, at last, is a novel that rocks and rolls."-Jonathan Evison, author of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving"So," she says. "Who died tonight?"Sam Samson, meet Samantha. Sam's a novelist: his dad has Alzheimer's, his mother died of stroke, his wife was killed seventeen months ago in a car crash. Samantha, eighteen, is a cutter. She lives across the street from Sam's parents' house. Marijuana and loneliness spark an unlikely friendship, which Sam finds hard to navigate, especially as his dad's condition worsens and the money for his care suddenly vanishes. Yet somehow, between a record player and a park bench, through late-night conversations about the deaths of Sam's musical heroes, and ultimately through each other, Sam and Samantha learn to endure the things they fear most.Starring a 40-something writer who stumbles through the small town he thought he'd left behind forever, and a marooned teenager who wishes she were anywhere else, I Was There The Night He Died is a saucy, swaggering look at loss, love, and the redeeming power of music in the twenty-first century.Praise for Ray Robertson,A Women's National Book Association Great Group Reads Author, 2013Shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize, 2011and the Trillium Prize, 2008 "Ray Robertson is the Jerry Lee Lewis of North American Letters."-Chuck Kinder, author of Honeymooners "Both playful and profound, laced with insight from music to history, politics to literature, high to low culture."-National Post "Robertson's art is as character-driven as Mordecai Richler's ... he wants us all to behave better and doesn't care who he angers along the way."-Globe and MailWidow
By Michelle Latiolais. 2011
BELIEVER BOOK AWARD FINALIST"In prose shimmering with intelligence and compassion, Michelle Latiolais dissects the essentials of everyday life to find…
the heartbeat within."-Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones"Widow is a hymn to reverence, simultaneously heartbroken and celebratory. Michelle Latiolais has given us the rarest item, a splendidly articulated masterpiece." -William Kittredge"In this luminous collection of stories, the gifted Michelle Latiolais writes of loss in all its surprising manifestations. Widow is a devastation and a wonder." -Christine Schutt"There is something mysterious about this book, as there always is in the writing that matters most. It eludes explanation. It illumines terrifying realities. Only because these pages seem nakedly willing to take the imprint of every emotion, no matter how ugly, do they possess this great beauty." -Elizabeth TallentThe stories of Widow conjure the nuances of inner sensations as if hitting the notes of a song, deftly played across human memory. These meditations bravely explore the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail-reminding us that the inner life is best understood through the medium of storytelling. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the ineffable pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout this collection, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompany life's most transformative chapters.Michelle Latiolais is the author of Widow: Stories, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, and two previous novels, including A Proper Knowledge, also published by Bellevue Literary Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.Turkana Boy
By Jessica Moore, Jean-François Beauchemin. 2012
In this contemplative novel-poem, Jean-François Beauchemin invites us to share in the inner world of the grieving Mr. Bartolomé, who,…
following the mysterious disappearance of his young son, wanders and wonders, seeking to transcend his pain by encountering something larger than himself. Continuously occupied by the memory of his lost son, Bartolomé's quest leads him from the city to the countryside and then to the edge of the ocean, where he marvels at the beauty of nature but cannot penetrate its mysteries.Through reference to the two-million-year-old "Turkana Boy," the fossilized remains of a boy found in 1984 near Lake Turkana, Kenya, Beauchemin addresses processes of memory and the long history of human evolution. Beauchemin's character Bartolomé sees in the lives of the boys-separated by nearly two million years-a kind of twin destiny. Has the passage of millennia changed the intensity of human feeling at the loss of blood relations? "Who knows what they had felt? Had the same emotions, those associated with incommensurable loss, broken their bodies, as they had his? Over and above morphological differences sculpted by the passage of millennia, was there something resembling a permanence of feeling, a sort of eternity for the murmuring of the heart, transmitted through the ages by the bonds of blood?"Turkana Boy offers a poignant examination of grieving and one man's search for understanding. This surrealist narrative is punctuated with magnificent musings on the world and startling questions about what it means to be alive.The Way of the Dog
By Sam Savage. 2013
"Sam Savage [creates] some of the most original, unforgettable characters in contemporary fiction. . . . Readers are left with…
a voice so strong that Savage is able to derive significance from these events by sheer literary force."--Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers"Savage's skill is in creating complex first-person characters using nothing but their own voice."--Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times"[Savage] creates one of the most intriguing stories--and one of the most vivid characters--that this reader has encountered this year."--The WriterSam Savage's most intimate, tender novel yet follows Harold Nivenson, a decrepit, aging man who was once a painter and arts patron. The death of Peter Meinenger, his friend turned romantic and intellectual rival, prompts him to ruminate on his own career as a minor artist and collector and make sense of a lifetime of gnawing doubt.Over time, his bitterness toward his family, his gentrifying neighborhood, and the decline of intelligent artistic discourse gives way to a kind of peace within himself, as he emerges from the shadow of the past and finds a reason to live, every day, in "the now."Sam Savage is the best-selling author of Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, The Cry of the Sloth, and Glass. A native of South Carolina, Savage holds a PhD in philosophy from Yale University. He resides in Madison, Wisconsin.Go Figure
By Will Browning, Réjean Ducharme. 2003
Go Figure is the hauntingly beautiful tale of a Montreal couple alienated from each other after suffering the miscarriage of…
twin girls. Mammy, the wife of Rémi Vavasseur, has gone away. Not because she no longer loves him, but because she no longer loves herself. She is criss-crossing Europe and Africa in the company of the dangerous and blonde Raïa, Rémi's former mistress. Meanwhile, Rémi remodels a ramshackle house in rural Quebec, designed for Mammy, if she ever comes back, "in flesh and bed." The novel is the journal that he keeps during their parallel journeys.Promise at Dawn
By Romain Gary. 1961
A romantic, thrilling memoir that has become a French classic. Promise at Dawn by Romain Gary (1914-80), a classic of…
modern French literature, has all the earmarks of a richly romantic novel. It is all the more thrilling, therefore, to read it and know that this is not fiction but a real-life story. As a young child, Romain Gary's mother told him that a day would come when he would have to challenge and conquer the evil demons of submission and defeat. After all, he was to be a French military hero, ambassador, noted writer, and ladies' man . . . . Thus anticipating battle, by the time of his death he had won the Cross of the Liberation, the Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honor, the Prix Goncourt (the last rather a comedown, as his mother had mentioned the Nobel Prize); and he had been the French consul-general in Los Angeles. Promise at Dawn begins as the story of a mother's sacrifice. Alone and poor she fights fiercely to give her son the very best. Gary chronicles his childhood with her in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riveria. And he recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in World War II. But above all he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his very life, their secret and private planet, their wonderland "born out of a mother's murmur into a child's ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love."