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The Code of the Woosters (Jeeves and Wooster)
by P. G. Wodehouse“To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.”—Ben Schott Follow the adventures of Bertie Wooster and his gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves, in this stunning new edition of one of the greatest comic novels in the English language. When Aunt Dahlia demands that Bertie Wooster help her dupe an antique dealer into selling her an 18th-century cow-creamer. Dahlia trumps Bertie's objections by threatening to sever his standing invitation to her house for lunch, an unthinkable prospect given Bertie's devotion to the cooking of her chef, Anatole. A web of complications grows as Bertie's pal Gussie Fink-Nottle asks for counseling in the matter of his impending marriage to Madeline Bassett. It seems Madeline isn't his only interest; Gussie also wants to study the effects of a full moon on the love life of newts. Added to the cast of eccentrics are Roderick Spode, leader of a fascist organization called the Saviors of Britain, who also wants that cow-creamer, and an unusual man of the cloth known as Rev. H. P. "Stinker" Pinker. As usual, butler Jeeves becomes a focal point for all the plots and ploys of these characters, and in the end only his cleverness can rescue Bertie from being arrested, lynched, and engaged by mistake!
The Perfect Age: A Novel
by Heather SkylerA sun-baked, beautifully observed debut for readers who loved Amy and Isabelle—a mother and daughter come of age in Las Vegas. Helen is just fifteen, lanky and striking. She is a lifeguard at the pool at The Dunes hotel this summer—her first job, a step toward independence in a world beginning to treat her as an adult and a woman. Her mother, Kathy, watching Helen grow up, suddenly finds herself in a place equally uncertain: her children getting older, her stable marriage perhaps too stable, the slow days of summer leaving her adrift. When she meets Helen's boss, the manager at the pool, she chooses an affair that opens her to the idea of a different sort of life. Following Helen and Kathy through three summers, this novel is an intimate picture of two sexual awakenings under one roof and their aftershocks on a family. Heather Skyler shows us that the validity of life's deepest experiences—love, betrayal, acceptance—is never compromised by age. Reading group guide included.
A Good Indian Wife: A Novel
by Anne Cherian"An absorbing tale of contrasts…Cherian tells the story with quiet strength." —San Francisco ChronicleHandsome anesthesiologist Neel is sure he can resist his family’s pleas that he marry a "good" Indian girl. With a girlfriend and a career back in San Francisco, the last thing Neel needs is an arranged marriage. But that’s precisely what he gets. His bride, Leila, a thirty-year-old teacher, comes with her own complications. They struggle to reconcile their own desires with others’ expectations in this story of two people, two countries, and two ways of life that may be more compatible than they seem.
Someone Knows My Name: A Novel
by Lawrence HillWinner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. "Wonderfully written...populated by vivid characters and rendered in fascinating detail." —Nancy Kline, New York Times Book ReviewKidnapped from Africa as a child, Aminata Diallo is enslaved in South Carolina but escapes during the chaos of the Revolutionary War. In Manhattan she becomes a scribe for the British, recording the names of blacks who have served the King and earned their freedom in Nova Scotia. But the hardship and prejudice of the new colony prompt her to follow her heart back to Africa, then on to London, where she bears witness to the injustices of slavery and its toll on her life and a whole people. It is a story that no listener, and no reader, will ever forget.Published in Canada as The Book of Negroes and the basis for the award-winning BET miniseries of the same name.
The Lobster Kings: A Novel
by Alexi ZentnerA mythical family saga steeped in the legends of the sea, The Lobster Kings is a "powerhouse of a novel" (Ben Fountain).The Kings family has lived on Loosewood Island for three hundred years. Now, Woody Kings, the leader of the island's lobster fishing community and the family patriarch, teeters on the throne, and Cordelia, the oldest of Woody's three daughters, stands to inherit the crown. To do so, however, she must defend her island from meth dealers from the mainland, while navigating sibling rivalry and the vulnerable nature of her own heart when she falls in love with her sternman.
The Knitting Circle: A Novel
by Ann Hood"An intelligent, moving read" (Pages) and "a testament to women’s friendship and to Ann Hood’s talent" (Hilma Wolitzer).After the loss of her only child, Mary Baxter finds herself unable to read or write, the activities that used to be her primary source of comfort. She reluctantly joins a knitting circle as a way to fill her lonely days—not knowing it will change her life. As they teach Mary new knitting techniques, the women in the circle also reveal their own secrets of loss, love, and hope. With time, Mary is finally able to tell her own story of grief, and in so doing finds the spark of life again.
Invisible Monsters: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk"A harrowing, perverse, laugh-aloud funny rocket ride of catastrophes…Gutsy, terse and cunning, Invisible Monsters may emerge as Palahniuk’s strongest book." —Greg Berkman, Seattle TimesShe’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you’ll ever want to look.
