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A Perfect Peace: A Novel
By Amos Oz. 1993
This tale of a conflicted family living on a kibbutz in Israel just before the Six-Day War is &“Oz's strangest,…
riskiest, and richest novel.&” —The Washington Post Book World On a kibbutz, the country&’s founders and their children struggle to come to terms with their land and with each other. The messianic father exults in accomplishments that had once been only dreams; the son longs to establish an identity apart from his father; the fragile young wife is out of touch with reality; and the gifted and charismatic &“outsider&” seethes with emotion. Through the interplay of these brilliantly realized characters, Oz evokes a drama that is chillingly, strikingly universal. &“[Oz is] a peerless, imaginative chronicler of his country&’s inner and outer transformations.&” —Independent (UK)East Side Story: A Novel
By Louis Auchincloss. 2004
A &“novel of power and hypocrisy in upper-class New York&” that follows the rise of one prominent family, generation after…
generation (The New Yorker). How did the families who live on Manhattan&’s Upper East Side get to where they are today? This engaging saga by a New York Times–bestselling author charts the rise of an uncommon family in America&’s grandest city. East Side Story tells of the Carnochan family whose Scottish forebears established themselves in New York&’s textile business during the Civil War. From there they quickly moved on to seize prominent positions in the country&’s top schools and Manhattan&’s elite firms. As the novel unfolds, Carnochans across generations recount stories about their illuminating lives steeped in both good fortune and moral jeopardy. From women who outsmart their foolish husbands to ambitious lawyers who protect the Carnochan name to the family&’s artists and writers, all weigh the question that infuses so much of Louis Auchincloss&’s fiction: What makes for a meaningful life in a family that has so much? &“Some writers inform, some instruct, and some tell how rewarding good prose can be,&” John Kenneth Galbraith once observed. &“Louis Auchincloss does all three.&” In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews called East Side Story &“a rich chronicle . . . that succeeds in humanizing a rare and much-maligned species of Americans for those who don&’t come across them very much.&” Auchincloss&’s superb novel is both a loving and wicked look at New York&’s Yankee aristocracy as only this sublime master of manners can provide.A Tenured Professor: A Novel (Seix Barral Ser.)
By John Galbraith. 1991
This biting satire of academia and high finance by the Harvard economist “is ingenious and humorous even as it chills…
and cuts close to the bone” (The New York Times).John Kenneth Galbraith served in the Kennedy administration before becoming one of the twentieth century’s foremost economists and public intellectuals. In A Tenured Professor, he spins his wealth of knowledge—and knowledge of wealth—into a delightfully comical morality tale. Montgomery Martin, a Harvard economics professor, creates a stock forecasting model which makes it possible for him to uncover society's hidden agendas. Seeking proof that human folly has no limit when motivated by greed, Martin sets off a mass hysteria that causes investors to believe—despite the lessons of history and physics—that up is the only direction.Don't Call It Night: A Novel
By Amos Oz. 1997
“A delicate contemporary tale about the quiddities of love and the perpetual mysteries of human motivations” from the bestselling Israeli…
author of Judas (Los Angeles Times).A New York Times Notable Book of the YearAt Tel-Kedar, a settlement in the Negev desert, the longtime love affair between Theo, a sixty-year-old civil engineer, and Noa, a young schoolteacher, is slowly disintegrating. When a pupil dies under difficult circumstances, the couple and the entire town are thrown into turmoil. Amos Oz explores with brilliant insight the possibilities—and limits—of love and tolerance.“A rich symphony of humanity . . . If Oz’s eye for detail is enviable, it is his magnanimity which raises him to the first rank of world authors.” —Sunday Telegraph (UK)“Vivid, convincing, and haunting.” —The New York Times Book Review“A vividly and affectionately detailed picture of Israeli village life—and of what might be called a JulyOctober relationship—by acclaimed essayist and novelist Oz . . . A perfectly pitched comedy, expertly translated, and one of Oz’s most attractive and accomplished books.” —Kirkus Reviews“This novel, his 10th (after Fima), is set in Tel Kedar, a quiet desert town in the Negev that is both a microcosm of Israeli society and a vividly evoked setting whose atmosphere and residents are palpable . . . his story carries thought-provoking implications.” —Publishers Weekly“Skillfully alternating point of view between his two main characters, Oz shows us the painful process by which a couple uncouples, one sinew at a time.” —BooklistThe Golden Apples
