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The Anatomy of Dreams: A Novel
By Chloe Benjamin. 2014
Long-listed for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize"A sly, promising and ambitious debut." --Publishers Weekly"Chloe Benjamin is a great new…
talent." --Lorrie Moore, author of Bark: StoriesIt's 1998, and Sylvie Patterson, a bookish student at a Northern California boarding school, falls in love with a spirited, elusive classmate named Gabe. Their headmaster, Dr. Adrian Keller, is a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming: By teaching his patients to become conscious during sleep, he helps them to relieve stress and heal from trauma. Over the next six years, Sylvie and Gabe become consumed by Keller's work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California, to the enchanting New England coast.But when an opportunity brings the trio to the Midwest, Sylvie and Gabe stumble into a tangled relationship with their mysterious neighbors--and Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller's research, recognizing the harm that can be wrought under the guise of progress. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn't, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.In stirring, elegant prose, Benjamin's tale exposes the slippery nature of trust--and the immense power of our dreams.infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.The Sentimentalists
By Johanna Skibsrud. 2009
The Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novel by Johanna Skibsrud.Haunted by the vivid horrors of the Vietnam War, exhausted from years spent…
battling his memories, Napoleon Haskell leaves his North Dakota trailer and moves to Canada.He retreats to a small Ontario town where Henry, the father of his fallen Vietnam comrade, has a home on the shore of a manmade lake. Under the water is the wreckage of what was once the town-and the home where Henry was raised.When Napoleon's daughter arrives, fleeing troubles of her own, she finds her father in the dark twilight of his life, and rapidly slipping into senility. With love and insatiable curiosity, she devotes herself to learning the truth about his life; and through the fog, Napoleon's past begins to emerge.Lyrical and riveting, The Sentimentalists is a story of what lies beneath the surface of everyday life, and of the commanding power of the past. Johanna Skibsrud's first novel marks the debut of a powerful new voice in Canadian fiction.When the White House Was Ours
By Porter Shreve. 2008
Loosely based on Porter Shreve's own childhood, When the White House Was Ours is the atmospheric and captivating story of…
a family's struggle to stay together against great odds.It's 1976, and while the country prepares to celebrate the bicentennial, Daniel Truitt's family is falling apart. His father, Pete, has been fired from yet another teaching job, and his mother, Valerie, is one step away from leaving for good. But when Pete lucks into a crumbling mansion in the nation's capital, he makes a bold plan to start a school under his own roof where students and teachers will be equals. Replete with the wry humor, human insight, and cultural resonance that characterizes Shreve's critically acclaimed fiction, When the White House Was Ours will be a joy to anyone whose family has lived through an idealistic time and ended up in an era of compromise.Jukebox Queen Of Malta: A Novel
By Nicholas Rinaldi. 1999
The Jukebox Queen of Malta is an exquisite and enchanting novel of love and war set on an island perilously…
balanced between what is real and what is not. It's 1942 and Rocco Raven, an intrepid auto mechanic turned corporal from Brooklyn, has arrived in Malta, a Mediterranean island of Neolithic caves, Copper Age temples, and fortresses. The island is under siege, full of smoke and rubble, caught in the magnesium glare of German and Italian bombs. But nothing is as it seems on Malta. Rocco's living quarters are a brothel; his commanding officer has a genius for turning the war's misfortunes into personal profit; and the Maltese people, astonishingly, testify to the resiliency of the human spirit. When Rocco meets the beautiful and ethereal Melita, who delivers the jukeboxes her cousin builds out of shattered debris, they are drawn to each other by an immediate passion. And, it is their full-blown affair that at once liberates and imprisons Rocco on the island. In this mesmerizing novel, music and bombs, war and romance, the jukebox and the gun exist in arresting counterpoint in a story that is a profound and deeply moving exploration of the redemptive powers of love.The Whiteness of Bones
By Susanna Moore. 1989