The Air We Breathe: A Novel
by Andrea Barrett"Turbulent and dramatic, full of longing and death and lust, the yearning to cover one’s own life and way in the world." —David Mehegan, Boston Globe An elegant and astute tale of desire and betrayal, science and medicine, from the "genius enchantress" (Karen Russell) author of Ship Fever, winner of the National Book Award.In the fall of 1916, America prepares for war—but in the town of Tamarack Lake, the focus is on the sick. Wealthy tubercular patients live in private cure cottages; charity patients, mainly immigrants, fill the large public sanatorium. From within their isolated community, they grapple with some of the most thrilling scientific discoveries of their time—X-ray technology, chemical and biological weapons, changing theories of atomic structure—and their limitations. Prisoners of routine, they take solace in gossip, rumor, and, sometimes, secret attachments. When the well-meaning efforts of one enterprising patient lead instead to a tragic accident and a terrible betrayal, the war comes home, bringing with it a surge of anti-immigrant prejudice. With The Air We Breathe, Andrea Barrett has crafted a "majestic, breathtaking, [and] thrilling" (San Diego Union-Tribune) novel that brilliantly illuminates the inescapable heartbreak of war.
Stormy Weather: A Charlotte Justice Novel (Charlotte Justice Novels) (Charlotte Justice Novels)
by Paula L. WoodsFollowing the much-acclaimed Inner City Blues, a journey through Los Angeles's mix of politics and police corruption, secrets and lies. Los Angeles is in the midst of rebuilding in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots when Detective Charlotte Justice of the LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide division takes on a high-profile case. The victim is pioneering black film director Maynard Duncan, a show business contemporary of her father. Charlotte, fueled by a desire to see the job done right and out of respect for a great man's memory, plunges badge-deep into the murky relationships between the director, his family, caregivers, business associates, and an elusive young man who seems to hold the key to unlocking the crime. Even when storm clouds gather, Detective Justice won't give upputting her career, her personal relationships, even her own life on the line.
The Tree-Sitter: A Novel
by Suzanne MatsonA passionate and tensely pitched tale of first love and idealism set in the Oregon forests. Julie Prince is a top college student, destined for conventional success. But then she falls in love with Neil, a radical graduate student, and abandons her privileged East Coast life to tree-sit in the forests of Oregon. At first it is a romantic field trip; soon, though, Julie finds herself increasingly moved by the magnificence of the endangered forest and, like Neil, invested in its protection. Eventually pulled into a militant act of sabotage, Julie is forced to reassess her deepest held loyalties and beliefs.
Ice Fire Water: A Leib Goldkorn Cocktail
by Leslie Epstein"At once a travel tale, a historical meditation, a Holocaust revenge fantasy, and a bedroom farce."—D. T. Max, New York Times Book Review Leib Goldkorn, aged musician, first appeared almost a quarter-century ago in The Steinway Quintet. Now Leib has replaced his magic flute with his phallus: it is love, longing, and the quest for sexual fulfillment that must stave off both his own death and the imminent destruction of the Jews. In Ice he rescues the celebrated skater Sonja Henie from Hitler's clutches. In Fire his paramour is Carmen Miranda. And in Water he engages in a South Sea Island intrigue with a famous swimming star of the 1940s. Meanwhile, in the present, Leib seeks consummation with three other inamoratas: Clara, his wife; Hustler model Miss Crystal Knight; and the critic Michiko Kakutani (causing a real-life literary scandal). In this "wickedly funny" (Elle) and no less heartbreaking novel, Leib Goldkorn emerges as one of American literature's most enduring, and endearing, creations. A New York Times Notable Book; a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year.
University Boulevard: A Novel
by A. B. HollingsworthChipper DeHart and court jester Peachy Waterman, Jr. leave the dry-boned village of El Viento, Oklahoma, to start life anew as college freshmen and fraternity brothers. It's 1967, and while the world is turning topsy-turvy, the twosome seeks refuge within the walls of Sigma Zeta Chi. But Peachy's bid to pledge doesn't come easy; in fact, he finagles his way into the frat house, along with the first non-white to ever pledge a college fraternity in Oklahoma, a full-blood Kickapoo Indian named Larry Twohatchets. And when the pledge class seems it couldn't take on one more misfit, along comes Smokey Ray Divine, a golfing hippie that lives on the razor's edge. Amy, Audora, and Cassie are the three muskarettes who steer the boys through college life, helping to protect them from the Vietnam tentacles that keep trying to reach through the windows of the fraternity house and pull the members into the jungle. But as the fraternity men cope by building their walls thicker and thicker, they discover that the enemy comes from within. Over the course of their four college years, faith is born through the death of their dreams. The Age of Aquarius meets The Age of Apollo in this flirtation with a mystical college life on University Boulevard.
