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Leaving Tangier
By Tahar Ben Jelloun. 2006
Jelloun tells the story of a Moroccan brother and sister making new lives for themselves in Spain. What they find…
there forms the heart of this novel of seduction and betrayal, deception and disillusionment, in which the two are reminded not only of where they've come from but also of who they really areLettres à une jeune espionne: 1, La diagonale du double
By Constantin Melnik. 1997
A travers ces Lettres à une jeune espionne, l'auteur, responsable des services secrets sous de Gaulle et maître incontesté du…
Renseignement, nous dévoile les mécanismes, "la psychologie et les techniques du plus obscur des mondes", celui des services secrets. [SDMHope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts: Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts (American Women Writers Ser.)
By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. 1987
Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in history. At…
the heart of the story is a cross-cultural friendship between Hope-Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society and Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief. It challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and claims for women their rightful place in history. Adult. UnratedWest of the West: imagining California : an anthology
By Leonard Michaels, David Reid, Raquel Scherr. 1995
An anthology of short stories, poems, essays, quotes, and excerpts that explore popular California themes and the romantic image of…
the West. Includes selections by well-known authors such as: Rudyard Kipling, Jack Kerouac, Simone de Beauvoir, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Soto, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, and Amy TanA Feeling for Books
By Janice A. Radway. 1967
Deftly melding ethnography, cultural history, literary criticism, and autobiographical reflection, A Feeling for Books is at once an engaging study…
of the Book-of-the-Month Club's influential role as a cultural institution and a profoundly personal meditation about the experience of reading. Janice Radway traces the history of the famous mail-order book club from its controversial founding in 1926 through its evolution into an enterprise uniquely successful in blending commerce and culture. Framing her historical narrative with writing of a more personal sort, Radway reflects on the contemporary role of the Book-of-the-Month Club in American cultural history and in her own life. Her detailed account of the standards and practices employed by the club's in-house editors is also an absorbing story of her interactions with those editors. Examining her experiences as a fourteen-year-old reader of the club's selections and, later, as a professor of literature, she offers a series of rigorously analytical yet deeply personal readings of such beloved novels as Marjorie Morningstar and To Kill a Mockingbird. Rich and rewarding, this book will captivate and delight anyone who is interested in the history of books and in the personal and transformative experience of reading.The Strength of Bone
By Lucie Wilk. 2013
An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013: Top 100/Editors' Pick"A gorgeous debut."-JOSEPH BOYDEN, author of Through Black Spruce and The OrendaAt…
the hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Bryce is learning to predict the worst. Racing heart: infection, probably malaria. He'll send Iris for saline. Shortness of breath? TB. Another patient rolled to the ward. And the round swellings, the rashes with dimpled centres, the small rough patches on a boy's foot? HIV. Iris will make him comfortable. They'll move on.Then there will be sleeplessness, rationed energy, a censuring of hope: the doctor's disease. Iris sees that one all the time.Henry Bryce has come to Blantyre to work off the grief he feels for his old life, but he can't adjust to the hopelessness that surrounds him. He relies increasingly upon Sister Iris's steady presence. Yet it's not until an accident brings them both to a village outpost that Bryce realizes the personal sacrifices Iris has made for her medical training, or that Iris in turn comes to fathom the depth of Henry's loss.The Strength of Bone is the story of a Western doctor, a Malawian nurse, and the crises that push both of them to the brink of collapse. With biting emotion and a pathological eye for detail, novelist and medical doctor Lucie Wilk demonstrates how, in a place where knowledge can frustrate as often as it heals, true strength requires the flexibility to let go.Advance Praise for The Strength of Bone"In supple, beautiful prose, Lucie Wilk recounts a doctor's struggle with technology and faith, and with the mysteries of death and love ... The Strength of Bone is an extraordinary look at the clash of worlds."-ANNABEL LYON, author of The Golden Mean and The Sweet GirlLucie Wilk grew up in Toronto and completed her medical training in Vancouver. Her short fiction has been nominated for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Anthology, longlisted for a CBC Canada Writes literary prize, and has appeared in Descant, Prairie Fire and Shortfire Press. She is working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She practices medicine and lives with her husband and two children in London, UK.Widow
