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Gaspard de la nuit: autobiographie de mon frère
By Elisabeth De Fontenay. 2018
Cinquante textes brefs de la philosophe sur son frère, autiste. Elle tente de mettre des mots sur ce qu'a été…
sa vie et partage les réflexions que son handicap a suscitées chez elleBuddha: a story of enlightenment
By Deepak Chopra. 2007
A retelling of the Buddha's search for truth. The prince Siddhartha leaves behind his comfortable palace, becomes a wandering monk…
who faces many trials and much suffering, and transcends physical pain to achieve enlightenment as the Buddha. Includes a concise practical guide to Buddhism. 2007Roll of thunder, hear my cry
By Mildred Taylor, Jerry Pinkney. 1976
Nine-year-old Cassie Logan recalls a turbulent time in Mississippi during the Great Depression--a year of night riders, burnings, and threats.…
She describes her African American family's struggle to survive with their dignity and independence intact. Some strong language. For grades 6-9. Newbery Award. 1976Glass Grapes: and Other Stories
By Martha Ronk. 2008
Glass Grapes and Other Stories is the first full-length collection of short stories by distinguished poet and fiction writer Martha…
Ronk. Ronk's work has garnered critical accolades and numerous awards, including, most recently, a 2005 PEN USA Award in poetry, a 2007 NEA Fellowship, and a 2007 National Poetry Series Award. Glass Grapes is a collection of short, experimental stories, usually dominated by an object imbued with fetishistic qualities by an obsessive, self-involved narrator. The language of these stories is repetitive, provocative, imagistic, occasionally comic, and unnerving. Ronk's fiction moves with the same grace, beauty, and attention to language as her most accomplished poetry.Cradle Book
By Craig Morgan Teicher. 2010
Timeless yet timely and hopeful with a dark underbelly, these fables revive a tradition running from Aesop to W.S. Merwin.…
With a poet's mastery, Craig Morgan Teicher creates strange worlds populated by animals fated for disaster and the people who interact with them, or simply act like them, including a very sad boy who wishes he had been raised by wolves. There are also a handful of badly behaving gods, a talking tree, and a shape-shifting room.Craig Morgan Teicher is poetry editor of Publishers Weekly and a vice president on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.When the Drumming Stops
By Steven Wishnia. 2012
Bass player and rapidly aging punk rocker Underend Vicodini is an unlikely hero. He loves New York City like nobody's…
business but does it still love him despite his lack of affluence and influence? His former band, The Gutter Astronomers, was riding high in the 1980s, releasing albums and touring across the country playing to packed nightclubs filled with eager fans, but the Great Recession finds the band members middle-aged and struggling not to drown in the seas of gentrification and disillusion. When lead singer Mickey gets an offer to reunite the band, he jumps at it. But can the old bandmates overcome their acrimonious break up? Can they get back into it without shredding their lives? Can Underend Vicodini find inner peace and, more importantly, a reasonably priced apartment below 14th Street or in Brooklyn? Steven Wishnia is a New York-based musician and journalist. Born on the Lower East Side, he grew up in Brooklyn, New England, Edinburgh, and Long Island. He has played in numerous bands, including the False Prophets, an eclectic punk group that recorded two albums released by Alternative Tentacles. After the False Prophets broke up in 1987, he earned an MA at New York University's School of Journalism, writing for failing newspapers before working for many years as news editor at High Times. Recipient of two New York City Independent Press Association awards, he currently works as a freelance writer and editor, most often for AlterNet.org and Junior Scholastic, and often performs musically with artist Mac McGill.Divine Stories
By Andy Rotman. 2008
Divine Stories is the inaugural volume in a landmark translation series devoted to making the wealth of classical Indian Buddhism…
accessible to modern readers. The stories here, among the first texts to be inscribed by Buddhists, highlight the moral economy of karma, illustrating how gestures of faith, especially offerings, can bring the reward of future happiness and ultimate liberation. Originally contained in the Divyavadana, an enormous compendium of Sanskrit Buddhist narratives from the early Common Era, the stories in this collection express the moral and ethical impulses of Indian Buddhist thought and are a testament to the historical and social power of narrative. Long believed by followers to be the actual words of the Buddha himself, these divine stories are without a doubt some of the most influential stories in the history of Buddhism.Being Dead in South Carolina