The Beauty of Your Face: A Novel
by Sahar MustafahOne of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020 Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Beauty of Your Face is “a story of outsiders coming together in surprising and uplifting ways” (New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice).The Beauty of Your Face tells a uniquely American story in powerful, evocative prose. Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter—radicalized by the online alt-right—attacks the school. As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories, and into a profound and “moving” (Bustle) exploration of one woman’s life in a nation at odds with its ideals.
Lonesome Lies Before Us: A Novel
by Don LeeA contemporary ballad of heartbreak, failure, and unquenchable longing, this novel presents Don Lee at his best.Yadin Park is a talented alt-country musician whose career has floundered—doomed first by his homely looks and lack of stage presence and then by a progressive hearing disorder. His girlfriend, Jeanette Matsuda, might have been a professional photographer but for a devastating heartbreak in her teens. Now Yadin works for Jeanette’s father’s carpet-laying company in California while Jeanette cleans rooms at a local resort.When Yadin’s former lover and musical partner, the celebrated Mallory Wicks, comes back into his life, all their most private hopes and desires are exposed, their secret fantasies about love and success put to the test.Drawn to the music of indie singer-songwriters like Will Johnson, who helped shape the lyrics in this book, Don Lee has written a novel that unforgettably captures America’s deepest yearnings. Beautifully sad and laced with dark humor, Lonesome Lies Before Us is a profound, heartfelt romance, a soulful and memorable song.
Activities of Daily Living: A Novel
by Lisa Hsiao ChenFinalist for the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel Finalist for the 2023 Gotham Book Prize Longlisted for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Vogue Best Book of the Year A "beguiling and brilliant" (Viet Thanh Nguyen) debut novel on the interconnection between art, work, care, and the passage of time.How do we take stock of a life—by what means, and by what measure? This is the question that preoccupies Alice, a Taiwanese immigrant in her late thirties. In the off-hours from her day job, Alice struggles to create a project about the enigmatic downtown performance artist Tehching Hsieh and his monumental, yearlong 1980s performance pieces. Meanwhile, she becomes the caretaker for her aging stepfather, a Vietnam vet whose dream of making traditional Chinese furniture dissolved in alcoholism and dementia.As Alice roots deeper into Hsieh’s radical use of time—in one piece, the artist confined himself to a cell for a year; in the next, he punched a time clock every hour, on the hour, for a year—and his mysterious disappearance from the art world, her project starts metabolizing events from her own life. She wanders from subway rides to street protests, loses touch with a friend, and tenderly observes her father’s slow decline.Moving between present-day and 1980s New York City, with detours to Silicon Valley and the Venice Biennale, this vivid debut announces Lisa Hsiao Chen as an audacious new talent. Activities of Daily Living is a lucid, intimate examination of the creative life and the passage of time.
The Devoted: A Novel
by Blair HurleyLonglisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize “As tender and fervent as a prayer.”—New York Times Book ReviewNicole Hennessy’s world revolves around her Boston Zendo, to the chagrin of her Irish Catholic family. As she struggles to break free from a psychological and sexual entanglement with her mentor, her past finally catches up with her. A spellbinding confession of what it means to abandon one life for another, The Devoted asks what it takes, and what you’ll sacrifice, to find enlightenment.
Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer
by Robert SwartwoodA story collection that proves less is more. The stories in this collection run the gamut from playful to tragic, conservative to experimental, but they all have one thing in common: they are no more than 25 words long. Robert Swartwood was inspired by Ernest Hemingway's possibly apocryphal six-word story—"For Sale: baby shoes, never worn"—to foster the writing of these incredibly short-short stories. He termed them "hint fiction" because the few chosen words suggest a larger, more complex chain of events. Spare and evocative, these stories prove that a brilliantly honed narrative can be as startling and powerful as a story of traditional length. The 125 gemlike stories in this collection come from such best-selling and award-winning authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Ha Jin, Peter Straub, and James Frey, as well as emerging writers.
Grave Consequences: A Vermont Mystery (Tish McWhinny Mysteries)
by B. ComfortA Vermont Village Mystery. B. Comfort's fourth mystery novel begins in the Farrar-Mansur House, Weston's museum on the green, and follows Tish McWhinney from Woodstock to Soho, to Hanover New Hampshire and Craftsbury Common.