In her ravishing and moving second novel, the bestselling author of In the Cut tells the story of Mamie Clarke,…
who sets out to lose herself in New York City.Having only previously known the fragile, magical world of her childhood on the lush Hawaiian island of Kaua'i, Mamie leaves college to visit her sophisticated aunt in New York. With her beautiful and self-destructive younger sister Claire in tow, Mamie must learn to make her way in a world of money, power, sex, and drugs. Moore's sharp and witty book captures an unforgettable time and place--the Manhattan of the early 80s-- and the powerful feelings engendered there.Kafka's Hat
By Chantal Bilodeau, Patrice Martin. 2013
Multiple plot lines interweave with twentieth-century literary allusions as hapless bureaucrat P. attempts to secure delivery of a valuable cultural…
relic. Patrice Martin's ticklish tip of the hat to the writing of Franz Kafka also evokes the literary techniques of Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Paul Auster.Polymath Patrice Martin is a writer, musician, and politician who is a former clerk in Canada's House of Commons, and currently is a Gatineau city councilor. He confesses his working life in government bureaucracy helped shape this, his first novel.Chantal Bilodeau is a New York-based playwright and translator originally from Montreal, Quebec.The Dark Room
By R. K. Narayan. 1938
It is still a man's world in Malgudi. And that is where docile and obedient Savitri has endured more than…
her fair share of humiliations in her long-standing marriage. But even she knows when her bullying husband has gone too far. For when Ramani insists on taking on an elegant new employee for the Engladia Insurance Company, Savitri recognises more than a professional interest in the woman. Her first resort is to try to ignore it. And her last resort is only just forestalled by a passing burglar. . .The Underdogs: A Novel of the Mexican Revolution
By Mariano Azuela, Carlos Fuentes, Sergio Waisman. 2008
The greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution, in a brilliant new translation by an award-winning translatorThe Underdogs is the first…
great novel about the first great revolution of the twentieth century. Demetrio Macias, a poor, illiterate Indian, must join the rebels to save his family. Courageous and charismatic, he earns a generalship in Pancho Villa?s army, only to become discouraged with the cause after it becomes hopelessly factionalized. At once a spare, moving depiction of the limits of political idealism, an authentic representation of Mexico?s peasant life, and a timeless portrait of revolution, The Underdogs is an iconic novel of the Latin American experience and a powerful novel about the disillusionment of war.Rien ne va Plus
By Margarita Karapanou. 1991
The story is simple: a love affair ends badly. A woman and a man marry, then cruelty, infidelity, and divorce.…
But this novel tells their story twice, from opposing perspectives. Our sympathies are inverted; we don't know whom to trust; the distinction between truth and deception blurs, and then seems simply to dissolve. The novel shifts deftly between endless oppositions: lover and beloved, angel and demon, master and slave, reader and writer. But inevitably both stories must arrive at the point of rien ne va plus: the moment in roulette when all bets are off and you either win or lose-the moment when the game becomes fate.A Short History of a Small Place
By Pearson, T. R.. 1985
Marvelously funny, bittersweet, and beautifully evocative, the original publication of A Short History of a Small Place announced the arrival…
of one of our great Southern voices. Although T. R. Pearson's Neely, North Carolina, doesn't appear on any map of the state, it has already earned a secure place on the literary landscape of the South. In this introduction to Neely, the young narrator, Louis Benfield, recounts the tragic last days of Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew, a local spinster and former town belle who, after years of total seclusion, returns flamboyantly to public view-with her pet monkey, Mr. Britches. Here is a teeming human comedy inhabited by some of the most eccentric and endearing characters ever encountered in literature. .Seven Spanish Angels
By Stephen Graham Jones. 2011
Women being murdered in El Paso, TX, and Marta Villarreal, newbie crime tech on the scene, is dragged into the…
investigation as her Detective boyfriend, extremely familiar with cases from the past this killer's work resembles, has disappeared as a possible suspect. Filled with energy, Jones' frenetic story doesn't let you put your eReader down.Un buen hijo de p...
