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Version Control (The Reckoner Rises #2)
By David Robertson. 2022
Production note: This title was created through eBOUND's Literary Image Description project. The author and illustrator wrote or consulted on…
the image descriptions, which are included in the body and narration of the text. "With Cole barely clinging to life, Eva fearlessly takes the lead to investigate Mihko's horrific experiments. But where's Brady? After learning that Mihko reinstated the Reckoner Initiative, Cole and Eva confront Mihko head-on. But a vicious battle with Mihko's newest test subject leaves Cole close to death, and Eva must continue their investigation without him. With Brady missing and Cole in recovery, Eva is on her own. When Eva stumbles across Mihko's secret laboratory, she finds her worst nightmares come to life. What new terrors has Mihko created? And can Eva find Brady before it's too late?"--Back coverBreakdown (The Reckoner Rises #1)
By David Robertson. 2020
Production note: This title was created through eBOUND's Literary Image Description project. The author and illustrator wrote or consulted on…
the image descriptions, which are included in the body and narration of the text. Acclaimed writer, David A. Robertson, delivers suspense, adventure, and humour in this stunningly illustrated graphic novel continuation of The Reckoner trilogy. Cole and Eva arrive in Winnipeg intent on destroying Mihko Laboratories. Their plans change when a new threat surfaces, and Cole has terrifying visions. Are these just troubled dreams or are they leading him to a terrifying truth? Will Eva be able to harness her powers to continue the investigation without him?RX
By Rachel Lindsay. 2018
A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness, treating mental illness as a commodity, and the often unavoidable choice…
between sanity and happiness.In her early twenties in New York City, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment. But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain, developing ads for an antidepressant drug. She is the audience of the work she's been pouring over and it highlights just how unhappy and trapped she feels, stuck in an endless cycle of treatment, insurance and medication. Overwhelmed by the stress of her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires, she begins to destabilize and while in the midst of a crushing job search, her mania takes hold. Her altered mindset yields a simple solution: to quit her job and pursue life as an artist, an identity she had abandoned in exchange for medical treatment. When her parents intervene, she finds herself hospitalized against her will, and stripped of the control she felt she had finally reclaimed. Over the course of her two weeks in the ward, she struggles in the midst of doctors, nurses, patients and endless rules to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment. One where she can live the life she wants, finding freedom and autonomy, without sacrificing her dreams in order to stay well.Glass Grapes: and Other Stories
By Martha Ronk. 2008
Glass Grapes and Other Stories is the first full-length collection of short stories by distinguished poet and fiction writer Martha…
Ronk. Ronk's work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards, including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in poetry, a 2007 NEA Fellowship, and a 2007 National Poetry Series Award. Glass Grapes is a collection of short, experimental stories, usually dominated by an object imbued with fetishistic qualities by an obsessive, self-involved narrator. The language of these stories is repetitive, provocative, imagistic, occasionally comic, and unnerving. Ronk's fiction moves with the same grace, beauty, and attention to language as her most accomplished poetry.This Bitter Earth
By Mcfadden, Bernice L.. 2002
In This Bitter Earth, Sugar Lacey is on her way out of Bigelow, Arkansas, where she’d come to break with…
the past. With her worn leopard-print suitcase and her head held high, she walks past the prying eyes of its small-minded, cruel-hearted townsfolk, praying for the strength to keep going. She doesn’t stop until she arrives at her childhood home in Short Junction. Here she learns the truth about her parentage: a terrible tale of unrequited love, of one man’s enduring hatred, and of the black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women. A powerfully realized novel that brings back the unforgettable characters from Sugar, McFadden’s bestselling debut, This Bitter Earth is a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. .The Clouds
By Juan Saer, Hilary Dobel. 2016
Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language --Ricardo Piglia What Saer presents marvelously is…
