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Mrs death misses death
By Salena Godden. 2023
Mrs Death has had enough. She is exhausted from spending eternity doing her job and now she seeks someone to…
unburden her conscience to. Wolf Willeford, a troubled young writer, is well acquainted with death, but until now hadn't met Death in person - a black, working-class woman who shape-shifts and does her work unseen. Enthralled by her stories, Wolf becomes Mrs Death's scribe, and begins to write her memoirs. Using their desk as a vessel and conduit, Wolf travels across time and place with Mrs Death to witness deaths of past and present and discuss what the future holds for humanity. As the two reflect on the losses they have experienced - or, in the case of Mrs Death, facilitated - their friendship grows into a surprising affirmation of hope, resilience and love. All the while, despite her world-weariness, Death must continue to hold humans' fates in her hands, appearing in our lives when we least expect herLes pègriots (Best-sellers)
By Auguste Le Breton. 1973
Prophecy
By Sandro Veronesi. 2023
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HUMMINGBIRD'The dawn will still be far away, and you will lift your eyes to…
the sky, and the sky will be as black as sackcloth and ashes'Addressed to a 'you' that encompasses the author, the reader and all of us at once, narrated in the future tense of apocalyptic texts and inspired by Sandro Veronesi's own experience of caring for his elderly parents, Prophecy is a powerful and unforgettable story of immense grief and infinite love.A visionary take on life by one of today's most remarkable writers.PRAISE FOR SANDRO VERONESI'S THE HUMMINGBIRDWinner of the Premio Strega | A Guardian and Spectator Book of the Year'Magnificent'GUARDIAN'A towering achievement'FINANCIAL TIMES'Inventive, bold, unexpected'SUNDAY TIMES'Masterly'IAN MCEWAN'Extraordinary'HOWARD JACOBSON'A real masterpiece'LEILA SLIMANICette aveuglante absence de lumière: roman
By Tahar Ben Jelloun. 2001
" Un roman inspiré à un grand écrivain américain par un terrible fait divers. Il était midi au cœur du…
désert de Mojave. Assis sur une valise de paille, Perry jouait de l'harmonica. Dick était debout au bord d'une grande route noire, la Route 66, les yeux fixés sur le vide immaculé comme si l'intensité de son regard pouvait forcer des automobilistes à se montrer. Il en passait très peu, et nul d'entre eux ne s'arrêtait pour les auto-stoppeurs Ils attendaient un voyageur solitaire dans une voiture convenable et avec de l'argent dans son porte-billets : un étranger à voler, étrangler et abandonner dans le désert. " -- 4e de couvThe Late Work of Margaret Kroftis: A Novella (Little House On The Bowery Ser.)
By Dennis Cooper, Mark Gluth. 2010
A phenomenal debut novella to further establish the literary excellence of Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series."In The…
Late Work of Margaret Kroftis, Mark Gluth does something I've never seen another author do: he captures perfectly the feel of daydreams. Though everybody in the book daydreams, Gluth doesn't simply describe their thoughts; instead, he does something better and more brilliant--he infuses his words with the deceptive simplicity and surrealism of the fantasies we dream up for ourselves. Like daydreams, his book is brief but powerful; like daydreams, it is both heartbreakingly hopeful and heart-stoppingly honest. It's a reverie that's a revelation. It is great."--Derek McCormack, author of The Show that SmellsThe Late Work of Margaret Kroftis begins during the later days of Margaret Kroftis's life. She is a writer, living alone. As she experiences a personal tragedy the narrative moves forward in an emotionally coherent manner that exists separately from linear time. Themes of loss and grief cycle and repeat and build upon each other. They affect the text and create a complex structure of crosshatched narratives within narratives. These mirror each other while also telling unique stories of loss that are both separate from Margaret's as well as deeply intertwined.This groundbreaking debut demonstrates an affinity with the work of such contemporary European writers as Agota Kristof and Marie Redonnet, while existing in a place and time that is uniquely American. Composed in brief paragraphs and structured as a series of vignettes, pieces of fiction, and autobiography, The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis creates a world in which a woman's life is refracted through dreamlike logic. Coupled with the spare language in which it is written, this logic distorts and heightens the emotional truths the characters come to terms with, while elevating them beyond the simply literal.Mark Gluth's writing has previously appeared in the anthology Userlands (Akashic, 2007) and Ellipsis magazine. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Bellingham, Washington with his wife and their two dogs.Dennis Cooper's (series editor) novels have been translated into eighteen foreign languages. He has guest-edited sections of fiction and nonfiction for BookForum, Nerve, the L.A. Weekly Literary Supplement, and the Village Voice Literary Supplement. He is a contributing editor of ArtForum magazine and lives in Los Angeles.Giants in the earth: the California redwoods
