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The Obese Christ
By Sheila Fischman, Larry Tremblay. 2014
The asocial, sexually repressed Edgar, kneeling in grief at his mother's graveside, turns abruptly to witness a terrifying and life-altering…
event: the brutal rape of a young woman. Compelled by muddled instinct (and ingrained religious conviction), our hero bears the unconscious victim home, solemnly pledging to care for her - and to act as her saviour. As winter closes in, the captor's neuroses are revealed and his behaviour becomes increasingly violent, allowing the victim only one escape.With The Obese Christ, Larry Tremblay squarely situates himself within the realm of Hitchcock, Polanski, and Stephen King. A brilliant exercise in unease and paranoia, The Obese Christ demonstrates Tremblay's powerful ability to evoke dead and fear, while immersing the reader in a wrapped and putrid world told from Edgar's sanctified point of view.In Absentia
By Morris Panych. 2012
Four seasons after her husband Tom's disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish,…
not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake - a sign? She emerges to give him her husband's parka - strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom.What is the stranger's connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette's attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbor Bill become increasingly alarmed.Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible - that which is made to disappear from view.Guilt and grief, infidelity and infertility, loss and longing are the deeper subjects Panych explores here. At the same time, the play examines the desire to make connections in life - thoughts to deeds, intentions to outcomes - in scenes often enlivened by the playwright's trademark humor.Cast of 3 men and 2 women.The Penguin's Song
By Marilyn Booth, Hassan Daoud. 2014
"I loved this book when I read it in Arabic. The Penguin's Song is a classic novel of the Lebanese…
civil war."--Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman"In The Penguin's Song, a city falls, a father dies, two women walk the same road over and over, a boy with a broken body dreams of love. Like Agota Kristof's Notebook Trilogy, this spare yet lyrical parable tells us more about exile, loss and the wearing away of hope than most us want to know. I love this beautiful book."--Rebecca Brown, author of American Romances and The End of Youth"Daoud's novel is an elegiac account of loneliness and separation. . . . This is a haunting story inhabited by the ghosts of past lives and demolished buildings, where desires are left unfulfilled and loneliness sweeps through every soul."--Publishers Weekly"Daoud's claustrophobic novel hauntingly conveys one family's isolation after being relocated during the Lebanese civil war. . . . Daoud's evocation of history as it is experienced is excellent. His characters live through momentous events, but their struggles to survive land them in a kind of purgatory. A novel that defies expectations as it summons up the displacement and dehumanization that can come with war."--Kirkus Reviews" . . . deftly explores how people cope with the aftermath of war and the tremendous struggle of rebuilding not only with bricks and concrete but with heart, hopes, and dreams."--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH, and Library Journal"Nothing about reading Hassan Daoud's novels is easy, but the effort is always rewarded. The complex but mundane beauty of his prose is skillfully rendered in Marilyn Booth's translation, The Penguin's Song, a novel as much about the dreary loneliness of daily life as it is about the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. Slowly paced, heavy with the burden of waiting, Daoud's text unfolds painstakingly, page after page. The horror of war, the pain of isolation, the longing of unfulfilled desire, and the power of the printed word all shine through in this finely-crafted narrative."--Michelle Hartman, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill UniversityAs war wreaks havoc on the historic heart of Beirut, tenants of the old city are pushed to the margins and obliged to live on the surrounding hillsides, where it seems they will stay forever, waiting. The dream of return becomes a way of life in the unending time of war."The Penguin" is a physically deformed young man who lives with his aging mother and father in one of the "temporary" buildings. His father spends his days on the balcony of their apartment, looking at the far-off city and pining for his lost way of life. Mother and father both find their purpose each day in worrying about the future for their son, while he spends his time in an erotic fantasy world, centered on a young woman who lives in the apartment below. Poverty and family crisis go hand in hand as the young man struggles with his isolation and unfulfilled sexual longing.Voted "The Best Arabic Novel of the Year" when it was first published, The Penguin's Song is a finely wrought parable of how one can live out an entire life in the dream of returning to another.Fugitive Kind
By Tennessee Williams, Allean Hale. 2001
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions—Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work in…
Fugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays. Fugitive Kind, one of Tennessee Williams's earliest plays, is one of his richest in dramatic material. Written in 1937 when the playwright was still Thomas Lanier Williams, Fugitive Kind introduces the character who will inhabit most of his later plays: the marginal man or woman who, through no personal fault, is a misfit in society but who demonstrates an admirable will to survive. Signature Tennessee Williams' characters, situations, and even the title (which was used as The Fugitive Kind for the 1960 film based on Orpheus Descending) have their genesis here. At age twenty-six, Williams was still learning his craft and this, his second full-length play, shows his debt to sources as diverse as thirties gangster films (The Petrified Forest, Winterset) and Romeo and Juliet. Fugitive Kind, with its star-crossed lovers and big city slum setting, takes place in a flophouse on the St. Louis waterfront in the shadow of Eads Bridge, where Williams spent Saturdays away from his shoe factory job and met his characters: jobless wayfarers on the dole, young writers and artists of the WPA, even gangsters and G-men. Fugitive Kind was also Williams's second play to be produced by The Mummers, a St. Louis theatre group devoted to drama of social protest. Called "vital and absorbing" by a contemporary review in The St. Louis Star-Times, this play reveals the young playwright's own struggle between his radical-socialist sympathies and his poetic inclinations, and signals his future reputation as our most compassionate lyric dramatist.Spring Storm
By Tennessee Williams, Dan Isaac. 1999
"A crucible of so many elements that would later shape and characterize Williams's work."--World Literature Today When Tennessee Williams read…
Spring Storm aloud to his playwriting class at the University of Iowa in 1938, he was met with silence and embarrassment. His professor, the renowned E. C. Mabie, remarked as he got up and dismissed the seminar, "Well, we all have to paint our nudes!" Tom's earlier comment in his journal that the play "is well-constructed, no social propaganda, and is suitable for the commercial stage" seems accurate enough in 1999, but woefully naive deep in the Depression when the play's sexual explicitness--particularly its matter-of-fact acceptance of a woman's right to her own sexuality--would have been seen as not only shocking but also politically radical. Spring Storm would later be disavowed by the author as "simply a study of Sex--a blind animal urge or force (like the regenerative force of April) gripping four lives and leading them into a tangle of cruel and ugly relations." But the solid and deft characterizations of the four young people whose lives intertwine--the sexually alive Heavenly Critchfield, her earthy lover Dick Miles, Heavenly's wealthy but tongue-tied admirer Arthur Shannon, and the repressed librarian Hertha Nielson who loves Arthur--are archetypes of characters we will meet again and again in the Williams canon. Epic in scope, a bit melodramatic in execution, tragic in outcome, Spring Storm created a wave of excitement among theatre insiders when it was given a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest '96. This edition has been prepared, with an illuminating introduction, by Dan Isaac, who initiated the Octoberfest production.Clothes for a Summer Hotel: Play
By Tennessee Williams. 1983
This late play by Tennessee Williams explores the troubled relationship between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The late Tennessee Williams's…
Clothes for a Summer Hotelmade its New York debut in 1980. Here Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, often seen as symbols of the doomed youth of the jazz age, become two halves of a single creative psyche, each part alternately feeding and then devouring the other. Set in Highland Hospital near Asheville, North Carolina, where Zelda spent her last confinement, this "ghost play" begins several years after Scott's death of a heart attack in California. But the past is "still always present" in Zelda, and Williams's constant shifting of chronology and mixing of remembrance with ghostly re-enactment suggest that our real intimacy is with the shadow characters of our own minds. As Williams said in the Author's Note to the Broadway production: "Our reason for taking extraordinary license with time and place is that in an asylum and on its grounds liberties of this kind are quite prevalent: and also these liberties allow us to explore in more depth what we believe is truth of character." Williams poses the inevitable, unanswerable questions: Did Scott prevent Zelda from achieving an independent creativity? Did Zelda's demands force Scott to squander his talents and turn to alcohol? Whose betrayal--emotional, creative, sexual--destroyed the other? But he poses these questions in a new way: in the act of creation, Zelda and Scott are now aware of their eventual destruction, and the creative fire that consumed two artists combines symbolically with the fire that ended Zelda's life.Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws & Other One-Act Plays
By Tennessee Williams, Thomas Keith. 1982
"The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays--like firecrackers in a rope." --Tennessee Williams This new collection of…