By Ismael Cala. 2014
Segundo libro de la serie Cala Contigo Rompe paradigmas para transformar tu vida ¿Hijo de p...? No, no es lo…
que piensas. Las pes de las que hablamos aquí son otras muy diferentes. Tras el enorme éxito de su primer libro El poder de escuchar, el presentador de CNN en Español y conferencista en desarrollo humano Ismael Cala vuelve con una fábula inspiradora sobre el desarrollo humano, los significados reales de nuestras historias de vida, la inteligencia emocional, la búsqueda del éxito y el bienestar interior que nos ayudará a transformar la manera en que vivimos nuestras vidas. A través de la historia y las conversaciones de dos personajes, Arturo y Chris, Cala nos enseña como sólo nosotros mismos tenemos el poder de transformar nuestras vidas y que con el poder de la mente y el amor, todo es posible. Esta forma de vivir queda encapsulada en las tres pes: la pasión, la paciencia y la perseverancia, que nos permitirán no sólo llegar a nuestra cima, sino aprovecharla y disfrutarla. ¿Estás dispuesto a convertirte en buen hijo de p...?Uncommon Type: Some Stories
By Tom Hanks. 2017
A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as…
he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have! A New York Times BestsellerEnchantments
By Kathryn Harrison. 2012
From Kathryn Harrison, one of America's most admired literary voices, comes a gorgeously written, enthralling novel set in the final…
days of Russia's Romanov Empire. St. Petersburg, 1917. After Rasputin's body is pulled from the icy waters of the Neva River, his eighteen-year-old daughter, Masha, is sent to live at the imperial palace with Tsar Nikolay and his family--including the headstrong Prince Alyosha. Desperately hoping that Masha has inherited Rasputin's miraculous healing powers, Tsarina Alexandra asks her to tend to Aloysha, who suffers from hemophilia, a blood disease that keeps the boy confined to his sickbed, lest a simple scrape or bump prove fatal. Two months after Masha arrives at the palace, the tsar is forced to abdicate, and Bolsheviks place the royal family under house arrest. As Russia descends into civil war, Masha and Alyosha grieve the loss of their former lives, finding solace in each other's company. To escape the confinement of the palace, they tell stories--some embellished and some entirely imagined--about Nikolay and Alexandra's courtship, Rasputin's many exploits, and the wild and wonderful country on the brink of an irrevocable transformation. In the worlds of their imagination, the weak become strong, legend becomes fact, and a future that will never come to pass feels close at hand. Mesmerizing, haunting, and told in Kathryn Harrison's signature crystalline prose, Enchantments is a love story about two people who come together as everything around them is falling apart.From the Hardcover edition.Ill Will: A Novel
By Dan Chaon. 2017
Two sensational unsolved crimes—one in the past, another in the present—are linked by one man’s memory and self-deception in this…
chilling novel of literary suspense from National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon. “We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.” This is one of the little mantras Dustin Tillman likes to share with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie? A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to epitomize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients has been plying him with stories of the drowning deaths of a string of drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses his patient's suggestions that a serial killer is at work as paranoid thinking, but as the two embark on an amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way. From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place.Advance praise for Ill Will “Dan Chaon’s new novel is subtly, steadily unnerving—like a scalpel slipping under your skin and prying it, ever so slowly, from the muscle beneath. Ill Will is a dark Möbius strip of a thriller that will leave you questioning what’s perceived and what’s imagined, and whether the reverberations of tragedy ever truly come to an end.”—Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You “Ill Will not only confirms Chaon as among our country’s finest writers but makes clear that he is one of our bravest and most inventive. He embraces risks that would have most novelists turning pale and making the sign of the cross. It’s stunning. Read it right now.”—Peter Straub, author of The Throat “Dan Chaon’s darkly stunning Ill Will ensnares you from its very first pages. It’s both a bone-chilling literary thriller and a complicated tale of family secrets and the strange and dangerous paths grief and guilt can take us on—and it is not to be missed.”—Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me “‘I believe in bad places,’ one narrator of Ill Will confesses, and he’s right. Dan Chaon’s damaged characters stalk the elusive truth and what may be a serial killer through a nightmarish Cleveland populated by drug addicts and sexual predators. Intimate and unsparing, this is one of the creepiest books I've ever read.”—Stewart O’Nan, author of Songs for the Missing “With impressive skill, across multiple narratives that twine, fracture, and reset, Chaon expertly realizes his singular vision of American dread.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)Please note that sections of Ill Will incorporate unconventional formatting, spacing, and punctuation choices. These are intentional design elements in the ebook file.The Sacred Book of the Werewolf
