Bücher veröffentlicht von Houghton Mifflin

Just as Jay Gatsby was haunted by Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fizgerald was haunted by his own great first love - a Chicago socialite named Ginevra. Alluring, capricious, and ultimately unavailable, she would become his first muse, the inspiration for such timeless characters as Gatsby's Daisy and Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise. Caroline Preston's astute perceptions of her characters and the cultural landscapes they inhabit have earned her work comparisons to to that of Anne Tyler, Alison Lurie, and Diane Johnson. Now, in this richly imagined and ambitious novel, Preston deftly evokes the entire sweep of Ginevra's life - from her first meeting with Scott to the second act of her sometimes charmed, sometimes troubled life. Ginevra was sixteen, a rich man's daughter who had been told she was pretty far too often for her own good. Scott was nineteen, a poor boy full of ambition. They met at a country club dance in St. Paul, Minnesota, in January 1916. For almost a year they wrote each other letters - so long, breathless, and yearning that they often required more than one envelope. But despite their intense epistolary romance, the relationship wouldn't last. After throwing him over with what he deemed "supreme boredom and indifference," she impulsively married a handsome aviator from the right society background. Ruminating over what might have been had she picked the writer instead of the flier, she furtively reads the now famous Fitzgerald's work. When she sees herself - much to her surprise - in his characters, it's not just as the spoiled debutante he'd known; he's also uncannily predicted the woman she's become, cracks and all. An affecting story of two people, one famous, one known only through her portrayals in enduring works of fiction, Gatsby's Girl is a tremendously entertaining and moving novel about the powerful forces of first love, memory, and art.

"An uncannily honest writer." -New York Times Book Review The novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation, the New York Times, the New Republic, Granta, and The New Yorker. Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time-including many never before published in the States-in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh's arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned decades ago of the dangerous rise of religious extremism. In his travels he has stood on an icy mountaintop on the contested border between India and Pakistan, interviewed Pol Pot's sister-in-law in Cambodia, shared the elation of Egyptians when Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize, and stood with his threatened Sikh neighbors through the riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination. With intelligence and authentic sympathy, he "illuminates the human drama behind the headlines" (Publishers Weekly). Incendiary Circumstances is unparalleled testimony of an era defined by the ravages of politics and nature. Amitav Ghosh is acclaimed for his political journalism and his travel writing. The New York Times Book Review called his travelogue, In An Antique Land, "remarkable . . . rivals anything by the masters of social realism in modern Egyptian literature." He is also the best-selling author of four novels, including The Hungry Tide and The Glass Palace, which has been published in eighteen foreign editions. Ghosh has won France's prestigious Prix Medici Etranger, India's Sahitya Akademi Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Educated in South Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, Ghosh holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford. He divides his time between Harvard University, where he is a visiting professor, and his homes in Kolkata, India, and Brooklyn, New York. Praise for Incendiary Circumstances "This absorbing collection of essays by the novelist, journalist, and travel writer Ghosh . . . covers some two decades of catastrophe and upheaval, from sectarian violence in his native India during the 1980s through the September 11 attacks . . . to the recent Indian Ocean tsunami. With an eye for evocative detail, he illuminates the human dramas behind the headlines: the plight of tsunami refugees trying to rebuild their lives and finances after every bank record and piece of ID is lost to the waves; the courage of ordinary Indians protecting their Sikh neighbors from rampaging Hindu mobs . . . He is equally engaging when he turns from current affairs to literary essays on, say, the international culture of novel reading or the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali. Written in luminous prose with unusual understanding . . . an insightful look at a chaotic world."-Publishers Weekly Starred Review Praise for Amitav Ghosh "Ghosh is adept at delineating the complicated crosscurrents of emerging national independence movements. He is even more impressive at portraying the different ways in which individuals react to the turmoil, hardship, and disorientation wrought by war."-Wall Street Journal "A wonderful hybrid of travel writing, reporting, historical analysis, and memoir - in other words, the kind of piece [Ghosh] writes better than almost anyone else."-Washington Times

This original paperback brings together for the first time all of Donald Hall's writing on Eagle Pond Farm, his ancestral home in New Hampshire, where he visited his grandparents as a young boy and then lived with his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, until her death. It includes the entire, previously published Seasons at Eagle Pond and Here at Eagle Pond; the poem ?Daylilies on the Hill? from The Painted Bed; and several uncollected pieces. In these tender essays, Hall tells of the joys and quiddities of life on the farm, the pleasures and discomforts of a world in which the year has four seasons -- maple sugar, blackfly, Red Sox, and winter. Lyrical, comic, and elegaic, they sing of a landscape and culture that are disappearing under the assault of change.

Eleven-year-old Walter can't believe his eyes when he sees the eviction notice from Ralph, the rotten nephew of his old friend, General Britt. It isn't so bad for Walter and his mother, who also lives there—she would have no trouble finding another housekeeping job to support them both. But what about the old soldiers, the last surviving members of the crack World War II rescue force called the Spitzers, who saved the general's life more than forty years before?This warmly humorous novel shows two very different generations banding together to outwit a cunning adversary in order to see justice and honor prevail!

In some places, bar and bat mitzvahs are rivaled only by proms as the most important social event in many teens' lives. Parties celebrating the occasion can range from humble cookies-and-punch receptions to lavish catered affairs with elaborate themes and celebrity guests. But more important, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs are serious religious ceremonies, with rich histories and deep significance to the participants.Here is a warmly written discussion of these important Jewish coming-of-age rituals, their historical backgrounds and evolution. A special chapter features the reminiscences of well-known actors, television personalities, and sports figures about their own bar and bat mitzvahs. Joan Reilly's lively black-and-white drawings perfectly illustrate the details of the event and the celebrations. This concise, informative book will help children preparing for their bar and bat mitzvahs—as well as their families and friends—understand and appreciate this rich, spiritual occasion.