fantastic, lesser-known one-acts contains some of Williams's most potent, comical and disturbing short plays?Upper East Side ladies dine out during the apocalypse in Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws, while the poet Hart Crane is confronted by his mother at the bottom of the ocean in Steps Must Be Gentle. Five previously unpublished plays include A Recluse and His Guest, and The Strange Play, in which we witness a woman's entire life lived within a twenty-four-hour span. This volume is edited, with an introduction and notes, by the editor, acting teacher, and theater scholar Thomas Keith.Belleville
By Amy Herzog. 2014
"A quietly devastating play... Both a perceptive drama depicting the sudden fraying of a young marriage and a nail-biting psychological…
thriller... Belleville is among the most suspenseful plays I've seen in years." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Masterly... Among the new crop of young American playwrights, Herzog is in a class by herself." - Richard Zoglin, TimeAbby and Zack, young American newlyweds, have abandoned a comfortable postgraduate life in the states for Belleville, a bustling, bohemian, multicultural Parisian neighborhood. But as secrets both minor and monumental are revealed, their fraught relationship begins to unravel. Belleville examines the limits of trust and dependency in a world where love can turn pathological and our most intimate relationships may not be what they seem.AMY HERZOG's plays include 4,000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and The Great God Pan. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.Twilight in a Knotted World
By Mr Sidhhartha Sarma. 2020
The soil of central India hides more than the bones of long-dead giants. The East India Company is master of…
almost the entire subcontinent, but real power is now with the Crown. Far from the great games of the empire, Captain William Henry Sleeman is content to administer Jabalpur district and dig for remnants of petrified bones with his charming and knowledgeable wife. Until he is tasked with investigating the activities of an obscure group of criminals who are said to strangle their victims. As Sleeman uncovers the many layers of the Phansigar problem, he finds a language unlike any other, and a set of beliefs, lore and superstitions seemingly drawn from the soul of the countryside. He finds orchards of corpses, and a hierarchy of stranglers, but also ordinary men driven to murder. He hears subtle murmurs of discontentment at the changes which have come to a land believed by some to be unchanging. He finds auguries of a conflict to come. And behind it all, the legend of a mysterious, beautiful man, whose capture might be the key to understanding the Phansigars. Sleeman&’s inquiries will make him confront the nature of his beloved adopted homeland and of the mighty people in Calcutta who he serves. Through the prism of caste, the consequent web of intricate social and cultural relationships, and the nature of travel in the hinterland, he will see the real face of India and come across its uncomfortable, bleak truths. But to unravel such truths is not easy…From a former Israeli spy, comes the most realistic and authentic thriller of the year. The Times Number One BestsellerWinner…
of the CWA International Dagger.A Times, Telegraph and FT pick for Summer Reads 2019"The year's best espionage thriller" Daily Telegraph Best Books of 2019"Breathlessly exciting" Marcel Berlins, The Times."Races along with pace and verve" Adam LeBor, Financial Times"A genuinely thrilling espionage novel" John Williams, Mail on Sunday"A deeply enjoyable espionage thriller" Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph.When an Israeli tech exec disappears from Charles de Gaulle airport with a woman in red, logic dictates youthful indiscretion. But Israel is on a state of high alert nonetheless. Colonel Zeev Abadi, the new head of Unit 8200's Special Section, just happens to have arrived on the same flight.For Commissaire Léger of the Paris Police, all coincidences are suspect. When a second young Israeli from the flight is kidnapped, this time at gunpoint from his hotel room, his suspicions are confirmed - and a diplomatic crisis looms. As the race to identify the victims and the reasons behind their abductions intensifies, a covert Chinese commando team watches from the rooftops, while hour by hour the morgue receives fresh bodies from around Paris.This could be one long night in the City of Lights.Translated from the Hebrew by Daniela ZamirBlack Widows: An Observer Crime Pick of the Month
By Cate Quinn. 2020
The only thing the three women had in common was their husband. And, as of this morning, that they're each…
accused of his murder.Blake Nelson moved into a hidden stretch of land - a raw paradise in the wilds of Utah - where he lived with his three wives:Rachel, the chief wife, obedient and doting to a fault.Tina, the other wife, who's everything Rachel isn't.And Emily, the youngest wife, who knows almost nothing else.When their husband is found dead under the desert sun, the questions pile up. What are these women to each other now that their husband is dead? Will the police uncover the secrets each woman has spent her life hiding? And is one of them capable of murder...?Black Widows: An Observer Crime Pick of the Month
By Cate Quinn. 2020
The only thing the three women had in common was their husband. And, as of this morning, that they're each…