By Jacob White. 2013
Stories of the modern South, of people who no longer recognize themselves, who have arrived, like the Sunbelt itself, to…
a strange day that seems disconnected from all the old days, the old stories. Yet it's on this day we must always answer for ourselves&emdash;right an overturned car, recover a brother's body, convince a son of our worth and his.Stray Decorum
By George Singleton. 2012
My dog Tapeworm Johnson needed legitimate veterinary attention. It had been two years since she received annual shots. I read…
somewhere that an older dog can overdose on all these vaccinations, and I have found--I share this information with every dog owner I meet--that if you keep your pet away from rabid foxes, raccoons, skunks, bats, and people whose eyes rotate crazy in their sockets, then the chances of your own dog foaming at the mouth diminishes drastically. I also believe that dogs don't need microchips imbedded beneath their shoulder blades if you keep the dog leashed or in the house, or with the truck windows rolled up when you drive around showing the dog farm animals living in pastures. I brought this up to Dr. Page one time, back four years earlier when Tapeworm Johnson was somewhere between eight and nine. Tapeworm showed up at my door one morning, her ribs as visible as anything you'd order down at Clem and Lyda's Barbecue Shack off Scenic Highway 11, her paw pads split open from, I assumed, days traveling from wherever her conscienceless owner dropped her off. Eleven stories, all previously published in journals like The Atlantic, The Oxford American, and The Georgia Review, in which George Singleton brings small-town South Carolina alive. Using everyday situations like a dog needing its annual vaccination and buckets of humorous observations, Singleton pokes and prods his readers into realizing we're all simply restless for a pat on the head.Nuri Does Not Exist
By Sadru Jetha. 2011
Amid a sea of dystopian world literatures haunted by the fractious claims of identity politics, Nuri Does Not Exist is…
an astonishingly charming collection of linked short stories that engages us with the utterly believable innocence of its Utopian vision. Accompany Nuri from Zanzibar to Canada as he learns how servitude transcends slavery; fealty transcends servitude; and community transcends fealty.Darwin Alone in the Universe
By M.A.C. Farrant. 2003
The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets
By Diana Wagman. 2012
Winnie Parker, mother to an angst-ridden teenage daughter and ex-wife to a successful game show host who left her for…
a twenty-something contestant, begins a normal day in her hum-drum existence by dropping her car off at the repair shop. After accepting what she believes is a ride to pick up her rental car, Winnie realizes too late that she's been kidnapped.What follows is a riveting psychological game of cat and mouse set in the kidnapper's tropically heated house-kept that way for Cookie, a menacing seven-foot long Iguana headquartered in the kitchen. While desperately seeking to escape-which leads to several violent clashes with her increasingly unstable kidnapper-Winnie also tries to understand why she was taken captive. Is her kidnapper merely seeking a ransom or does he have something more sinister in mind? Does he know that Winnie's mother is an Oscar-winning actress? Or did he connect her with Jonathan, her famous ex-husband? When the truth reveals itself, Winnie is not only forced to fight for her life, but must also protect the lives of those she loves from the kidnapper's deranged master plan.An engrossing, darkly humorous, edge-of-your-seat story, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets explores the dynamic between kidnapper and kidnapped, bizarre reptile lore, and the absurdity of the celebrity lifestyle.Diana Wagman is the author of the novels Bump, Spontaneous-which won the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction-and Skin Deep. She is also a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times.Wigrum
By Daniel Canty, Oana Avasilichioaei. 2011
End of October 1944. Sebastian Wigrum absconds from his London flat. Very little is known about him, except his intense…
curiosity about the world and perhaps his disillusionment in love. The legacy of this man, who lived to collect has left in his wake an inventory of some hundred objects, which shed light on the history of our time.Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions
By Rob Funderburk, Michael Czyzniejewski. 2012
For everyone who's always wondered what would happen if Roger Ebert had taken Oprah Winfrey to a critics' screening of…
Revenge of The Nerds for their second date..In Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions by Michael Czyzniejewski, each story is told in the persona of a famous Chicagoan, from Mrs. O'Leary to Barack Obama.Illustrated by Chicago artist Rob FunderburkThe Strange Truth About Us