By Eudora Welty. 1956
This collection of short stories of the Mississippi Delta by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author is &“a work of art&” (The…
New York Times Book Review). Here in Morgana, Mississippi, the young dream of other places; the old can tell you every name on every stone in the cemetery on the town&’s edge; and cuckolded husbands and love-starved piano teachers share the same paths. It&’s also where one neighbor has disappeared on the horizon, slipping away into local legend. Black and white, lonely and the gregarious, sexually adventurous and repressed, vengeful and resigned, restless and settled, the vividly realized characters that make up this collection of interrelated stories, with elements drawn from ancient myth and transplanted to the American South, prove that this National Book Award–winning writer, as Katherine Anne Porter once wrote, had &“an ear sharp, shrewd, and true as a tuning fork.&” &“I doubt that a better book about &‘the South&’—one that more completely gets the feel of the particular texture of Southern life, and its special tone and pattern—has ever been written.&” —The New YorkerThe Tale of the Unknown Island
By José Saramago. 1998
A dreamer petitions his king for a boat—and gets more than he bargained for—in &“this richly enigmatic short story&” by…
the Nobel Prize-winning author (Kirkus).&“A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. But the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear . . ." So begins this beautifully illustrated and deceptively simple fable. Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him, the reader will soon discover. In a departure from his linguistically dense and sprawling historical novels, Jose Saramago presents a philosophic love story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.The Best American Short Stories 2015 (The Best American Series)
By T. C. Boyle, Heidi Pitlor. 2015
The acclaimed author presents an anthology of &“confrontational and at times confounding . . . stories to get lost in&” by Colum McCann,…
Victor Lodato and others (Kirkus Reviews). In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, &“The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition.&” Boyle&’s choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is &“what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year&’s selections.&” The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes entries by Denis Johnson, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth McCracken, Aria Beth Sloss, Thomas McGuane, and others.The Best American Short Stories 2011: The Best American Series (The Best American Series)
By Geraldine Brooks, Heidi Pitlor. 2011
Twenty of the best American short stories of 2011, chosen by the New York Times bestselling author of The Secret…
Chord. The twenty tightly crafted stories collected here by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Geraldine Brooks are full of deftly drawn characters, universal truths, and often surprising humor. Richard Powers&’s &“To the Measures Fall&” is a comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life. In the satirical &“The Sleep,&” Caitlin Horrocks puts her fictional prairie town to bed—the inhabitants hibernate through the long winter as a form of escape—while in Steve Millhauser&’s imagined town, the citizens are visited by ghostlike apparitions in &“Phantoms.&” Allegra Goodman&’s spare but beautiful &“La Vita Nuova&” finds a jilted fiancée letting her art class paint all over her wedding dress as a poignant act of release. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wryly captures the social change in the air in Lagos, Nigeria, in &“Ceiling,&” her story of a wealthy young man who is not entirely at ease with what his life has become. As Brooks perused these richly imagined and varied landscapes, she found that it was like walking into the best kind of party, where you can hole up in a corner with old friends for a while, then launch out among interesting strangers.The Best American Short Stories 2011 also includes contributions from: Megan Mayhew Bergman · Tom Bissell • Jennifer Egan • Nathan Englander • Ehud Havazelet • Bret Anthony Johnston • Claire Keegan • Sam Lipsyte • Rebecca Makkai • Elizabeth McCracken • Ricardo Nuila • Joyce Carol Oates • Jess Row • George Saunders • Mark SloukaWhat We Owe
By Golnaz Bonde. 2018
The winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize &“about mothers and daughters, nation and exile, and the way forward with…
