Middling historian Lucas Paige visits St. Louis to give a sparsely attended reading-nothing out of the ordinary. Except among the yawning attendees is someone he did not expect: Lola Faye Gilroy, the "other woman" he has long blamed for his father's murder decades earlier.Reluctantly, Luke joins Lola Faye for a drink. As one drink turns into several, these two battered souls relive, from their different perspectives, the most searing experience of their lives. Slowly but surely, the hotel bar dissolves around them and they are transported back to the tiny southern town where this defining moment-a violent crime of passion-is turned in the light once more to reveal flaws in the old answers. As it turns out, there is much Luke doesn't know. And what he doesn't know can hurt him. Trapped in an increasingly intense emotional exchange, and with no place to go save back into his own dark past, Luke struggles to gain control of an ever more threatening conversation, to discover why Lola Faye has come and what she is after-before it is too late.A taut literary thriller in the gothic tradition of Master of the Delta.
A brutal car accident that claimed the life of her best friend has left seventeen-year-old Catherine in a state of shock and severe depression. She longs to move forward with her life, but feels she can't until she is somehow assured of her friend's forgiveness. On a Christmas visit to her grandmother in Pasadena, a mysterious and handsome stranger approaches Catherine at church claiming that he can put her in touch with her dead friend. Catherine is wary of the stranger's claims and his ghostly appearance but feels he may be the only key to escaping her past. She tells no one of the meeting but is approached by an elderly woman who warns her of the stranger's powers. The woman's teenage diary and eerie rumors surrounding other troubled girls who have disappeared from the church community leave Catherine fearful of the stranger's true intentions. She realizes she must find some way to confront this supernatural presence as well as the ghosts of her past.A classic ghost story from one of Clarion's most distinguished authors. Eve Bunting brings a new edge to the genre of suspense by interweaving contemporary issues with sharp and frightful storytelling.
From the best-selling author of The Vanishing of Esme Lennox comes a spellbinding novel that shows there are no accidents, in life and in love.Frustrated with her parents' genteel country life, Lexie Sinclair plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, postwar Soho. She learns to be a reporter, comes to know art and artists, and embraces her freedom fully. So when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own. Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood and finds she can't remember giving birth, while her boyfriend Ted is flooded with memories and images he cannot place. As their stories unfold--moving in time and changing voice chapter by chapter--a connection between the three of them takes shape that drives the novel towards a tremendous revelation. Praised by The Washington Post as a "breathtaking, heart-breaking creation," The Hand That First Held Mine is a gorgeous and tenderly wrought story about the ways in which love and beauty bind us together.
A sixth-grade Goth girl who thinks she's a vampire encounters her greatest nemesis when she enrolls at Sunny Hill Middle School in this hilarious and entirely original take on the vampire genre for middle graders. Svetlana Grimm has recently discovered she's a vampire. The clues are all there: she can eat only red foods, has to sleep under the bed because of her heightened sensitivity to light and noise, and can read others' thoughts. But this new discovery is making her transition from home-schooling to attending sixth grade at Sunny Hill Middle School that much more difficult. After all, what can she possibly have in common with those jellybean-eaters in her class? She prefers to watch them from afar in her hidden lair atop the Oak of Doom in her backyard. But things get more interesting when Svetlana's cruel yet beautiful science teacher, Ms. Larch, reads her thoughts. Svetlana is excited to have found another of her kind?until her new neighbor, The Bone Lady, fills her in on Ms. Larch's true identity and her own. What happens when your sixth-grade science teacher might also be your immortal enemy?
In a crumbling apartment building in post-Soviet Russia, there s a ghost who won t keep quiet.
In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length-some are almost novellas, others no more than a page-but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return. Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses-by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive-that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.
When Jeffrey Koterba was six, he started drawing his first cartoons, painstakingly copying from the Sunday Omaha World Herald's funny papers and making up his own characters. With a pen and a sheet of white paper, he was able to escape into a world that was clean, expansive, and comfortable-a refuge from the pandemonium surrounding him. The tiny house Koterba grew up in was full-to-bursting with garage-sale treasures and televisions his father Art repaired and sold for extra money. A hard-drinking one-time jazz drummer whose big dreams never seemed to come true, Art was subject to violent facial and vocal tics-symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome, a condition Jeffrey inherited-as well as explosions of temper and eccentricity that kept the Koterba family teetering on the brink of disaster.From the canyons of broken electronics, the lightning strikes, screaming matches, and discouragements great and small emerged a young man determined to follow his creative spirit to grand heights. And much to his surprise, he found himself on a journey back to his family and the father he once longed to escape. An exuberant, heart-felt memoir that calls to mind The Tender Bar and Fun Home, Inklings is infused with an irresistible optimism all its own.