By M.A.C. Farrant. 2011
This tell-all book by M.A.C. Farrant, whom Publishers Weekly has celebrated as "a brave iconoclast" and whose work the Globe…
& Mail has said "bristles with moral fury ... at the absurdities of our accelerated age and a great dose of laugh-out-loud humour," offers her readers nothing less than The Strange Truth About Us.A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions, speculations, and meditations, by turns philosophical, dark, comedic, and lyrical, it attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned world."Annotations About an Absence" is a series of 115 numbered annotations to the day-long ruminations of a retired couple living in a gated community attempting to create an imaginary novel in which they express their fears about the future: "We attempt to express the universal confusion of mind that is the main feature of contemporary life. Which is? We are afraid.""Woman Records Brief Notes Regarding Absence" is written as a series of notes to these annotations, providing (in the utterly blank spirit of transparency) a running satiric narrative on the project. Each of these "notes" is written as if it were a description of a late-night TV movie or the content of a wet Jehovah's Witness pamphlet left on a woman's doorstep that has taken hold of her mind."Other Prose Surrounding Absence" comprises twenty-seven prose pieces that take aim at a globalized world bludgeoned by the threat of "end times"-climate change, species extinction, pandemics, and really bad politics-that seem designed insofar as we are able to retain our status as "individuals."Unique in style and approach, engaging, enigmatic, controversial, and delightful, this book is an attempt to prick the bubble of our complacency in the face of the "awful atrocity" we've made for ourselves.The Legend's Daughter
By David Kranes. 2013
A 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award Winner"In this exceptional collection of stories set mostly in Idaho in the deep backwoods…
along river banks and lonely county roads, Kranes' characters are all thrown out of their comfort zones. And so is the reader. Richly drawn and complex, these stories challenge the intellect. Kranes has managed to somehow dam the river of souls these stories possess. They do not lie still, however, between the covers but rather spin in far-reaching whirlpools of genuine humanity and mortality."-15 Bytes"There's something to be said about a writer whose style is easily recognized, whose voice stands out, whose stories are readily identified. What's remarkable about David Kranes's writing and these stories, though, is that each story stands out on its own merit, while every story is well crafted and conceived. Nothing one-dimensional about his people, nothing one dimensional about his prose, either."-ForeWord Reviews"From rainbow trout jumping in the Salmon River to watering holes on the edge of McCall Lake, each of the ten stories in author and playwright David Kranes's The Legend's Daughter transports the reader to the wilderness of Eastern Idaho. While Kranes renders a common setting in each story, the collection is not simply a detailed portrait of Idaho, but an examination of the lives of restless people seeking to escape from their lives and find peace."-ZYZZYVA"The Legend's Daughter is a story collection of real people struggling with identity, with love, with time, rooted in the rugged and indifferent beauty of Idaho where each character finds his or her mirror in water, in stone, in place. David Kranes shows how our tenacious love of life can transform any situation, large or small, into alchemy. We are all living inside these raw and well-drawn pages."-Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds"These Idaho stories are vintage David Kranes. He, more than any other writer, is the one whose work spurs me to reconsider what fiction can do. He uses language like a knife and the worlds in his stories come off the page at me. We haven't seen this Idaho before. I'm thrilled to have these stories, every one of them provocative, riveting, and robust."-Ron Carlson, author of The Signal"In these times of disconnection, David Kranes lassoes us with the delicate tether of his multiple gifts and brings us home . . . a storyteller and an elegant craftsman."-Mary Sojourner"David Kranes has given us ten stories, entirely various, often splendid, sometimes hilarious or heartbreaking."-William Kittredge, author of The Willow FieldGrind
By Mark Maynard. 2012
Convicts round up wild mustangs, a schizophrenic homeless man wins the jackpot and disappears, a truck driver with a child's…