accused of his murder.Blake Nelson moved into a hidden stretch of land - a raw paradise in the wilds of Utah - where he lived with his three wives:Rachel, the chief wife, obedient and doting to a fault.Tina, the other wife, who's everything Rachel isn't.And Emily, the youngest wife, who knows almost nothing else.When their husband is found dead under the desert sun, the questions pile up. What are these women to each other now that their husband is dead? Will the police uncover the secrets each woman has spent her life hiding? And is one of them capable of murder...?From a former Israeli spy, comes the most realistic and authentic thriller of the year. The Times Number One BestsellerWinner…
of the CWA International Dagger.A Times, Telegraph and FT pick for Summer Reads 2019"The year's best espionage thriller" Daily Telegraph Best Books of 2019"Breathlessly exciting" Marcel Berlins, The Times."Races along with pace and verve" Adam LeBor, Financial Times"A genuinely thrilling espionage novel" John Williams, Mail on Sunday"A deeply enjoyable espionage thriller" Jake Kerridge, Daily Telegraph.When an Israeli tech exec disappears from Charles de Gaulle airport with a woman in red, logic dictates youthful indiscretion. But Israel is on a state of high alert nonetheless. Colonel Zeev Abadi, the new head of Unit 8200's Special Section, just happens to have arrived on the same flight.For Commissaire Léger of the Paris Police, all coincidences are suspect. When a second young Israeli from the flight is kidnapped, this time at gunpoint from his hotel room, his suspicions are confirmed - and a diplomatic crisis looms. As the race to identify the victims and the reasons behind their abductions intensifies, a covert Chinese commando team watches from the rooftops, while hour by hour the morgue receives fresh bodies from around Paris.This could be one long night in the City of Lights.Translated from the Hebrew by Daniela ZamirSaving Meghan: the chilling thriller about Munchausen's by proxy syndrome...
By D. J. Palmer. 2019
Can a mother love her daughter to death?Some would say Becky Gerard is a devoted mother. Others, including her husband,…
would say she's obsessed with her daughter. Fifteen-year-old Meghan is constantly, inexplicably ill. Her doctors are starting to suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy - they believe Meghan's mother is seeking medical help for symptoms that don't exist. But when Meghan's illness takes a sharp turn, it is no longer clear whether her mother is lying, or if something even more sinister is at hand...Becky must race against time to prove her daughter is in danger. But first, she must confront secrets that threaten to not only upend her life... but destroy it.Praise for Saving Meghan: 'Plenty of twists...will keep you turning the pages as you guess...and guess again.' -Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of After Anna'An acute, sensitive portrayal of family love under extreme stress...[with] a touch of Hitchcock.' -William Landay, New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob'Palmer's take on a dark and fascinating topic will keep the reader wondering to the very end.' Publishers WeeklyFirefly: A story of the power of true love (Redemption Series)
By Molly McAdams. 2017
Firefly is the new novel from New York Times bestselling author, Molly McAdams, a dark, twisting story of redemption and…
true love against the odds, perfect for fans of J. B. Salsbury, Jamie McGuire, Sophie Jackson and Lisa Renee Jones.As the Princess of the Irish-American Mob, there's no shortage of men ready to help guard and protect me. Kieran Hayes has been saving me for as long as I can remember. It's in his blood, and one of the many reasons I fell in love with him. Until my favourite trait became his biggest flaw, making me resent the man I love. What I wasn't prepared for was Dare - the man who set my world on fire with just one touch. He saw straight through to my soul and silently demanded my heart from the beginning. And I didn't expect Dare to be Demitri Borello - the reason for so many deaths in my family. A man who will take my life the moment he finds out who I am. Despite it all, I'll love him until that moment comes.Don't miss Blackbird, another powerful romance of love in the darkness from Molly McAdams.Blood Wedding
By Pierre Lemaitre. 2016
Sophie is haunted by the things she can't remember - and visions from the past she will never forget.One morning,…
she wakes to find that the little boy in her care is dead. She has no memory of what happened. And whatever the truth, her side of the story is no match for the evidence piled against her. Her only hiding place is in a new identity. A new life, with a man she has met online. But Sophie is not the only one keeping secrets . . .For fans of Gone Girl and Lemaitre's own internationally bestselling Alex, Blood Wedding is a compelling psychological thriller with a formidable female protagonist.Translated from the French by Frank WynneThe Ghost Marriage: A China Novella (China Thrillers #7)
By Peter May. 2017
LI YAN AND MARGARET CAMPBELL RETURN IN A NEW SHORT STORY, YEARS AFTER THE DRAMATIC CONCLUSION OF CHINESE WHISPERS. 'I…
saw your missing girl at a ghost wedding last week. She was the bride.'It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad, and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon.When a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin.Yet Li's investigation soon turns from a favour into a full-scale murder enquiry. And when he receives an anonymous note he learns Jiang Meilin's death is tied to a dangerous underground trade, and a dark marital rite from China's past.Split: A powerful, addictive love story with a twist...