Taylor Antrim's novel is a darkly comic, clear-eyed look at hidden worlds whose complexities and rules can be understood only from inside: the insular hothouse of boarding school, the thorny dynamics between father and son, and the self-delusion of blind ideological commitment. Dyer Martin, a new history teacher at the prestigious Britton School, arrives in the fall ready to close the door on the failures and disappointments of his past: a disastrous first job, a broken relationship, and acute uncertainty about his future. James, a lonely senior, just wants to make it through his last year unscathed, avoiding both the brutal hazing of dorm life and the stern and unforgiving eye of his father, the school's politically radical headmaster, Edward Wolfe. Soon, however, both Dyer and James are inescapably drawn into Wolfe's hidden agenda for Britton, as the headmaster orders Dyer to set up and run a Model UN Club for students. As the United States moves steadily toward a conflict with an increasingly hostile North Korea-whose pursuit of nuclear technology is pushing the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon-Wolfe's political fervor begins to consume him, and he sets in motion a plan that will jeopardize his job, his school, and even the life of his own son. With precisely controlled, deceptively subtle storytelling, The Headmaster Ritual is an insightful and captivating examination of the halting, complicated course young men must chart to shake off the influence of fathers-and father figures-while refining their convictions about the world and their place in it.

The remarkable Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse arrived in New Amsterdam from Holland in 1659, a brash and ambitious twenty-two-year-old bent on making her way in the New World. She promptly built an empire of trading ships, furs, and real estate that included all of Westchester County. The Dutch called such women "she-merchants," and Margaret became the wealthiest in the colony, while raising five children and keeping a spotless linen closet. Zimmerman deftly traces the astonishing rise of Margaret and the Philipse women who followed her, who would transform Margaret's storehouse on the banks of the Hudson into a veritable mansion, Philipse Manor Hall. The last Philipse to live there, Mary Philipse Morris-the It-girl of mid-1700s New York-was even courted by George Washington. But privilege couldn't shelter the family from the Revolution, which raged on Mary's doorstep. Mining extensive primary sources, Zimmerman brings us into the parlors, bedrooms, countinghouses, and parties of early colonial America and vividly restores a forgotten group of women to life.

Miracle McCloy is the child of a talented dancer, who died in childbirth, and a brilliant, reclusive novelist. Raised by her grandmother Gigi, a psychic, Miracle becomes a dancer herself, and a loner who believes in mystical spirits and auras. Then her father disappears. When no one can give an explanation, or even a version of the truth, Miracle becomes obsessed with contacting him and bringing him back. As she loses herself in her quest, she loses her self? and, in a last, desperate attempt, sends her life up in flames. In the page-turning tradition of best-selling novels I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and The Bell Jar, Dancing on the Edge gives readers a story? and a heroine? they will never forget. "Nolan dives into the mind of an emotionally disturbed girl in an intense, exceptionally well-written novel"

Larry, Teresa, and Elliot are so tight, there's no room in their circle for more than three: boy, girl, boy. And when they graduate, they plan to move to California tostart their "real" lives--together.

Widely known as an original and graceful writer, Roger Angell has developed a devoted following through his essays in the New Yorker. Now, in Let Me Finish, a deeply personal, fresh form of autobiography, he takes an unsentimental look at his early days as a boy growing up in Prohibition-era New York with a remarkable father; a mother, Katharine White, who was a founding editor of the New Yorker; and a famous stepfather, the writer E. B. White. Intimate, funny, and moving portraits form the book's centerpiece as Angell remembers his surprising relatives, his early attraction to baseball in the time of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio, and his vivid colleagues during a long career as a New Yorker writer and editor. Infused with pleasure and sadness, Angell's disarming memoir also evokes an attachment to life's better moments.

Pierre Corneille, in his original dedication for The Theatre of Illusion, described the play as a "strange monster." He first called these five acts a comedy; later, a "caprice" and an "extravagant trifle." Written in 1635 and staged in 1636, the play vanished from the stage for the next three hundred years-to be revived in 1937 by Louis Jouvet and the Comédie Française. Since then it has been widely considered, in Virginia Scott's words, "Corneille's baroque masterpiece."Today this brilliant piece of wit and drama is available in a new translation from one of America's finest poets and translators of French, Richard Wilbur. Widely praised for his translations of plays by Molière and Racine, Wilbur now turns his poetic grace to this work, which remains as much a celebration of the comedy of humanity and the magic of life as it was when Corneille wrote it.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, taking lives and livelihoods and displacing thousands. Because the hurricane struck at the beginning of the school year, the city's children were among those most affected. Michael Tisserand, former editor of the alternative cultural newspaper Gambit Weekly, evacuated with his family to New Iberia, Louisiana. Then, rather than waiting to find out when--or if--schools in New Orleans would reopen, Tisserand and other parents persuaded one of his children's teachers, Paul Reynaud, to start a school among the sugarcane fields.So was born the Sugarcane Academy--as the children themselves named it--and so also began an experience none of Reynaud's pupils will ever forget. This inspiring book shows how a dedicated teacher made the best out of the worst situation, and how the children of New Orleans, of all backgrounds and races, adjusted to Katrina's consequences.