the experience of reality and the characters attempts to write their own narratives within its excess --BookforumIn modern-day Paris Pich n Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript--which might be fictional or could be a memoir--by Doctor Real a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum Their trip which ends in disaster and fire is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone--even the other patients--into sleeping with her Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer s typically gorgeous Proustian style The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile--a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers--as well as an examination of madness Juan Jos Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation The author of numerous novels and short-story collections including Scars and La Grande Saer was awarded Spain s prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University She is the author of two manuscripts and in addition to Saer she has translated work by Carlos PintadoThe Itch
By Benilde Little. 1998
From the author of the smashing debut bestseller Good Hair comes The Itch, the stirring story of a crisis-torn woman…
who discovers a depth of character and a sense of self she never knew she possessed.Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle. She leads a charmed life -- having attended all the right schools, married the right man, and started a successful film production company with her best friend, Natasha Coleman -- and seems like an ambassador from the world of perfection. It is only when her impeccable marriage turns suddenly shaky that her utopia is left in pieces.Shadow Man
By Jeffrey Fleishman. 2012
Foreign correspondent James Ryan was there whenever the world changed: in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in the former…
Soviet bloc. But now he can't remember these events; he can't recall anything long-term, except the summer of his fifteenth year following his mother's death. It was the summer his father told him to call him Kurt. The summer the mysterious and enchanting Vera burst into their lonely, quiet lives. The summer his own world opened, then irrevocably changed.James, at fifty-two, suffers from a severe case of early onset Alzheimer's. The novel unravels James's predicament through the clear glimpses he retains of that long ago summer, and through the desperate attempts of his wife and his nurse to bring him back to the present, if only for stolen moments. Each has her motives: his wife trying not to lose the man with whom she shared so much - wars, death, love, loss of a child, history. And his nurse, the half sister he never knew he had, needing James's adolescent memory to understand the biological father and mother she never met. Told from the perspective of a man betrayed by his own mind, Shadow Man is a novel of identity and suspense that travels across continents and deep into the pasts that make us each who we are. It explores the power of memory to heal and to mask, and of the limits of unconditional love. Set in Philly and the eastern shore of yesteryear, in the Middle East, and throughout Eastern Europe, Fleishman's trademark descriptive but spare lyricism shines. Shadow Man is a touching and haunting novel perhaps most similar to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, though it is a work of fiction. From the Trade Paperback edition.Gospel Choirs
By Derrick A. Bell. 1996
Just like the songs of a gospel choir, the pieces in this book give voice to the hardships faced by…
African Americans. Through allegorical stories and fictional encounters, dreams and dialogues, it presents fresh perspectives on the different issues that concern blacks. Despite their tough subjects, however, these stories resound with laughter and compassion and a continuing theme of Christian love.Maleficium
By David Homel, Fred A. Reed, Martine Desjardins. 2009
Martine Desjardins delivers to readers of Maleficium the unexpurgated revelations of Vicar Jerome Savoie, a heretic priest in nineteenth century…
Montreal. Braving threats from the Catholic Church, Savoie dares to violate the sanctity of the confessional in this confession-within-a-confession, in which seven penitents, each afflicted with a debilitating malady or struck with a crippling deformity, relates his encounter with an enigmatic young woman whose lips bear a striking scar.As these men penetrate deep into the exotic Orient, each falls victim to his own secret vice. One treks through Ethiopia in search of wingless locusts. Another hunts for fly-whisks among the clove plantations of Zanzibar. Yet others bargain for saffron in a Srinagar bazaar, search for the rarest frankincense, and pursue the coveted hawksbill turtle in the Sea of Oman. Two more seek the formula for sabon Nablus in Palestine or haggle over Persian carpets in the royal gardens of Shiraz. The men's individual forms of punishment, revealed through the agency of the young woman, are wrought upon their bodies.Baroque in its complexity, Kafka-like in its inexorable mechanics, Maleficium by turns astonishes, amuses, and beguiles. Then author Martine Desjardins's Vicar Savoie-as in any confession worth its communion wafer-saves the best (or worst) for last.Maleficium won the Prix Jacques Brossard and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award (French Fiction), the Prix des libraires du Québec, the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie, and the Prix France-Québec.Helping the Polonskys
By Khaleel Muhammad. 2012
In this exciting new series, a group of Muslim kids come together to clean up an old Jewish man's house…