hope and pain . . . a masterpiece&” (Tayari Jones, The Times). A gut punch of a novel that asks us to consider: what do we pass on to our children? What do we owe those we love? And without roots, can you ever truly be free? Nahid has six months left to live. Or so the doctors say. At fifty, she is no stranger to loss. But now, as she stands on the precipice of her own death—just as she has learned that her daughter Aram is pregnant with her first child—Nahid is filled with both new fury and long dormant rage. Her life back home in Iran, and living as a refugee in Sweden, has been about survival at any cost. How to actually live, she doesn&’t know; she has never had the ability or opportunity to learn. Here is an extraordinary story of exile, dislocation, and the emotional minefields between mothers and daughters; a story of love, guilt and dreams for a better future, vibrating with both sorrow and an unquenchable joie de vivre. With its startling honesty, dark wit, and irresistible momentum, What We Owe introduces a fierce and necessary new voice in international fiction. &“One of the best books I&’ve read about the psychological horror of being from post-revolutionary Iran . . . Gorgeous and vital, this story will haunt its readers.&”—Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, for The Rumpus &“Spare and devastating . . . Always arresting, never sentimental; gut-wrenching, though not without hope.&”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots: A Novel
By Jessica Soffer. 2013
A troubled teen turns to cooking lessons to win her emotionally distant mother&’s love in this &“moving [and] extraordinary&” novel…
(The Atlantic). Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks to earn the love of her distracted, angry mother, a prominent Manhattan chef who left Lorca&’s father and is now packing her off to boarding school. Desperate to prove herself, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother&’s ideal meal. She signs up for cooking lessons from Victoria, an Iraqi-Jewish immigrant profoundly shaken by her husband&’s death. Soon these two develop a deeper bond while their concoctions—cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, and masgouf—bake in Victoria&’s kitchen. But their individual endeavors force a reckoning with the past, the future, and the truth—whatever it might be. &“Sassy, brash, acrobatic and colorful…I want to read it again and again.&” —Time &“Impressive…Soffer&’s style is natural and assured.&”—Meg Wolitzer, All Things Considered, NPR &“Breathtaking…a profoundly redemptive story about loss, self-discovery, and acceptance.&”—O: The Oprah Magazine &“Soffer&’s prose is as controlled as it is fresh, as incisive as it is musical.&” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World SpinThe Best American Short Stories 2017 (The Best American Series)
By Meg Wolitzer, Heidi Pitlor. 2017
The New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings compiles a stunning anthology of literary short fiction with T.C. Boyle, Emma…
Cline and others. &“If you know exactly what you are going to get from the experience of reading a story, you probably wouldn&’t go looking for it; you need, in order to be an open reader of fiction, to be willing. To cast a vote for what you love and then wait for the outcome,&” writes Meg Wolitzer in her introduction to this volume. The Best American Short Stories 2017 casts a vote for and celebrates all that is our country. Here you&’ll find a man with a boyfriend and a girlfriend, naval officers trapped on a submarine, a contestant on America&’s Funniest Home Videos, and a gay man desperate to be a father—unforgettable characters waiting for an outcome, burning with stories to tell. The Best American Short Stories 2017 includes entries by T.C. Boyle, Jai Chakrabarti, Emma Cline, Danielle Evans, Lauren Groff, Eric Puchner, Jim Shepard, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jenn Walter and others.The Boat Runner: A Novel
By Devin Murphy. 2017
National Bestseller: An &“astute and riveting&” novel of a Dutch teenager thrust into the dangers and moral perils of his…
country&’s Nazi occupation (The New York Times). In the summer of 1939, fourteen-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and locals hold the family in high esteem. On days when they aren&’t playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their Uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. But conflict still seems unthinkable, even as the boys&’ father naively sends his sons to a Hitler Youth camp in an effort to secure German business for the factory. When war breaks out, Jacob&’s world is thrown into chaos. The Boat Runner follows Jacob over the course of four years, through the forests of France and the stormy beaches of England, and deep within the secret missions of the German Navy, where he is confronted with the moral dilemma that will change his life—and his life&’s mission—forever. Thrillingly written, The Boat Runner tells the little-known story of the young Dutch boys who were thrown into the Nazi campaign, as well as the brave boatmen who risked everything to give Jewish refugees safe passage. Through one boy&’s harrowing tale of personal redemption, it reveals the power of people&’s stories and voices to shine light through our darkest days, until only love prevails. &“An ambitious coming of age story . . . Murphy&’s debut novel is a purposely limited view of war, as was The Red Badge of Courage, but strong characters and compelling narrative convey the impact well beyond one family. An impressive debut.&” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)Agatha