By Michelle Latiolais. 2011
BELIEVER BOOK AWARD FINALIST"In prose shimmering with intelligence and compassion, Michelle Latiolais dissects the essentials of everyday life to find…
the heartbeat within."-Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones"Widow is a hymn to reverence, simultaneously heartbroken and celebratory. Michelle Latiolais has given us the rarest item, a splendidly articulated masterpiece." -William Kittredge"In this luminous collection of stories, the gifted Michelle Latiolais writes of loss in all its surprising manifestations. Widow is a devastation and a wonder." -Christine Schutt"There is something mysterious about this book, as there always is in the writing that matters most. It eludes explanation. It illumines terrifying realities. Only because these pages seem nakedly willing to take the imprint of every emotion, no matter how ugly, do they possess this great beauty." -Elizabeth TallentThe stories of Widow conjure the nuances of inner sensations as if hitting the notes of a song, deftly played across human memory. These meditations bravely explore the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail-reminding us that the inner life is best understood through the medium of storytelling. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the ineffable pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout this collection, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompany life's most transformative chapters.Michelle Latiolais is the author of Widow: Stories, a New York Times Editor's Choice selection, and two previous novels, including A Proper Knowledge, also published by Bellevue Literary Press. She is the recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California and an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.Against the Wind
By Howard Scott, Madeleine Gagnon, Phyllis Aronoff. 2012
Is an artist born, or rather, created by experience? From the moment in childhood when he is forced to take…
drastic action to defend his adoptive mother from a violent assault - the only maternal figure that he has ever known - it is evident that the life of Joseph Sully-Jacques is to be no ordinary life, and one marked by sorrow and adversity.Unable to cope with or even recognize the residual effects of his trauma in adolescence, Joseph retreats into an increasingly abstract world, one in which he must confront what he calls his "visions." And when he hears of the death of his natural mother, this brings to the surface memories he had hoped were buried deep within him, and precipitates the form of various crises to come, particularly as he discovers and makes use of the artistic abilities revealed to his family during his psychiatric evaluation.After many more hardships, the young man does find meaning to the absurdities of life, ironically in the asylum, where he meets a virtuoso pianist whose condition prevents her from continuing to exercise her talents. They heal together through their mutual love, which will soon subsist upon nothing but memory and absence. During mournful years of raising his son alone, in his extensive adversaria, Joseph sets out to reconcile the contradictory themes in his life, including abandonment, madness, love, and death.In spare, lucid prose, and in a style reminiscent of André Gide, Madeleine Gagnon invites the reader to experience the creation and development of an artist "in his own words" - Joseph's gelid journal entries that are to become emphatic poetic laments - in a novel that chronicles the extreme destitution of Quebec in the years before World War Two and in abstract developing forms of artistic expression after years of uncertainty and loss.Monument Road
By Charlie Quimby. 2013
Leonard Self has spent a year unwinding his ranch, paying down debts, and fending off the darkening. Just one thing…