By Victor Pelevin. 2005
The world?s first Zen Buddhist paranormal romance?published to coincide with Halloween One of the most progressive writers at work today,…
Victor Pelevin?s comic inventiveness has won him comparisons to Kafka, Calvino, and Gogol, and Time has described him as a ?psychedelic Nabokov for the cyberage. ? In The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, a smash success in Russia and Pelevin?s first novel in six years, paranormal meets transcendental with a splash of satire as A Hu-Li, a two-thousand-year-old shape-shifting werefox from ancient China meets her match in Alexander, a Wagner-addicted werewolf who?s the key figure in Russia?s Big Oil. Both a supernatural love story and an outrageously funny send-up of modern Russia, this stunning and ingenious work of the imagination is the sharpest novel to date from Russia?s most gifted literary malcontent. .Exile and the Kingdom
By Albert Camus, Carol Cosman. 2007
From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them.…
A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom in which to be reborn. They display Camus at the height of his powers. Now, on the 50th anniversary of the book's publication, Carol Gasman's new translation recovers a literary treasure for our time. Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me
By Javier Marias. 1996
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me is a riveting novel of infidelity and a man trapped by a terrible…
secret.Marta has only just met Victor when she invites him to dinner at her Madrid apartment while her husband is away on business. When her two-year-old son finally falls asleep, Marta and Victor retreat to the bedroom. Undressing, she feels suddenly ill; and in his arms, inexplicably, she dies. What should Victor do? Remove the compromising tape from the answering machine? Leave food for the child for breakfast? These are just his first steps, but he soon takes matters further; unable to bear the shadows and the unknowing, Victor plunges into dark waters. And Javier Marías, Europe's master of secrets, of what lies reveal and truth may conceal, is on sure ground in this profound, quirky, and marvelous novel.The House of All Sorts
By Emily Carr, Susan Musgrave. 2004
Emily Carr was primarily a painter, but she first gained recognition as an author for her seven books about her…
journeys to remote Native communities and stories about life as an artist, as a small child in Victoria at the turn of the last century-and as a reluctant landlady.Before winning recognition for her painting and writing, Carr built a small apartment building with four suites (she lived in one of them) that she hoped would earn her a living. But things turned out worse than expected, and in her forties, the gifted artist found herself shoveling coal and cleaning up after people for 23 years.The House of All Sorts is a collection of 41 stories of those hard-working days and the parade of tenants- young couples, widows, sad bachelors and rent evaders- all the tears and travails of being a landlady confronted with the startling foibles of humanity. Carr is at her most acerbic and rueful, but filled with energy and inextinguishable hope.Carr's writing is vital and direct, aware and poignant, and as well regarded today as when The House of All Sorts was first published in 1944 to critical and popular acclaim. The book has been in print ever since.Pushing Upward
By Andrea Adler. 2012
Pushing Upward is a remarkable debut novel that will sweep you along on one woman s unforgettable spiritual…
quest The year is 1974 While trying to eke out a living as an actress in L A 21-year-old Sandra Billings discovers the I Ching the ancient Chinese oracle and uses it as her GPS to navigate a torrid love affair battle with demons of the past and search for meaning and truth She places a fateful newspaper ad Drama student in need of RM and BRD in exchange for housekeeping and encounters an assortment of outrageous and inappropriate individuals But it is one unlikely stranger who will change the course of her life Events ultimately build to a stunning climax where everything Sandra has gained is challenged by a poignant and surprising twist of fate