When Jerry Delfont, an aimless travel writer with writer's block (his ?dead hand?), receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs. Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son's, he is intrigued. Who is the dead boy, found on the floor of a cheap hotel room? How and why did he die? And what is Jerry to make of a patch of carpet, and a package containing a human hand? He is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs. Unger?and revived by her tantric massages?but the circumstances surrounding the dead boy cause him increasingly to doubt the woman's motives and the exact nature of her philanthropy. Without much to go on, Jerry pursues answers from the teeming streets of Calcutta to Uttar Pradesh. It is a dark and twisted trail of obsession and need. Beautifully written, A Dead Hand demonstrates the powerful evocation of place and character that has made Paul Theroux one of the most perceptive and engaging writers today.
David Sax's delightful travelogue is a journey across the United States and around the world that investigates the history, the diaspora, and the next generation of delicatessen. David Sax was alarmed by the state of Jewish delicatessen. As a journalist and lifelong deli lover, he watched in dismay as one beloved deli after another closed its doors, only to be reopened as some bland chain restaurant laying claim to the cuisine it just paved over. Was it still possible to save the deli? He writes about the food itself--how it's made, who makes it best, and where to go for particular dishes--and, ultimately, what he finds is hope: deli newly and lovingly made in places like Boulder, Colorado, longstanding deli traditions thriving in Montreal, and the resurrection of iconic institutions like New York's 2nd Avenue Deli. No cultural history of food has ever tasted so good.
Praised by Hilary Mantel, Amanda Foreman, and the New York Times Book Review for her ?verve and intelligence . . . [and] the originality of her imagination,? Clare Clark has become a rising star in historical fiction. Elisabeth is among twenty-three girls who set sail from France for the new colony of Louisiana to be married to strangers. Although she has little hope for happiness in her new life, she finds herself passionately in love with her new husband, Jean-Claude, a charismatic and ruthlessly ambitious soldier. But betrayal is as much a part of the new world as the old, and when Elisabeth finds herself deceived by her husband she also finds herself bound to a poor cabin boy in a way she never anticipated. Clark creates a world that is both incredibly real and incredibly dazzling. And with the same compelling prose and vividly realized characters that won her widespread acclaim for The Great Stink and The Nature of Monsters, she takes us deep into the heart of colonial French Louisiana.
Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of small-town Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible event--their loss, their place in it, and the secrets they all carry.
Nathanael West was a comic artist whose insight into the brutalities and absurdities of modern life proved prophetic. He is famous for two masterpieces, " Miss Lonelyhearts "and the most penetrating novel ever written about Hollywood, "The Day of the Locust." Eileen McKenney, accidental muse and literary heroine, fled Cleveland in search of romance and adventure, inspiring her sister s humorous stories, "My Sister Eileen," which led to stage, film, and television adaptations.
One day, at the age of thirty-one, Susan Richards realized that she was an alcoholic. She wrote it down in her journal, struck by the fact that it had taken nine years of waking up hung-over to name her illness. What had changed? Susan had a new horse, a spirited Morgan named Georgia, and, as she says: "It had something to do with Georgia. It had something to do with making a commitment as enormous as caring for a horse that might live as my companion for the next forty years. It had something to do with love." Every day begins with a morning ride. Every day Susan lives a little more and thinks about her mistakes a little less. Every day she learns a little more from Georgia, the kind of horse who doesn't go in for indecision, who doesn't apologize for her opinions, and who isn't afraid to be herself. In Georgia, Susan finds something to draw her back to herself, but also something to keep her steady and focused, to teach her about stepping carefully in unknown territory, to help her learn again about balance. This is a memoir about the power of animals to carry us through the toughest times of our lives--about the importance of constancy, the beauty of quiet, steadfast love, the way loving a good (and sometimes bad!) animal can keep you going. It's a wonderful story for Susan's (and Georgia's) fans, and for anyone who has ever loved an animal enough to keep on living.
Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, edits this year's volume of the finest science and nature writing.
Best-selling novelist Lee Child edits this latest collection of the genre's finest from the past year. Featuring "gritty tales told with panache," this is a "must-read for anybody who cares about crime stories" ("Booklist").
Sixteen-year-old Katya Spivak is out for a walk on the gracious streets of Bayhead Harbor with her two summer babysitting charges when she's approached by silver-haired, elegant Marcus Kidder. At first his interest in her seems harmless, even pleasant; like his name, a sort of gentle joke. His beautiful home, the children's books he's written, his classical music, the marvelous art in his study, his lavish presents to her ? Mr. Kidder's life couldn't be more different from Katya's drab working-class existence back home in South Jersey, or more enticing. But by degrees, almost imperceptibly, something changes, and posing for Mr. Kidder's new painting isn't the lighthearted endeavor it once was. What does he really want from her? And how far will he go to get it? In the tradition of Oates's classic story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" A Fair Maiden is an unsettling, ambiguous tale of desire and control.
Self-proclaimed nobody CG Silverman sees her move to an upscale new school as her chance to be somebody different. Her devil-may-care attitude attracts the in-clique, and before CG realizes it, a routine game of truth or dare launches her to iconic status.