left: taking his wife's ashes to her favorite overlook, where he plans to step off the cliff with her into a stark and beautiful landscape. But Leonard finds he has company on a route that intertwines old wounds and new insights that make him question whether his life is over after all."Part modern western, part mystery, this first novel will appeal to fans of Louise Erdrich and Kent Haruf. Quimby's prose reads so true, it breaks the heart."-BOOKLIST, starred review"The Colorado setting and the author's simple style of prose perfectly complement the complexity of the human spirit in this superb debut."-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"Monument Road is so rich with landscape, character and event that such a small telling cannot begin to do it justice. Read this exquisite story; it is a joy and a wonder and a tour de force of authorship."-SHELF AWARENESS"Quimby's storytelling, his humane impulses and his lyrical passages on the meaning of love and time, and on the history, geology and botany of the region, will surely impress readers."-MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE"Quimby uses words as spare as Colorado's landscape to describe characters who range from endearing to crusty, wise to foolish, spiritual to downright evil. The folks who live near Monument Road aren't just descriptions in a book; they're complex people readers will care about."--FOREWORD REVIEWS"Not to be overlooked is the love, humor and friendship among pain and loss, which makes it a book far more about the richness of life than the finality of death."-GRAND JUNCTION DAILY SENTINEL"Monument Road is a wonderful novel full of wit and wisdom, generosity and malice."-GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS"Quimby's writing is sensitive and graceful; he has a talent for revealing slowly blossoming characters who are beautifully flawed and realistic."-THE DESERET NEWS"While not exactly a happy novel, Monument Road is beautiful and real, full of landscape imagery of the American Southwest as a poignant and sometimes haunting metaphor of our connections to the land."-15 BYTES"This is a novel with size and scope and generosity, with an acute understanding of human nature and a deep appreciation for the ways people face change and work out their lives in relation to each other."-Kent Meyers, author of Twisted Tree and The Work of Wolves"In prose that might have been chiseled from the magnificent landscape he describes, Charlie Quimby has written a great big American Novel. Full of pathos and humor and sadness, you won't reach the end of this book without feeling fuller and wiser. What a gift Charlie has given us."-Peter Geye, author of The Lighthouse Road and Safe from the Sea"Monument Road is a legitimate modern western, complete with an impressively authentic and aging rancher, heartache, ghosts, low-lifes, a rural landscape undergoing radical transformation, a glut of evangelical churches, and the ancient, powerful cliffs and mesas that surround it all, in southwestern Colorado. The narrative is likewise unpredictable and wild! A pleasure to read."-Bonnie Nadzam, author of Lamb"The landscape and characters of Monument Road ring true. Charlie Quimby has created a story that is hard to forget. His attention to the details of a fading life and life style are spot on and will be a window to any reader's understanding of the central phenomenon of the New West."-Dan O'Brien, author of Stolen Horses and Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch"Monument Road is a big-hearted novel chock full of memorable characters, a pleasure to read."-David Rhodes, author of Jewelweed and DriftlessRock, Paper, Scissors
By K. E. Semmel, Naja Marie Aidt. 2015
"The emotions unleashed in this tale . . . are painfully universal. Yet you know exactly where in the universe…
you are. This is the hallmark of great short stories, from Chekhov's portraits of discontented Russians to Joyce's struggling Dubliners."-Radhika Jones, TimeNaja Marie Aidt's long-awaited first novel is a breathtaking page-turner and complex portrait of a man whose life slowly devolves into one of violence and jealousy.Rock, Paper, Scissors opens shortly after the death of Thomas and Jenny's criminal father. While trying to fix a toaster that he left behind, Thomas discovers a secret, setting into motion a series of events leading to the dissolution of his life, and plunging him into a dark, shadowy underworld of violence and betrayal.A gripping story written with a poet's sensibility and attention to language, Rock, Paper, Scissors showcases all of Aidt's gifts and will greatly expand the readership for one of Denmark's most decorated and beloved writers.Naja Marie Aidt was born in Greenland and raised in Copenhagen. She is the author of seven collections of poetry and five short story collections, including Baboon (Two Lines Press), which received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the Danish Critics Prize for Literature. Rock, Paper, Scissors is her first novel.K. E. Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Ontario Review, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. His translations include books by Karin Fossum, Erik Valeur, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Simon Fruelund.Taino: A Novel
By José Barreiro. 2012
"Written" by Guaikán, the elderly Taino man who, in his youth, was adopted by Christopher Columbus and saw history unfold,…
