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La Casa en Mango Street
by Sandra CisnerosDISPONIBLE POR PRIMERA VEZ EN EBOOKElogiado por la crítica, admirado por lectores de todas las edades, en escuelas y universidades de todo el país y traducido a una multitud de idiomas, La casa en Mango Street es la extraordinaria historia de Esperanza Cordero. Contado a través de una serie de viñetas --a veces desgarradoras, a veces profundamente alegres-- es el relato de una niña latina que crece en un barrio de Chicago, inventando por sí misma en qué y en quién se convertirá. Pocos libros de nuestra era han conmovido a tantos lectores.
La Casa en Mango Street
by Sandra CisnerosElogiado por la crítica, admirado por lectores de todas las edades, en escuelas y universidades de todo el país y traducido a una multitud de idiomas, La casa en Mango Street es la extraordinaria historia de Esperanza Cordero. Contado a través de una serie de viñetas a veces desgarradoras, a veces profundamente alegres es el relato de una niña latina que crece en un barrio de Chicago, inventando por sí misma en qué y en quién se convertirá. Pocos libros de nuestra era han conmovido a tantos lectores.
Perdida
by Gillian FlynnEn un caluroso día de verano, Amy y Nick se disponen a celebrar su quinto aniversario de bodas en North Carthage, a orillas del río Mississippi. Pero Amy desaparece esa misma mañana sin dejar rastro. A medida que la investigación policial avanza las sospechas recaen sobre Nick. Sin embargo, Nick insiste en su inocencia. Es cierto que se muestra extrañamente evasivo y frío, pero ¿es un asesino? Perdida arranca como todo buen thriller que se precie: una mujer desaparecida, una investigación policial... Pero es que Perdida no es solo un buen thriller. Es una obra maestra. Un thriller psicológico brillante con una trama tan apasionante y giros tan inesperados que es absolutamente imposible parar de leer. Perdida es también una novela sobre el lado más oscuro del matrimonio, sobre los engaños, las decepciones, la obsesión, el miedo. Una radiografía completamente actual de los medios de comunicación y su capacidad para modelar la opinión pública. Pero sobre todo es la historia de amor de dos personas perdidamente enamoradas.
Tengo tu número
by Sophie KinsellaDiez días antes de la boda, Polly pierde su anillo de compromiso. Todo se tuerce en un hotel lujoso de Londres en el que ella y sus amigas están celebrando su despedida de soltera por todo lo alto. Todas quieren probarse ese anillo tan valioso, y entre risas y champán, suena la alarma de incendios y salen corriendo a la calle. Al llegar fuera, nadie tiene el anillo. Desesperada, Polly empieza a llamar a todo el mundo para pedir ayuda y ¡alguien le quita el móvil de la mano! ¡Se lo han robado también! ¿Cómo la van a avisar ahora cuando encuentren el anillo? Y acto seguido, ve un móvil en una papelera, un móvil tirado a propósito a la basura y que ella necesita urgentemente. Polly le pasa el nuevo número a todos sus amigos y además contesta las llamadas que recibe y lee los mensajes dirigidos a la propietaria anterior, la secretaria (que acaba de dimitir) de Sam Roxton, un empresario importante. Mientras sigue buscando el anillo, Polly está en contacto con Sam Roxton, el dueño del nuevo teléfono. Sam le dejará quedárselo un tiempo a cambio de que le reenvíe todos los mensajes que reciba, pero Polly a veces contesta de parte de Sam en temas profesionales y también personales. No tiene freno. Sam también empieza a opinar sobre la vida de Polly, sobre su boda, sobre los suegros y sobre el mismo novio, quien, quizás, no sea tan maravilloso como pensaba.