Edited by the award-winning, best-selling author Richard Russo, this year's collection boasts a satisfying ?chorus of twenty stories that are by turns playful, ironic, somber, and meditative? (Wall Street Journal). With the masterful Russo picking the best of the best, America's oldest and best-selling story anthology is sure to be of ?enduring quality? (Chicago Tribune) this year.
An eye-opening and courageous memoir that explores what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves. After miraculously surviving a serious illness, Katherine Rich found herself at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor. She spontaneously accepted a freelance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language, and before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi. Rich documents her experiences?ranging from the bizarre to the frightening to the unexpectedly exhilarating?using Hindi as the lens through which she is given a new perspective not only on India, but on the radical way the country and the language itself were changing her. Fascinated by the process, she went on to interview linguistics experts around the world, reporting back from the frontlines of the science wars on what happens in the brain when we learn a new language. She brings both of these experiences together seamlessly in Dreaming in Hindi, a remarkably unique and thoughtful account of self-discovery.
As a sweltering Seville recovers from the shock of a terrorist attack, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón is struggling to find the bombers. The death of a gangster in a spectacular car crash offers vital evidence implicating the Russian mafia in his investigation, but it pitches Falcón into the heart of a turf war over prostitution and drugs. Now the target of vicious hoods, Falcón finds those closest to him are also coming under intolerable pressure: his best friend, who's spying for the Spanish government, reveals that he is being blackmailed by Islamist extremists, and Falcón's own lover suffers a mother's worst nightmare. He might be able to bring the perpetrators of the bombing to justice, but there will be a devastating price to pay.
"A master American novelist." -Vanity Fair "One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senator's son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer. Alec and his Swiss wife, Lucia, settle in Georgetown next door to a couple whose émigré gatherings in their garden remind Lucia of all the things Americans are not. She leaves Alec as his career founders on his refusal of an assignment to cover the Vietnam War - a slyly subversive fictional choice from Ward Just, who was himself a renowned war correspondent. At the center of the novel is Alec's unforeseen reckoning with Lucia's long-absent father, Andre Duran, a Czech living out the end of his life in a hostel called Goya House. Duran's career as an adventurer and antifascist commando is everything Alec's is not. The encounter forces Alec to confront just how different a life where things - "terrible things, terrible things" - happen is from a life where nothing much happens at all. Once again, "Ward Just writes the kind of books they say no one writes anymore: smart, well-crafted narratives - wise to the ways of the world - that use fiction to show us how we live" (Joseph Kanon, Los Angeles Times).
Ahlème, a young woman living on the outskirts of Paris, is trying to make a life out of the dreams she brought with her from Algeria and the reality she faces every day. Her father lost his job after an accident at his construction site. Her mother was lost to a massacre in Algeria. And her brother, Foued, boils with adolescent energy and teeters dangerously close to choosing a life of crime. As she wanders the streets of Paris looking for work, Ahlème negotiates the disparities between her dreams and her life, her youth and her responsibilities, the expectations of those back home and the limitations of life in France. With the same laugh-out-loud, razor-sharp humor that made Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow an international hit, Some Dream for Fools shows Faïza Guène's evolution as a novelist and reminds us of her extraordinary talent as she explores what happens to people when a lid is put on their dreams.
This riveting war story introduces us to the beautiful Kate Zweig, the English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots two lovers with complicated loyalties.
Spanning the years in which Virginia Woolf penned her classic novel The Waves and worked on Flush, the nonfiction pieces in this fifth volume provide further insight into Woolf's creative genius and showcase her supreme stylistic capability. The far-ranging essays and criticism collected here include ruminations on the romantic and literary lives of William Cowper and Christina Rossetti and an introduction to memoirs by the Women's Cooperative Guild that reveals Woolf's signature feminism. This collection also includes the entirety of The Common Reader: Second Series, the sequel to The Common Reader.
Three warnings for readers who hate surprises: 1. Beware of slivers, 2. and gamblers, 3. and aces.Zebulon Crabtree found all that out the hard way back in 1849 when his mother and father shipped him off to St. Louis to apprentice with a tanner. Too bad he had serious allergies to fur and advice from his parents. Hearing the beat of a different drummer, Zeb takes up with a riverboat gambler who has some special plans for him, crosses paths with a slave who turns out to be a better friend than cook, and learns that some Indian medicine men can see even though blind. And then there's the Brotherhood?the one that Zeb can't seem to get out of . . . Lucky for us, the price of living in turbulent times is often a good story, and Zeb spins an unforgettable one.
On the eve of World War II, in a place called Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon falls in love with a girl fabled for her angelic looks. To court Anielica Hetmanskahe offers up his golden hands and transforms her family s modest hut into a beautiful home, thereby building his way into her heart. War arrives to cut short their courtship, delay their marriage, and send the young lovers far from home, to the promise of a new life in Krakow. Nearly fifty years later, their granddaughter, Beata, repeats their postwar journey, seeking a new life in her grandmother s fairy-tale city. But instead of the whispered prosperity of the New Poland, she discovers a Krakow caught between its future and its past. Whimsical, wise, beautiful, magical, and at times heartbreaking,
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