By J. B. Salsbury. 2016
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Fighting Series, comes Split, a dark, deeply emotional story of love…
against the odds with a suspenseful twist, perfect for fans of Katy Evans, Jamie McGuire and Sophie Jackson.When her career takes a hit, Shyann abruptly finds herself jobless, penniless and packing for her hometown - where memories of her late mother and a reunion with her distant father await. Lucas needs a quiet life, and that's exactly what he's found in Payson, Arizona. He finally feels like he fits...and is starting to keep his mind in check. Having suffered blackouts since he was a child, Lucas knows he's not like other guys. The minute he meets his boss's strong-willed, sexy-as-sin daughter, her probing eyes and personal questions pick away at his barriers. Shyann is everything Lucas wants - and everything he should never have. When the blackouts return, the last thing he wants is to expose how dangerous he can be...When you can't trust yourself, how can you ask anyone else to? Don't miss J. B. Salsbury's powerfully emotional romance, Wrecked, coming soon.Fire Me Up: Deacons of Bourbon Street 2 (Deacons of Bourbon Street #3)
By Rachael Johns. 2015
Meet the Deacons of Bourbon Street, bad boy bikers who are hell on wheels and heaven between the sheets. Fans…
of Madeline Sheehan, Katie Ashley, Joanna Wylde and Kristen Ashley, buckle up - you're in for a wild ride. Prepare for Fire Me Up by Rachael Johns.Travis 'Cash' Sinclair's biker days are behind him. The only thing he still values from that life is his Harley Davidson and the man who gave it to him. But Priest Lombard is dead, and Cash has inherited the Deacons' old clubhouse and its new tenant. All incense and art, she's exactly the kind of woman he avoids - but he can't deny that he wants this bohemian beauty.Billie Taylor fled her dark past to start over in New Orleans. She refuses to let a man distract her from her dreams - especially a biker outlaw who's trying to evict her. Just one look at Cash and you know he's deadly. But Billie might just discover she's got a taste for danger... For more badass bikers, don't miss the rest of the Deacons of Bourbon Street series: Make You Burn by Megan Crane, Hold Me Down by Jackie Ashenden, and Strip You Bare by Maisey Yates.Strip You Bare: Deacons of Bourbon Street 4 (Deacons of Bourbon Street #1)
By Maisey Yates. 2016
Meet the Deacons of Bourbon Street, bad boy bikers who are hell on wheels and heaven between the sheets. Fans…
of Madeline Sheehan, Katie Ashley, Joanna Wylde and Kristen Ashley, buckle up - you're in for a wild ride. The final thrilling destination is Strip You Bare by Maisey Yates.Micah Carpenter was done with the Deacons of Bourbon Street ten years ago. But when tragedy calls, Micah returns to his brotherhood. Joining the hunt for their mentor's killer, he crosses paths with a Southern belle who exudes class - and sex appeal. Micah knows better than to turn the heat up with an ice queen, but he can't resist offering her a taste of the wrong side of the tracks.For Sarah Delacroix, reputation is everything. From an established family rocked by scandal, she longs to restore their good name. Micah is exactly the kind of man she should avoid: his sleek exterior hides the heart of a predator and his body is dripping in tattoos. All too soon he's getting under her skin - and she's learning she might have a wild side after all.For more badass bikers, don't miss the rest of the Deacons of Bourbon Street series: Make You Burn by Megan Crane, Fire Me Up by Rachael Johns, and Hold Me Down by Jackie Ashenden.