La cronica de fuego
by John StephensEmma, Kate y Michael acaban de descubrir que, después de diez años desaparecidos, sus padres podrían estar vivos. Magnus el Siniestro, la criatura más cruel que hay en la Tierra, los secuestró porque sabían mucho, incluso demasiado, sobre los Libros de los Orígenes. Ahora los hermanos también han descubierto varias cosas sobre estos libros: son tres, confieren un poder extraordinario a quien los posee... y, según una profecía, ellos son los únicos que pueden liberar su magia y protegerla. De hecho, ya tienen uno, el Atlas Esmeralda, pero Magnus quiere ofrecerles un trueque muy tentador: sus padres a cambio del libro. Volverían a ser una familia..., pero saben que él lo quiere para dominar el mundo y sumirlo en las tinieblas. Algo muy peligroso.
El Héroe Perdido (Los Héroes del Olimpo #1)
by Rick RiordanCuando Jason despierta, sabe que algo va muy mal. Está en un autobús camino de un campamento para chicos problemáticos. Y le acompañan Piper --una muchacha (bastante guapa, por cierto) que dice que es su novia-- y el que parece ser su mejor amigo, Leo... Pero él no recuerda nada: ni quién es ni cómo ha llegado allí. Pocas horas después, los tres descubrirán no solo que son hijos de dioses del Olimpo, sino además que su destino es cumplir una profecía de locos: liberar a Hera, diosa de la furia, de las garras de un enemigo que lleva mucho tiempo planeando su venganza...From the Trade Paperback edition.
Empieza el campeonato!
by Luigi GarlandoOcho niños. Una Pasión: el futbol. Un sueño: ¡ser los mejores! Ya hemos llegado al ecuador del campeonato, ¡y los Cebolletas están a solo un punto del líder! Pero su mayor reto no va a ser conseguir el primer puesto, sino superar los problemas internos. Desde que Fidu dejó el futbol, nada es lo que era: a Dani le disgusta estar bajo los tres palos, Tomi tiene celos de Becan y las gemelas se despistan continuamente... Por suerte, Gaston Champignon les va a recordar la lección básica del deporte en equipo: lo más importante es mantenerse unidos.
El nombre del viento
by Patrick Rothfuss"Viajé, amé, perdí, confié y me traicionaron." En una posada en tierra de nadie, un hombre se dispone a relatar, por primera vez, la auténtica historia de su vida. Una historia que únicamente él conoce y que ha quedado diluida tras los rumores, las conjeturas y los cuentos de taberna que le han convertido en un personaje legendario a quien todos daban ya por muerto: Kvothe... músico, mendigo, ladrón, estudiante, mago, héroe y asesino. Ahora revelará la verdad sobre sí mismo. Y para ello debe empezar por el principio: su infancia en una troupe de artistas itinerantes, los años malviviendo como un ladronzuelo en las calles de una gran ciudad, y su llegada a una universidad donde esperaba encontrar todas las respuestas que había estado buscando. Atípica, profunda y sincera, El nombre del viento es una novela de aventuras, de historias dentro de otras historias, de misterio, de amistad, de amor, de magia y de superación, escrita con la mano de un poeta y que ha deslumbrado -por su originalidad y la maestría con que está narrada- a todos los que la han leído.
The Country of Ice Cream Star
by Sandra NewmanA post-apocalyptic literary epic in the tradition of The Handmaid's Tale, Divergent and Cloud Atlas, and a breakout book in North America for a writer of rare and unconventional talent. From Guardian First Book Award finalist Sandra Newman comes an ambitious and extraordinary novel of a future in which bands of children and teens survive on the detritus--physical and cultural--of a collapsed America. When her brother is struck down by Posies--a contagion that has killed everyone by their late teens for generations--fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star pursues the rumour of a cure and sets out on a quest to save him, her tribe and what's left of their future. Along the way she faces broken hearts and family tragedy, mortal danger and all-out war--and much growing up for the girl who may have led herself and everyone she loves to their doom.