By Peter Johnstone, Peter E. Palmquist. 2001
Literary anthology of stories, poems, natural history compositions, and articles selected from three hundred years of writing about the California…
redwoods. Authors Walt Whitman, John Muir, Jack London, Tom Wolfe, Armistead Maupin, and others who visited the groves felt inspired to write about their experiences and feelingsThe Ministry for the Future: A Novel
By Kim Stanley Robinson. 2020
From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a remarkable vision of climate change over the coming decades. The…
Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us -- and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written."A breathtaking look at the challenges that face our planet in all their sprawling magnitude and also in their intimate, individual moments of humanity." -- Booklist (starred)"A sweeping, optimistic portrait of humanity's ability to cooperate in the face of disaster. This heartfelt work of hard science-fiction is a must-read for anyone worried about the future of the planet." -- Publishers Weekly (starred)Also by Kim Stanley Robinson:Red MoonNew York 21402312AuroraShamanDeep Down: the 'intimate, emotional and witty' 2023 debut you don't want to miss
By Imogen West-Knights. 2023
A 2023 best book to look forward to in Vogue, Bustle, GQ and the New Statesman'A superbly observed exploration of…
intimacy and its failings' Megan Nolan'West-Knights is a masterful, hilarious and humane story-teller' Olivia Sudjic'A sharp and clear-eyed portrait of familial love and the ways it makes us mad' Monica HeiseyBillie and Tom have just lost their father. It should be a time to comfort each other, but there's always been a distance to their relationship. Determined to change this, Billie boards a flight to her brother in Paris.Dazed by grief, the siblings spend days wandering the streets, both helping and hurting each other in the process. When their explorations lead them to the infamous Paris catacombs, they will finally be forced to face the secrets lurking in their past that illuminate the questions in their present.Funny, moving and unexpected, DEEP DOWN is an empathetic and hard-hitting look at both the struggles and the joys of sibling relationships, and the realities of grieving the loss of someone who was already an absence.Grief Is the Thing with Feathers: A Novel
By Max Porter. 2015
Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar--a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden,…
accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised.In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow--antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up.Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent.Deep Down: the 'intimate, emotional and witty' 2023 debut you don't want to miss
By Imogen West-Knights. 2023
A 2023 best book to look forward to in Vogue, Bustle, GQ and the New Statesman'A superbly observed exploration of…
intimacy and its failings' Megan Nolan'West-Knights is a masterful, hilarious and humane story-teller' Olivia Sudjic'A sharp and clear-eyed portrait of familial love and the ways it makes us mad' Monica HeiseyBillie and Tom have just lost their father. It should be a time to comfort each other, but there's always been a distance to their relationship. Determined to change this, Billie boards a flight to her brother in Paris.Dazed by grief, the siblings spend days wandering the streets, both helping and hurting each other in the process. When their explorations lead them to the infamous Paris catacombs, they will finally be forced to face the secrets lurking in their past that illuminate the questions in their present.Funny, moving and unexpected, DEEP DOWN is an empathetic and hard-hitting look at both the struggles and the joys of sibling relationships, and the realities of grieving the loss of someone who was already an absence.Highway 99: a literary journey through California's Great Central Valley
By Stan Yogi. 1996
This multicultural anthology contains essays, fiction, poetry and drama showcasing seventy writers living along the length of Highway 99--the main…
artery through California's Central Valley. Explores how the agricultural opportunities of the region attract people from many walks of life: African American migrants, Oklahoma refugees, Filipino laborers, Chinese pioneers, Mexican workers, and Laotian immigrantsBetty: The International Bestseller
By Tiffany McDaniel.