By Caroline Waight, Anne Bomann. 2017
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA psychiatrist is counting down towards his upcoming retirement. He lives alone in his childhood home and has…
neither friends nor family.Often, he resorts to drawing bird caricatures of his patients instead of taking notes. His social life consists of brief conversations with his meticulous secretary Madame Surrugue, who has reigned over the clinic for more than thirty years. The two of them have no relationship outside the office, where everything runs smoothly and uneventfully.Until one day, that is, when a young German woman called Agatha arrives and demands to see the doctor and he soon realizes that underneath her fragile exterior is a strong and fascinating woman. The doctor and Agatha embark upon a course of therapy together, a process that forces the doctor to confront his fear of true intimacy outside the clinic. But is it too late to reconsider your existence as a 71-year-old?Wingwalkers: A Novel
By Taylor Brown. 2022
A former WWI ace pilot and his wingwalker wife barnstorm across Depression-era America, performing acts of aerial daring.“They were over…
Georgia somewhere, another nameless hamlet whose dusty streets lay flocked and trembling with the pink handbills they’d rained from the sky that morning, the ones that announced the coming of DELLA THE DARING DEVILETTE, who would DEFY THE HEAVENS, shining like a DAYTIME STAR, a WING-WALKING WONDER borne upon the wings of CAPTAIN ZENO MARIGOLD, a DOUBLE ACE of the GREAT WAR, who had ELEVEN AERIAL VICTORIES over the TRENCHES OF FRANCE.”Wingwalkers is one-part epic adventure, one-part love story, and, as is the signature for critically-acclaimed author Taylor Brown, one large part American history. The novel braids the adventures of Della and Zeno Marigold, a vagabond couple that funds their journey to the west coast in the middle of the Great Depression by performing death-defying aerial stunts from town to town, together with the life of the author (and thwarted fighter pilot) William Faulkner, whom the couple ultimately inspires during a dramatic air show—with unexpected consequences for all.Brown has taken a tantalizing tidbit from Faulkner’s real life—an evening's chance encounter with two daredevils in New Orleans—and set it aloft in this fabulous novel. With scintillating prose and an action-packed plot, he has captured the true essence of a bygone era and shed a new light on the heart and motivations of one of America's greatest authors.The River of Kings: A Novel
By Taylor Brown. 2017
Named one of the Top 25 Best Novels of 2017 by Paste Magazine!“The most exciting literary adventure fiction I've read…
since Deliverance.” –Howard Frank Mosher, author of God's KingdomIn The River of Kings, bestselling author of Fallen Land Taylor Brown artfully weaves three narrative strands—two brothers’ journey down an ancient river, their father’s tangled past, and the buried history of the river’s earliest people—to evoke a legendary place and its powerful hold on the human imagination.The Altamaha River, Georgia’s “Little Amazon,” is one of the last truly wild places in America. Crossed by roads only five times in its 137 miles, the black-water river is home to thousand-year-old virgin cypress, direct descendants of eighteenth-century Highland warriors, and a staggering array of rare and endangered species. The Altamaha is even rumored to harbor its own river monster, as well as traces of the oldest European fort in North America.Brothers Hunter and Lawton Loggins set off to kayak the river, bearing their father’s ashes toward the sea. Hunter is a college student, Lawton a Navy SEAL on leave; they were raised by an angry, enigmatic shrimper who loved the river, and whose death remains a mystery that his sons are determined to solve. As the brothers proceed downriver, their story alternates with that of Jacques le Moyne, the first European artist in North America, who accompanied a 1564 French expedition that began as a search for riches and ended in a bloody confrontation with Spanish conquistadors and native tribes.Twining past and present in one compelling narrative, and illustrated with drawings that survived the 1564 expedition, The River of Kings is Taylor Brown’s second novel: a dramatic and rewarding adventure through history, myth, and the shadows of family secrets.Gods of Howl Mountain: A Novel