Sunshine on Scotland Street
by Alexander Mccall Smith Iain McintoshThe eighth installment in Alexander McCall Smith's popular 44 Scotland Street series. Scotland Street witnesses the wedding of the century of Angus Lordie to Domenica Macdonald, but as the newlyweds depart on their honeymoon, Edinburgh is in disarray. While recovering from the trauma of being best man, Matthew is taken up by a Dane called Bo. Cyril eludes his dog-sitter and embarks on an odyssey involving fox-holes and the official residence of a cardinal. Narcissist Bruce meets his match in the form of a sinister doppelganger. Bertie, set up by his mother for fresh embarrassment at school, yearns for freedom, and Big Lou goes viral. However, the residents of Scotland Street rally, and order is restored by the combined effects of understanding, kindness and, most of all, friendship.
The Forever Girl
by Alexander Mccall SmithThe author of the best-selling and universally adored No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series now gives us The Forever Girl, a novel about love and following one's heart, and the unexpected places to which this can lead us. Amanda and her husband, David, feel fortunate to be raising their son and daughter in the close-knit community of ex-pats on Grand Cayman Island, an idyllic place for children to grow up. Their firstborn, Sally, has always listened to her heart, deciding at age four that she would rather be called Clover and then, a few years later, falling in love with her best friend, James. But the comforting embrace of island life can become claustrophobic for adults, especially when they are faced with difficult situations. At the same time that Clover falls in love with James, Amanda realizes that she has fallen out of love with David . . . and that she is interested in someone else. While Amanda tries to navigate the new path her heart is leading her down, Clover finds, much to her dismay, that James seems to be growing away from her. And when they leave the island for boarding school--James to England and Clover to Scotland--she feels she may have lost him for good. As Clover moves on to university, seldom seeing James but always carrying him in her heart, she finds herself torn between a desire to go forward with her life and the old feelings that she just can't shed. Through the lives of Clover and James, and Amanda and David, acclaimed storyteller Alexander McCall Smith tells a tale full of love and heartbreak, humor and melancholy, that beautifully demonstrates the myriad ways in which love shapes our lives.
Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter: Growing Up with a Gay Dad
by Alison WearingA moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. <P> Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario--especially to his wife and three children.<P> Alison's father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe's internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe's private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada. <P> Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is also the story of "coming out" as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent's search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly "went in," concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the "great straight things" they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide. <P> Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy's Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life's great lessons in love. Alison brings her story to life with a skillfully light touch in this warm, heartfelt and revelatory memoir.
The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was
by Chantal HebertA sly, insightful and wonderfully original book from one of Canada's most popular political analysts, Chantal Hébert, and one of Quebec's top political broadcasters, Jean Lapierre. Only the most fearless of political journalists would dare to open the old wounds of the 1995 Quebec referendum, a still-murky episode in Canadian history that continues to defy our understanding. The referendum brought one of the world's most successful democracies to the brink of the unknown, and yet Quebecers' attitudes toward sovereignty continue to baffle the country's political class. Interviewing 17 key political leaders from the duelling referendum camps, Hébert and Lapierre begin with a simple premise: asking what were these political leaders' plans if the vote had gone the other way. Even 2 decades later, their answers may shock you. And in asking an unexpected question, these veteran political observers cleverly expose the fractures, tensions and fears that continue to shape Canada today.
Two Pints
by Roddy DoyleA collection of sublimely funny dialogues inspired by a year's worth of news. Two men meet for a pint in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, take the piss... They talk about their wives, their kids, their kids' pets, their football teams and -- this being Ireland in 2011-12 -- about the euro, the crash, the presidential election, the Queen's visit. But these men are not parochial or small-minded; one of them knows where to find the missing Colonel Gadaffi (he's working as a cleaner at Dublin Airport); they worry about Greek debt, the IMF and the bondholders (whatever they might be); in their fashion, they mourn the deaths of Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, Davy Jones and Robin Gibb; and they ask each other the really important questions like 'Would you ever let yourself be digitally enhanced?'