'NOT A STORY YOU WILL SOON FORGET' Karen Joy Fowler, author of Man Booker Prize finalist We Are All Completely…
Beside Ourselves'A girl comes of age against the knife.' So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence - both from outside the family and also, devastatingly, from within. When her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, Betty has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.Despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write.A heartbreaking yet magical story, Betty is a punch-in-the-gut of a novel - full of the crushing cruelty of human nature and the redemptive power of words.From the author of the Waterstones Book of the Month Our Fathers comes a compelling domestic comedy about complex family…
dynamics, mental health and the intricacies of sibling relationships.For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial. There is their mother, who takes a divide and conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is their older brother Michael, whose disapproval is a force to be reckoned with. There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything.As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with disappointments in work and in love as well as increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they'd intended. They must look for a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.(P)2022 Quercus Editions LimitedLove Orange: a vivid, comic cocktail about a modern American family
By Natasha Randall. 2020
Jenny Tinkley lives to mother her two complicated sons and prop up her technology obsessive husband Hank, who has installed…
gadgets, cameras and voice recognition devices in their smart house. He tells her it's all designed to help her, but she is convinced their home is judging her- reminding her to load the laundry, buy milk, do better- and she becomes paranoid that she's being spied upon by the white goods. When she hears of an outreach opportunity at her church (where worshippers are encouraged to confess their sins via mobile phone), she feels that hand-writing letters to John, inmate 6587 at Flainton Correctional Facility, will be an antidote to her high-tech isolation, and a kindness to someone who is perhaps lonelier than herself. And Hank needn't know. Letter by letter John pinches Jenny awake from the marshmallow numbness of her life. In their exchanges she expresses tenderness, unexpected affection. Constantly under surveillance, their letters chart a secret rebellion, a bid for freedom. But Jenny is becoming curiously dependent on the sweet orange glue that seals John's envelopes and their lives begin to converge with toxic consequences.Love Orange throws open the blinds of American life, showing a family facing up to the modern age, from the ascendancy of technology, the predicaments of masculinity, the pathologising of children, the epidemic of opioid addiction and the tyranny of the WhatsApp Gods. The first novel by the acclaimed translator is a comic cocktail, an exuberant skewering of contemporary anxieties and prejudices.(P)2020 Quercus Editions LimitedThe Way Back: The funny, insightful and hopeful family adventure you need in 2021
By Jamie Fewery. 2020
A moving, funny, sweeping and emotional family drama perfect for fans of David Nicholls, Beth O'Leary, Mike Gayle and Caroline…
Hulse.* * * * * * *If you're reading this, my funeral must have just finished. I've got something to ask of you...Who knows, you might even enjoy it?The Cadogan children haven't spoken to each other for three years. But their father, Gerry, has a plan to bring them together. To scatter his ashes, they must first drive his old camper van up to Scotland...For the trip, Gerry has provided them with three family photo albums and a bottle of single malt whisky.But will the journey help banish their ghosts and turn them back into a family? Or will it show them exactly why they've stayed apart for so long?* * * * * * *Praise for Jamie Fewery:'Moving, honest, sad and hopeful' MIRANDA DICKINSON'Will melt your heart' VERONICA HENRY'Clever, moving, funny, insightful' ZOE FOLBIGG'Made me do a proper ugly cry' DOMESTIC SLUTTERYCall Him Mine: A Telegraph Thriller of the Year
By Tim MacGabhann. 2019
Jaded reporter Andrew and his photographer boyfriend, Carlos, are sick of telling just another story. From cartel massacres to corrupt…