before his wife returns home from a major operation. But with time running out and a bigger mess than they had imagined . . . can they succeed?Khaleel Muhammad is a well-known singer of nasheeds (Islamic songs). He has also written and produced his own successful audio adventure, The Adventures of Hakim. This is his first children's book. Khaleel lives in London, England.Between Father and Son
By Eric V. Copage. 2011
Thirteen-year-old Jordan Garrison is at a crossroads. He's just about to enter high school, and his biggest worries are his…
new bottom-of-the-totem-pole status as an incoming freshman and his father's constant lectures about becoming a man. Growing further apart from his younger siblings-precocious eight-year-old twins-Jordan thinks his only ally is his grandmother, a hip sixty-two-year-old with a youthful glow that comforts Jordan, especially in the absence of his mother. But when his widowed father suddenly dies, Jordan finds the journey through puberty to adulthood all the more daunting. He feels alone despite the best efforts of his family and friends. He is resentful and confused about new responsibilities forced on him, and torn between acting with his heart or fulfilling the expectations of those around him. A mysterious neighborhood shopkeeper, Snackman, notices Jordan's dilemma and steps in as surely as Jordan's own father would have. He offers Jordan a dirty strip of kente cloth, which he says contains the answers to Jordan's problems. And through this strip of cloth, Snackman guides Jordan to the answer of what it is to be a Black man. But not before Jordan meets with an almost disastrous fire and realizes his true importance to his family. Dazzling and magical, Between Father and Son is a heartening story with a powerful message that adults and children alike will turn to time and time again.The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales
By Charles W. Chesnutt, Richard H. Brodhead. 1993
The stories in The Conjure Woman were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success, and since their initial publication in…
1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Lesser known, though, is that the The Conjure Woman, as first published by Houghton Mifflin, was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors. This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tale genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published Conjure Woman forms a part. It allows the reader to see how the original volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work.In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.Blind Ambitions
By Lolita Files. 2000
Hollywood. The place people go to fulfill their dreams. But its reality is a cruel one: Opportunities are few and…
the competition ruthless. Innocent hearts can suddenly turn dark, and the most loyal of friends can become bitter enemies. Desi, Sharon, and Bettina are three black women struggling to make names for themselves amid the glitz, glamour, and deception. Before the women can be swept away by the intrigue and intensity of the entertainment industry, they must answer the desperate calls from the ghosts of their pasts....But if they do, will the shadows of infidelity, abandonment, and murder destroy everything they've worked for?Snow White: An Islamic Tale
By Fawzia Gilani, Shireen Adams. 2013
Involving the power of a djinn, poisoned dates, seven dwarf sisters-in-faith, and a mysterious old peddler woman in the woods…
wearing a face veil, this lyrically told story offers a unique twist on this fairy tale, whilst keeping the classic much-loved story intact, including a hateful and vain stepmother, a considerate huntsman, and a charming prince.Set in the heady snow-strewn woodlands of Anatolia by the illustrator Shireen Adams, this tale of flight, friendship, and forgiveness is richly detailed and beautifully brought to life.Snow White is the second book in the Islamic Fairy Tales series, which looks to offer meaningful and faithful variants of these popular worldwide stories.Fawzia Gilani has worked as a teacher, librarian, and school principal in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada since 1993. She is the author of thirty children's books, mostly on the topic of Eid.The Blacker the Ink
By John Jennings, Craig Fischer, Frances Gateward, Rebecca Wanzo, William Lafi Youmans, Kinohi Nishikawa, Blair Davis, Nancy Goldstein, Daniel F. Yezbick, Sally Mcwilliams, James J. Zeigler, Qiana Whitted, Reynaldo Anderson, Hershini Bhana Young, Robin Means Coleman, Patrick F. Walter, Consuela Francis, Andre Carrington. 2015
When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps,…
inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century. The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into "panels" in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s. Even as it demonstrates the wide spectrum of images of African Americans in comics and sequential art, the collection also identifies common character types and themes running through everything from the strip The Boondocks to the graphic novel Nat Turner. Though it does not shy away from examining the legacy of racial stereotypes in comics and racial biases in the industry, The Blacker the Ink also offers inspiring stories of trailblazing African American artists and writers. Whether you are a diehard comic book fan or a casual reader of the funny pages, these essays will give you a new appreciation for how black characters and creators have brought a vibrant splash of color to the world of comics.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 MailThe Strange Truth About Us