One Day in August
by David O'KeefeMagnificent and engrossing, One Day in August reveals in full for the first time the "Ultra Secret" story behind one of WW2's most controversial mysteries--and one of Canada's most sorrowful moments. In a narrative as powerful and moving as it is authoritative, David O'Keefe rewrites history, connecting Canada's tragedy at Dieppe with an extraordinary and colourful cast of characters--from the young Commander Ian Fleming, later to become the creator of the James Bond novels, and his team of crack commandos to the code-breaking scientists of Bletchley Park (the closely guarded heart of Britain's wartime Intelligence and code-breaking work) to those responsible for the planning and conduct of the Dieppe Raid--Admiral John Godfrey, Lord Louis Mountbatten, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and others. The astonishing story critically changes what we thought we knew. For seven decades, the objective for the raid has been one of the most perplexing mysteries of WWII. In less than six hours on August 19, 1942, nearly one thousand Canadians--as well as British and Americans--lay dead or dying on the beaches around the French seaside town, with over two thousand other Canadians wounded or captured. These awful losses have left a legacy of bitterness, recrimination and controversy. In the absence of concrete reasons for the raid, myriad theories ranging from incompetence to conspiracy developed. Over almost two decades of research, sifting through countless recently declassified Intelligence documents, David O'Keefe skillfully pieces together the story like a jigsaw puzzle to reveal the prime reason behind the raid: a highly secret mission designed, in one of Britain's darkest times, to redress the balance of the war. One Day in August provides a thrilling, multi-layered story that fundamentally changes our understanding of this most tragic and pivotal chapter in Canada's history.
The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
by Hisham MatarFrom Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Hisham Matar, a memoir of his journey home to his native Libya in search of answers to his father's disappearance.In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeys to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. When he was twelve, Matar and his family went into political exile. Eight years later Matar's father, a former diplomat and military man turned brave political dissident, was kidnapped from the streets of Cairo by the Libyan government and is believed to have been held in the regime's most notorious prison. Now, the prisons are empty and little hope remains that Jaballa Matar will be found alive. Yet, as the author writes, hope is "persistent and cunning." This book is a profoundly moving family memoir, a brilliant and affecting portrait of a country and a people on the cusp of immense change, and a disturbing and timeless depiction of the monstrous nature of absolute power.
My Ghosts
by Mary SwanFrom Mary Swan, the bestselling author of the Scotiabank Giller finalist The Boys in the Trees, comes a dazzling and intricate new novel that tracks one family across 150 years, unearthing long-buried secrets and capturing moments that reverberate unexpectedly across the generations. In My Ghosts, with an uncanny eye for the telling detail, Mary Swan brings to vivid life a household of Scottish orphans trying to make their way in Toronto in 1879. The youngest, Clare, has rheumatic fever; the oldest brother has run away. The fate of them all rests on the responsible Ben, the irrepressible Charlie and the two middle sisters: Kez, sarcastic with big ears and a kind heart, and Nan, benignly round but with a hidden talent for larceny and mischief. Fascinating lives spool out from these siblings: a cast of indelible strivers and schemers, spinsters and unhappy spouses, star-crossed lovers and hidden adulterers, victims of war and of suicide--proof of how eventful the lives of "ordinary families" can be. Swan leaves us with the contemporary Clare, widowed and moodily packing up her house. She isn't sure what she'll do next, and she knows nothing of her family's past. But we do: we recognize the ghosts and echoes, the genetic patterns and the losses that have shaped her as much as her own choices and heartbreaks.My Ghosts is entrancing fiction that pulls you into its characters' lives at the same time as it inspires you to think about your own ghosts, your own forgotten past.