politicians, sifting the dregs of Mexico's drug war, they think they've seen it all. But when they find a body even the police are too scared to look at, what started out as just another reportage becomes the sort of story all reporters dream of.Until Carlos pushes for answers too fast, and winds up murdered, leaving Andrew grief-stricken and flailing for answers, justice, and revenge. Caught in a web of dirty money that stretches from the boardrooms of the United States to the death squads of El Salvador, Andrew must decide whether to save himself - or find out who killed the man he loves, and destroyed the only home he's ever known.(p) Orion Publishing Group Ltd 2019This Thing Of Darkness
By Harry Thompson. 2005
Colin Morgan narrates the action-packed and gripping novel of Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle - longlisted for the Man…
Booker Prize. 'A masterpiece' Bernard Cornwell'A master storyteller' Sunday TimesIn 1831 Charles Darwin set off in HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert Fitzroy on a voyage that would change the world. This is the story of a deep friendship between two men, and the twin obsessions that tear them apart, leading one to triumph, and the other to disaster.'An outstandingly good first novel. A[n]... action-adventure combined with subtle intellectual arguments. The meticulous research enriches this fascinating tale' Sunday Telegraph (P) 2021 Headline Publishing Group LtdVioleta among the Stars
By Dulce Maria Cardoso. 2005
suddenlyI should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, for some…
time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing,suddenly I stopVioleta is driving along a lonely stretch of late-night motorway, in the midst of a fearsome storm. When her tired eyes close for just a second, her car veers off the road, rolls down a muddy embankment, over and over, and comes to rest on an empty stretch of sodden ground. And as she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violeta's life will quite literally flash before her eyes . . .Scenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her father's mysterious double-life; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors...Violeta Among the Stars weaves memories and feelings as Violeta reflects on her death, her life, her reality and her dreams. An astonishing portrait of a seemingly insignificant life, from one of Portugal's greatest living writers.Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-QuintanaÁngel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the Financial Times, and his translations include the anthology Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil and The Return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso.With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European UnionDevotion: Soon a Netflix limited series
By Marco Missiroli. 2021
NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES, COMING VALENTINE'S DAY 2022 'An absolute scorcher' Evening Standard'The book about infidelity that has shaken…
up Italy'The Times'Intimate and ultimately moving... completely absorbing'Daily Mail'A gripping novel exploring the tensions in an apparently idyllic marriage' Financial Times 'A must-read'Sydney Morning Herald'Devotion thrilled me, made me think and moved me deeply... Irresistible'Jonathan Safran FoerCarlo, a part-time professor of creative writing, and Margherita, an architect-turned-real estate-agent: a happily married couple in their mid-thirties, perfectly attuned to each other's restlessness. They are in love, but they also harbour desires that stray beyond the confines of their bedroom: Carlo longs for the quiet beauty of one of his students, Sofia; Margherita fantasises about the strong hands of her physiotherapist, Andrea.But it is love, with its unassuming power, which ultimately pulls them from the brink, aided by Margherita's mother Anna, the couple's anchor and lighthouse - a wise, proud seamstress hiding her own disappointments.But after eight years of repressed desires and the birth of a son, when the past resurfaces in the form of books sent anonymously, will love be enough to save them? A no. 1 international bestsellerWinner of the Premio Strega GiovaniShortlisted for the Premio Strega'Powerful, delicate, exquisite' Claudio Magris 'Masterful... The ending is just as good as that of Joyce's The Dead' Corriere della Sera'You'll feel like taking refuge in this book and never leaving its confines' La Stampa'With all-encompassing writing, Marco Missiroli opens the rooms of his characters and the streets of Milan, the thoughts and the concealed desires, makes dialogue and silences reverberate with the spontaneity of great narrators' Il Foglio