By M.A.C. Farrant. 2011
This tell-all book by M.A.C. Farrant, whom Publishers Weekly has celebrated as "a brave iconoclast" and whose work the Globe…
& Mail has said "bristles with moral fury ... at the absurdities of our accelerated age and a great dose of laugh-out-loud humour," offers her readers nothing less than The Strange Truth About Us.A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions, speculations, and meditations, by turns philosophical, dark, comedic, and lyrical, it attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned world."Annotations About an Absence" is a series of 115 numbered annotations to the day-long ruminations of a retired couple living in a gated community attempting to create an imaginary novel in which they express their fears about the future: "We attempt to express the universal confusion of mind that is the main feature of contemporary life. Which is? We are afraid.""Woman Records Brief Notes Regarding Absence" is written as a series of notes to these annotations, providing (in the utterly blank spirit of transparency) a running satiric narrative on the project. Each of these "notes" is written as if it were a description of a late-night TV movie or the content of a wet Jehovah's Witness pamphlet left on a woman's doorstep that has taken hold of her mind."Other Prose Surrounding Absence" comprises twenty-seven prose pieces that take aim at a globalized world bludgeoned by the threat of "end times"-climate change, species extinction, pandemics, and really bad politics-that seem designed insofar as we are able to retain our status as "individuals."Unique in style and approach, engaging, enigmatic, controversial, and delightful, this book is an attempt to prick the bubble of our complacency in the face of the "awful atrocity" we've made for ourselves.Bob Stevenson
By Richard Wiley. 2016
"A witty, roller-coaster ride of uncertain identity set against the gritty certainties of New York City. In compelling, unadorned prose,…
Richard Wiley gives us a bewitching and ultimately moving tale." -Caryl Phillips, author of A Distant Shore and The Lost ChildDr. Ruby Okada meets a charming man with a Scottish accent in the elevator of her psychiatric hospital. Unaware that he is an escaping patient, she falls under his spell, and her life and his are changed forever by the time they get to the street.Who is the mysterious man? Is he Archie B. Billingsly, suffering from dissociative identity disorder and subject to brilliant flights of fancy and bizarre, violent fits? Or is he the reincarnation of Robert Louis Stevenson, back to haunt New York as Long John Silver and Mr. Edward Hyde? Her career compromised, Ruby soon learns that her future and that of her unborn child depend on finding the key to his identity. With compelling psychological descriptions and terrifying, ineffable transformations, Bob Stevenson is an ingenious tale featuring a quirky cast of characters drawn together by mutual fascination, need, and finally, love.Richard Wiley is the author of eight novels including Soldiers in Hiding, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and Ahmed's Revenge, winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he divides his time between Los Angeles, California and Tacoma, Washington.Against the Wind
By Howard Scott, Madeleine Gagnon, Phyllis Aronoff. 2012
Is an artist born, or rather, created by experience? From the moment in childhood when he is forced to take…
drastic action to defend his adoptive mother from a violent assault - the only maternal figure that he has ever known - it is evident that the life of Joseph Sully-Jacques is to be no ordinary life, and one marked by sorrow and adversity.Unable to cope with or even recognize the residual effects of his trauma in adolescence, Joseph retreats into an increasingly abstract world, one in which he must confront what he calls his "visions." And when he hears of the death of his natural mother, this brings to the surface memories he had hoped were buried deep within him, and precipitates the form of various crises to come, particularly as he discovers and makes use of the artistic abilities revealed to his family during his psychiatric evaluation.After many more hardships, the young man does find meaning to the absurdities of life, ironically in the asylum, where he meets a virtuoso pianist whose condition prevents her from continuing to exercise her talents. They heal together through their mutual love, which will soon subsist upon nothing but memory and absence. During mournful years of raising his son alone, in his extensive adversaria, Joseph sets out to reconcile the contradictory themes in his life, including abandonment, madness, love, and death.In spare, lucid prose, and in a style reminiscent of André Gide, Madeleine Gagnon invites the reader to experience the creation and development of an artist "in his own words" - Joseph's gelid journal entries that are to become emphatic poetic laments - in a novel that chronicles the extreme destitution of Quebec in the years before World War Two and in abstract developing forms of artistic expression after years of uncertainty and loss.