The Son of a Certain Woman
by Wayne JohnstonHere comes Percy Joyce. From one of Canada's most acclaimed, beloved storytellers: The Son of a Certain Woman is Wayne Johnston's funniest, sexiest novel yet, controversial in its issues, wise, generous and then some in its depiction of humanity. Percy Joyce, born in St. John's, Newfoundland, in the fifties is an outsider from childhood, set apart by a congenital disfigurement. Taunted and bullied, he is also isolated by his intelligence and wit, and his unique circumstances: an unbaptized boy raised by a single mother in a fiercely Catholic society. Soon on the cusp of teenagehood, Percy is filled with yearning, wild with hormones, and longing for what he can't have--wanting to be let in...and let out. At the top of his wish list is his disturbingly alluring mother, Penelope, whose sex appeal fairly leaps off the page. Everyone in St. John's lusts after her--including her sister-in-law, Medina; their paying boarder, the local chemistry teacher, Pops MacDougal; and...Percy. Percy, Penelope, and Pops live in the Mount, home of the city's Catholic schools and most of its clerics, none of whom are overly fond of the scandalous Joyces despite the seemingly benign protection of the Archbishop of Newfoundland himself, whose chief goal is to bring "little Percy Joyce" into the bosom of the Church by whatever means necessary. In pursuit of that goal, Brother McHugh, head of Percy's school, sets out to uncover the truth behind what he senses to be the complicated relationships of the Joyce household. And indeed there are dark secrets to be kept hidden: Pops is in love with Penelope, but Penelope and Medina are also in love--an illegal relationship: if caught, they will be sent to the Mental, and Percy, already an outcast of society, will be left without a family. The Son of a Certain Woman brilliantly mixes sorrow and laughter as it builds toward an unforgettable ending. Will Pops marry Penelope? Will Penelope and Medina be found out? Will Percy be lured into the Church? It is a reminder of the pain of being an outsider; of the sustaining power of love and the destructive power of hate; and of the human will to triumph.
Lore (Movie Tie-in Edition)
by Rachel SeiffertNow a Major Motion Picture: in Lore, Rachel Seiffert powerfully examines the legacy of World War II on ordinary Germans--both survivors of the war and the generations that succeeded them. It is spring of 1945, just weeks after the defeat of Germany. A teenage German girl named Lore has been left to fend for herself. Her parents have been arrested by the Allies, and she has four younger siblings to care for. Together, they set off on a harrowing journey to find their grandmother. As we follow Lore on a 500-mile trek through the four zones of occupation, Seiffert evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological acuity.
All My Puny Sorrows
by Miriam ToewsMiriam Toews is beloved for her irresistible voice, for mingling laughter and heartwrenching poignancy like no other writer. In her most passionate novel yet, she brings us the riveting story of two sisters, and a love that illuminates life. You won't forget Elf and Yoli, two smart and loving sisters. Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. Yoli is a beguiling mess, wickedly funny even as she stumbles through life struggling to keep her teenage kids and mother happy, her exes from hating her, her sister from killing herself and her own heart from breaking. But Elf's latest suicide attempt is a shock: she is three weeks away from the opening of her highly anticipated international tour. Her long-time agent has been calling and neither Yoli nor Elf's loving husband knows what to tell him. Can she be nursed back to "health" in time? Does it matter? As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life. All My Puny Sorrows, at once tender and unquiet, offers a profound reflection on the limits of love, and the sometimes unimaginable challenges we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities. In her beautifully rendered new novel, Miriam Toews gives us a startling demonstration of how to carry on with hope and love and the business of living even when grief loads the heart.
The Boys in the Trees
by Mary SwanA tragic event sends a small town reeling in Mary Swan's brilliant, Scotiabank Giller-nominated The Boys in the Trees, a haunting exploration of one family's desperation. For the first time in Vintage Canada. William, his wife and 2 daughters, new immigrants to a small town in southern Ontario, are the picture of a devoted family. But when he is accused of embezzlement, William commits an unthinkable crime, and those who believed him to be an affectionate, attentive father are brought up short. Mary Swan examines the intricate and unexpected connections between the people in this close-knit community that continue to echo into the future. In her nuanced, evocative descriptions, a locket contains immeasurable sorrow, trees provide refuge for lost souls and grief clicks into place when a man cocks the cold-steel hammer of a revolver.A supreme literary achievement, The Boys in the Trees offers a chilling story that swells with acutely observed emotion and humanity.