mind spends his last hours in the embrace of a prostitute's photos-disparate and vivid, Mark Maynard's characters intersect in the new wild west of Reno, Nevada."Throughout the volume's eight tenuously linked tales, lives and fortune are lost, and the city of Reno emerges as a locus of shattered souls. Maynard's debut collection bursts with idiosyncratic characters...packs a strong emotional punch...is strangely entertaining."-Publishers Weekly"In Grind, Maynard reveals a world the Nevada tourism board would rather you didn't see...A debut collection of stories that perfectly captures the seediness, desperation and sense of loss permeating the hot desert world of Reno."-Shelf Awareness"Mark Maynard's Reno is so sleazily appealing, so filled with convict cowboys, wild horses, racing pilots, truckers, snow bums, eco-terrorists, tattoo conventions, pawnshops and jackpots that you emerge from reading Grind dazed by this author's empathy for neglected quarters of humanity. You feel gritty all over-and more alive."-Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution"The characters in these stories are as beautiful and broken as the desert itself. Mark Maynard explores the stony truths of lost lives with an unflinching eye for detail, an insider's sense of the place and its people, and an honest compassion. The heartbreaks here are real, as are the moments of uncommon grace and hard-won redemption."-Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men"Mark Maynard's Grind is chock full of men and women who are desperate with want and full of spirit. Pawnbrokers. Truckers. Casino shills. Prison inmates. They're all here, and they're all gloriously alive. This is prime American fiction-tough, generous, and open-eyed."-Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto"Grind is exactly what I like in a locally based book. Plenty of those characters who make a visit to the environs of Reno both an exciting potential and an illicit affair...This is a Northern Nevada book."-D. Brian Burghart, Reno News & ReviewApples from the Desert
By Grace Paley, Savyon Liebrecht. 1992
Savyon Liebrecht's intense, lyrical, and emotionally complex stories have made her a best-selling writer in her native Israel. Her short…
fiction explores the everyday tragedies that emanate from strained relationships between Arabs and Jews, women and men, older and younger generations in present-day Israel. According to the Washington Post Book World, her "engrossing and skillful tales take you through the lives of real people, to the heart of their emotional and moral being." Liebrecht reveals the impact of larger social and political conflicts within the private world of the home with a precision and a subtle ferocity reminiscent of the work of Nadine Gordimer. "These finely wrought stories of private lives shed light on a terrifying political conflict", notes the New York Times Book Review. "[Liebrecht] takes you places you've never been before." The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Woman's SeriesGrowing Up Amish
By Richard Ammon. 1989
Anna and her family live on a farm, but they don't have tractors or electricity. The "old fashioned" clothing of…
men and women, boys and girls doesn't have zippers or buttons. Anna is Amish, and here is the story of what her life is like day to day. Anna and other Amish children attend their own school, they raise farm animals and do farm chores without modern technology. They wear their distinctive clothing every day and attend long church services every other Sunday. Anna's life is a full and satisfying one. She and her family work hard, but they play, too. There are picnics, excursions, a trip to buy a new horse, school parties, and sports like hockey, volleyball, skating, sledding, baseball, and fishing. There are indoor games, books to read, songs to sing, and good food to eat. Along with Anna's story, this book includes recipes, songs, poems, and games so that the reader will better understand and appreciate the Amish--a group of very special people who only accept from the modern world those things that do not interfere with their way of life.The First Breath
By Icarus Phaethon. 2009
"Everyone's life is a mountain. You can spend your whole time wandering around the lowlands and foothills of this great…
peak, but unless you make the commitment to get to the top one day, you will never find out who you really are." The First Breath is an astounding work that is a mix of travel narrative, philosophical dialogue, human drama, intrigue, love story and soul-searching personal journey. It will challenge your perception of the world and relationship with it. There's something terribly wrong with the world, at least Icarus thinks so. Something's not quite right and it's something he can't quite put his finger on. It's akin to that fleeting moment when you think of a rose then you actually see one, and can't quite figure out whether it's just a coincidence or something much stranger, deeper and far reaching than you could ever imagine.