By Taylor Brown. 2018
“A fresh, authentic, and eloquent new voice in American fiction.” - Robert Morgan, New York Times bestselling author of Gap…
CreekIn Gods of Howl Mountain, award-winning author Taylor Brown explores a world of folk healers, whiskey-runners, and dark family secrets in the high country of 1950s North Carolina.Bootlegger Rory Docherty has returned home to the fabled mountain of his childhood - a misty wilderness that holds its secrets close and keeps the outside world at gunpoint. Slowed by a wooden leg and haunted by memories of the Korean War, Rory runs bootleg whiskey for a powerful mountain clan in a retro-fitted '40 Ford coupe. Between deliveries to roadhouses, brothels, and private clients, he lives with his formidable grandmother, evades federal agents, and stokes the wrath of a rival runner.In the mill town at the foot of the mountains - a hotbed of violence, moonshine, and the burgeoning sport of stock-car racing - Rory is bewitched by the mysterious daughter of a snake-handling preacher. His grandmother, Maybelline “Granny May” Docherty, opposes this match for her own reasons, believing that "some things are best left buried." A folk healer whose powers are rumored to rival those of a wood witch, she concocts potions and cures for the people of the mountains while harboring an explosive secret about Rory’s mother - the truth behind her long confinement in a mental hospital, during which time she has not spoken one word. When Rory's life is threatened, Granny must decide whether to reveal what she knows...or protect her only grandson from the past.With gritty and atmospheric prose, Taylor Brown brings to life a perilous mountain and the family who rules it.Wrong Way: A Novel
By Joanne McNeil. 2023
For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build…
her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with labor and technology brings blazing compassion and criticism to Wrong Way, examining the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. Within these divides, McNeil turns the unsaid into the unignorable, and captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy.In the Cage (Hesperus Classics)
By Henry James. 2002
In this small masterpiece of unrequited love, Henry James, as in his greatest novels, depicts a moral consciousness torn between…
emotional impulses and the demands of society. Working in a post office in Mayfair, a young woman is exposed to the cryptic but alluring correspondence of the social elite, and in particular, to lines written by the dashing Captain Everard. As she memorizes the messages he telegraphs, she becomes increasingly attracted to the life described to her, fixated by scandal and gossip a world apart from her ordinary existence.The Birthplace (Hesperus Classics)
By Henry James. 2012
In this lesser known classic James explores in miniature the themes of his major fiction, enlivened by a characteristically keen…
eye for character and a wry appreciation of both pretension and the absurd Blackport-on-Dwindle— "all granite, fog, and female fiction"— has been the Gedges' dull domain for some years. They leap, therefore, at the invitation to become the live-in guardians of the birthplace of their nation's literary hero. Anticipating romance and inspiration— in other words, everything that' s been lacking in their daily lives to date— they find instead that the house casts an altogether more sinister spell. Also included is "The Private Life," another little-known work in which James again considers the relevance of the artist' s persona— a theme with continued relevance in literature and the arts.The Mad Toy
By Roberto Arlt, Robert Arlt. 2013
The first novel by one of the greatest writers of Latin American literature is a semiautobiographical story reflecting the energy…
and chaos of early 20th-century Buenos AiresFeeling the alienation of youth, Silvio Astier's gang tours neighborhoods, inflicting waves of petty crime, stealing from homes and shops until the police are forced to intervene. Drifting then from one career and subsequent crime to another, Silvio's main difficulty is his own intelligence, with which he grapples. Writing in the language of the streets and basing his writings in part on his own experience, with his characters wandering in a modern world, Arlt creates a book that combines realism, humor, and anger with detective story. Although astronomically famous in South America, Roberto Arlt's name is still relatively unknown in Anglophone circles, but the rising wave of appreciation of South American literature is bringing him to the fore.