The Guts
by Roddy DoyleA triumphant return to the characters of Booker Prize-winning writer Roddy Doyle's breakout first novel, The Commitments, now older, wiser, up against cancer and midlife. Jimmy Rabbitte is back. The man who invented the Commitments back in the 1980s is now 47, with a loving wife, 4 kids...and bowel cancer. He isn't dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle--his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money online for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin, between chemo and work he meets two of the Commitments--Outspan Foster, whose own illness is probably terminal, and Imelda Quirk, still as gorgeous as ever. He is reunited with his long-lost brother, Les, and learns to play the trumpet....This warm, funny novel is about friendship and family, about facing death and opting for life. It climaxes in one of the great passages in Roddy Doyle's fiction: 4 middle-aged men at Ireland's hottest rock festival watching Jimmy's son's band, Moanin' at Midnight, pretending to be Bulgarian and playing a song called "I'm Goin' to Hell" that apparently hasn't been heard since 1932.... Why? You'll have to read The Guts to find out.
Road Ends
by Mary LawsonHe listened as their voices faded into the rumble of the falls. He was thinking about the lynx. The way it had looked at him, acknowledging his existence, then passing out of his life like smoke. . . It was the first thing--the only thing--that had managed, if only for a moment, to displace from his mind the image of the child. He had carried that image with him for a year now, and it had been a weight so great that sometimes he could hardly stand. Mary Lawson's beloved novels, Crow Lake and The Other Side of the Bridge, have delighted legions of readers around the world. The fictional, northern Ontario town of Struan, buried in the winter snows, is the vivid backdrop to her breathtaking new novel. Roads End brings us a family unravelling in the aftermath of tragedy: Edward Cartwright, struggling to escape the legacy of a violent past; Emily, his wife, cloistered in her room with yet another new baby, increasingly unaware of events outside the bedroom door; Tom, their eldest son, twenty-five years old but home again, unable to come to terms with the death of a friend; and capable, formidable Megan, the sole daughter in a household of eight sons, who for years held the family together but has finally broken free and gone to England, to try to make a life of her own. Roads End is Mary Lawson at her best. In this masterful, enthralling, tender novel, which ranges from the Ontario silver rush of the early 1900s to swinging London in the 1960s, she gently reveals the intricacies and anguish of family life, the push and pull of responsibility and individual desire, the way we can face tragedy, and in time, hope to start again.
Purple Hibiscus
by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieFifteen-year-old Kambili and her older brother Juju live in the rigidly strict household run by their father, a successful Nigerian businessman and devout convert to the Catholic Church. When they are allowed a brief visit to their free-spirited aunt, the young people discover a different mode of life. However, political upheavals and the anguished family situation lead to tragedy.
A Permanent Member of the Family
by Russell BanksA masterly collection of new stories from Russell Banks, acclaimed author of The Sweet Hereafter and Rule of the Bone, which maps the complex terrain of the modern American familyThe New York Times lauds Russell Banks as "the most compassionate fiction writer working today" and hails him as a novelist who delivers "wrenching, panoramic visions of American moral life. " Long celebrated for his unflinching, empathetic works that explore the unspoken but hard realities of contemporary culture, Banks now turns his keen intelligence and emotional acuity on perhaps his most complex subject yet: the shape of family in its many forms. Suffused with Banks's trademark lyricism and reckless humor, the twelve stories in A Permanent Member of the Family examine the myriad ways we try--and sometimes fail--to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. In the title story, a father looks back on the legend of the cherished family dog whose divided loyalties mirrored the fragmenting of his marriage. In "Christmas Party," a young man entertains dark thoughts as he watches his newly remarried ex-wife leading the life he once imagined they would share. "A Former Marine" asks, to chilling effect, if one can ever stop being a parent. And in the haunting, evocative "Veronica," a mysterious woman searching for her missing daughter may not be who she claims she is. Moving between the stark beauty of winter in upstate New York and the seductive heat of Florida, A Permanent Member of the Family charts with subtlety and precision the ebb and flow of both the families we make for ourselves and the ones we're born into, as it asks how we know the ones we love and, in turn, ourselves. One of our most acute and penetrating authors, Banks's virtuosic writing animates stories that are profoundly humane, deeply--and darkly--funny, and absolutely unforgettable. Russell Banks is one of America's most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.