Taino is the Indian chronicle of the American encounter, the Native view on Columbus and what happened in the Caribbean. This novel, based on a true story, penetrates the historical veil that still enshrines the "discovery." Presently a senior fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, José Barreiro is a novelist, essayist, and an activist of nearly four decades on American indigenous hemispheric themes. Barreiro is a member of the Taino Nation of the Antilles.The Baldwins
By David Homel, Fred A. Reed, Serge Lamothe. 2004
In the post-apocalyptic future, 50 years after the last government of turbo-liberals and its president-for-life have been elected, a group…
of researchers convenes a Congress to address the curious cultural phenomenon of the Baldwins, whose stories have been gathered and archived by the chroniclers. This novel of fragments represents contemporary prose at its most daring and experimental.The Baldwins
By David Homel, Fred Reed, Serge Lamothe. 2004
In the post-apocalyptic future, 50 years after the last government of turbo-liberals and its president-for-life have been elected, a group…
of researchers convenes a Congress to address the curious cultural phenomenon of the Baldwins, whose stories have been gathered and archived by the chroniclers. This novel of fragments represents contemporary prose at its most daring and experimental.The Dependents
By Katharine Dion. 2018
One of TIME magazine's best summer reads, a "wise" (Entertainment Weekly) and "resplendent" (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut that follows…
a new widower confronting the truth about his long marriageOne of the best books of the summer: TIME, Entertainment Weekly, O: The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Brit + Co."A fine debut, full of intelligent writing . . . This book pleases on many levels." --Jeffrey Eugenides"The Dependents is a big book, one that grapples with important questions through generations...Dion's intelligence and ambition truly shine through sentence after sentence." --Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of WomenAfter the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college days, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared, raising their children in a small New Hampshire town and vacationing together at a lake house every summer. Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him--and how enigmatic his wife was as well. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew. Katharine Dion's assured debut moves seamlessly between Gene's present-day journey and the long history of a marriage and friendship. Rich and wonderfully alive, The Dependents is the most moving kind of drama, an intimate glance into the expanse of family life and the way we must all eventually bridge the chasm between what we want to believe and what we know to be true.The Baltimore Atrocities: A Novel
By John Dermot Woods. 2014
Praise for John Dermot Woods:"Poignant and unsettling, and much like a good short story collection these tales resonate long after…
the book is closed."-Largehearted Boy"An accomplished artist and writer, in addition to being an entertaining and often an electrifying one. John Woods does something very original in his combining of the arts in this collection, and my hat's off to him in his two-hat achievement."-Stephen Dixon"Like a lost season of The Wire directed by Richard Linklater, The Baltimore Atrocities beguiles, bemuses, often horrifies, and never fails to impress. John Woods renders small moments of intimacy and violence with remarkable compression and eerie calm; together they form a rich disturbing portrait of the city-as-zonked-out-slaughterhouse, its denizens both the butchers and the butchered."-Justin Taylor, author of FlingsThe Baltimore Atrocities is a mordant, deadpan collection of more than one hundred murders, betrayals, heartbreaks, suicides, and bureaucratic snafus-each with a half-page illustration by the author-that tells the story of a couple who spends a year in Baltimore in search of their respective siblings, who were abducted decades earlier as young children.John Dermot Woods is a writer and cartoonist living in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of a collection of comics, Activities (Publishing Genius, 2013), and two previous illustrated novels, No One Told Me I Was Going to Disappear (with J.A. Tyler) and The Complete Collection of people, places & things. He and Lincoln Michel created the funny comic strip Animals in Midlife Crises for the Rumpus. He is a professor of English at Nassau Community College.The Prince
By Niccolò Machiavelli, Christopher Celenza. 2018
Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential works. From the musings of intellectuals…