The Love She Left Behind: A Novel
by Amanda CoeA bitingly comic exploration of an unforgettably dysfunctional family, from a writer who wields great "comic rhythm" (The New Yorker). This ferociously funny family saga journeys into the mysteries of many kinds of love.England, 1983. A celebrated love story entertains the nation: Patrick, the sexy young playwright, scourge of an enthralled establishment, marries Sara, who has abandoned her two children to fulfill her destiny as Patrick’s beautiful, devoted muse. Thirty-five years later, Sara’s death leaves Patrick alone in their crumbling house in Cornwall, with his whisky, his writer’s block and his undimmed rage against the world. The children Sara left behind, Louise and Nigel, are now adults—with memories, questions and agendas of their own. What was their mother really like? Why did she leave them? What has she left them? And how can Patrick carry on without the love of his life?As versions of the past collide with realities in the present, Sara’s heirs do battle over ownership of this much beloved woman. But the closer Louise and Nigel get to the true story of Sara’s great love affair, the greater its mystery. Secrets and lies, scenes and letters: how do any of us piece together the people who made us what we are?
Site Fidelity: Stories
by Claire BoylesA 2022 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction Finalist for the 2022 Reading the West Debut Fiction Award Finalist for the 2022 Colorado Book Award for Literary Fiction Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection Set in the western sagebrush steppe, Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse.In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, this knockout debut introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies. Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.
God's Fool: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries Ser.)
by Mark Slouka"If you can read [God’s Fool] without being astonished and touched, then you’d better check to see if your heart is made of stone…simply brilliant. A book of the year." —Dallas Morning NewsBorn attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an act of God. By any standard, theirs is a history of epic variety and drama. Mark Slouka recounts their tumultuous story, from the docks of Vietnam to American fame, with intimacy and compassion.A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News Best Book of the Year.
The Sultan's Seal: A Novel (Kamil Pasha Novels) (Kamil Pasha Novels)
by Jenny White"A wonderful read…. An historical novel of the highest quality." —Iain PearsRich in sensuous detail, this first novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire. The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the murder by strangulation of another English governess, a crime that was never solved. Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a lush, mystical voice, a young Muslim woman, Jaanan, recounts her own relationships with one of the dead women and her suspected killer. Were these political murders involving the palace or crimes of personal passion? An absorbing tale that transports the reader to nineteenth-century Turkey, this novel is also a lyrical meditation on the contradictory desires of the human soul.Reading group guide included. Includes the first chapter of the next Kamil Pasha novel.
Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible (Excelsior Editions)
by Sara Lippmann Seth RogoffProvocative new readings of biblical texts by major contemporary Jewish writers.Lot's daughters rebel against their predatory father, Jacob wrestles an angel in a queer underground nightclub, Job arrives in the form of an avaricious former sorority girl-Smashing the Tablets presents a collection of provocative new readings of biblical texts by major contemporary Jewish writers. Behind this groundbreaking collection is the idea that foundational texts must be read anew or they become tools of conservatism and reaction. To achieve fresh readings, it is often necessary to step outside traditional modes of analysis, whether academic or theological, and to violate the conventions of storytelling and interpretation. By challenging dominant readings and identifying underrepresented characters and moments that have been "written out" of the biblical conversation, the essays, stories, and poems in this collection rupture assumptions, unsettle the reader, and give voice to the voiceless. The Bible in this collection is bent, recontextualized, queered, inverted, and smashed to pieces. Smashing the Tablets is one of the most significant Jewish literary collections in decades, a groundbreaking must-read for Jews and others interested not only in the Bible but also in identity, faith, and power.
Captain Grey's Gambit: A Novel (A Thomas Grey Novel #2)
by J. H. GelernterA taut historical thriller for fans of The Queen’s Gambit and James Bond.December 1803: A French invasion fleet is poised to cross the Channel and storm the beaches of southern England. A member of Napoleon’s inner circle—disaffected by Napoleon’s creeping tyranny—contacts the British naval intelligence service in hopes of defecting to London. His escape plan calls for a rendezvous at an international chess tournament in Frankfurt—a rare opportunity for him to travel outside France. Naval intelligence sends its top man—and best chess player—Captain Thomas Grey, to orchestrate the Frenchman’s escape to England. But Grey’s mission changes dramatically when the defector demands that his pro-Napoleon daughter come with him—expecting Grey to act not just as escort but kidnapper.The second novel in J. H Gelernter’s already lauded Captain Grey series, Captain Grey’s Gambit continues a story that is “smart, fast, twisty, and dangerous” (Lee Child) in a “richly imagined early nineteenth-century world” (Richard Snow).
The Choking Doberman: And Other Urban Legends
by Jan Harold Brunvand"A wonderfully entertaining book of American folklore and humor."—Elaine Kendall, Los Angeles Times Book Review Professor Jan Harold Brunvand expands his examination of the phenomenon of urban legends, those improbable, believable stories that always happen to a "friend of a friend."