such as Thomas Paine in Common Sense to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our intellectual history through the words of the exceptional few.Widely acknowledged as Machiavelli’s defining work, The Prince is an innovative and rich treatise marked by his political theories and the principles of leadership. Based upon his own experiences witnessing “the actions of great men” and the often immoral aspects that come with power, Machiavelli encouraged ambition amongst leaders—which was a break from the philosophy of other contemporary thinkers. The Prince identifies the aims of powerful leaders, which can help to justify the use of largely immoral means in their methods.With a new foreword by scholar Christopher Celenza, this essential work on politics contemplates leadership in a manner still relevant today. This lesson in autocratic rule will provide the reader with the author’s rational approach to control and the contextualization for the term “Machiavellian.”Among the Lesser Gods: A Novel
By Margo Catts. 2017
For fans of authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Leif Enger, a stunning new voice in contemporary literary fiction."Tragedy and blessing.…
Leave them alone long enough, and it gets real hard to tell them apart." Elena Alvarez is living a cursed life. From the deadly fire she accidentally set as a child, to her mother's abandonment, and now to an unwanted pregnancy, she knows better than most that small actions can have terrible consequences. Driven to the high mountains surrounding Leadville, Colorado by her latest bad decision, she's intent on putting off the future. Perhaps there she can just hide in her grandmother's isolated cabin and wait for something–anything–to make her next choice for her. But instead of escape, she finds reminders of her own troubles reflected from every side–the recent widower and his two children adrift in a changed world, Elena's own mysterious family history, and the interwoven lives within the town itself. Bit by bit, Elena begins to reconsider her role in the tragedies she's held on to and the wounds she's refused to let heal. But then, in a single afternoon, when threads of cause and effect tangle, Elena's fragile new peace is torn apart. It's only at the prospect of fresh loss and blame that she will discover the truth of the terrible burdens we take upon ourselves, the way tragedy and redemption are inevitably bound together–and how curses can sometimes lead to blessings, however disguised.The Red Coat: A Novel of Boston
By Dolley Carlson. 2018
Think Downton Abbey, set in the heart of Boston Irish domestic worker Norah King's decision to ask her wealthy employer,…
Caroline Parker, for an elegant red coat that the Beacon Hill matriarch has marked for donation ignites a series of events that neither woman could have fathomed. The unlikely exchange will impact their respective daughters and families for generations to come, from the coat's original owner, marriage-minded collegian Cordelia Parker, to the determined and spirited King sisters of South Boston, Rosemary, Kay, and Rita. As all of these young women experience the realities of life – love and loss, conflict and joy, class prejudices and unexpected prospects – the red coat reveals the distinction between cultures, generations, and landscapes in Boston during the 1940s and 50s, a time of change, challenge, and opportunity. Meet the proud, working-class Irish and staid, upper-class Brahmins through the contrasting lives of these two families and their friends and neighbors. See how the Parkers and the Kings each overcome sudden tragedy with resolve and triumph. And witness the profound impact of a mother’s heart on her children’s souls. Carlson brings us front and center with her knowing weave of Celtic passion – both tragic and joyful – words of wisdom, romance, humor, and historical events. Dive into Boston feet first! The Red Coat is a rich novel that chronicles the legacy of Boston from both sides of the city, Southie and the Hill.City of Jasmine
By Olga Grjasnowa. 2019
Syria - a country at war Amal, Hammoudi and Youssef are young and ambitious, the face of modern Syria. But…
when civil war tears through their homeland, they are left with a horrifying choice: risk death by staying in the country they love, or flee in search of a new life elsewhere? From one of Germany's most talented literary voices comes this intricately woven story of brutality, loss, and how hope can shine through when darkness feels overwhelming.Mark Twain's Civil War: The Private History Of A Campaign That Failed
By Mark Twain. 2010
Had there been no Civil War, the eminent American author known as Mark Twain would likely have spent his life…
as Sam Clemens, the Mississippi River steamboat pilot. When the war came and the steamboats stopped running, Clemens served two weeks in the Missouri State Guard before he fled west to begin his career as a writer. After the Civil War dramatically altered the course of Twain's life and career, his thoughts and stories about the war were published widely. Mark Twain's Civil War marks the first occasion for readers to survey the full range of his Civil War writings in one volume. The book contains autobiographical pieces as well as fiction, appealing to both Twain enthusiasts and Civil War scholars.