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Malibu Rising: A Novel
by Taylor Jenkins ReidNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today • From the author of Carrie Soto Is Back, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo . . . &“Irresistible . . . High drama at the beach, starring four sexy, surfing siblings and their deadbeat, famous-crooner dad.&”—PeopleONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Time, Marie Claire, PopSugar, Parade, Teen Vogue, Self, She Reads Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, the family drama that ensues will change their lives forever.Malibu: August 1983. It&’s the day of Nina Riva&’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he&’s been inseparable since birth.Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can&’t stop thinking about promised she&’ll be there.And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family&’s generations will all come rising to the surface.Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.
Cool for You: A Novel
by Eileen MylesGrainy and stripped down, this gritty novel traces the downbeat progress of a tough, queer girl growing up in working-class Boston by "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant-garde” (The New York Times).Why can’t I live right now. Because I am not rich, I am not a saint. But I do know this: not all of us were sent here to work.The first published novel of legendary poet and performer Eileen Myles follows a queer female growing up in working-class Boston, straining against the institutions that hold her: family, Catholic school, jobs at a camp, at a nursing home, at a school for developmentally disabled adult males.She wants to be an astronaut. Instead, she becomes a poet and journeys through a series of low-end schools, pathetic jobs, and unmade beds. Schooled by mean and memorable Catholic nuns, this tomboy heroine stumbles and dreams her way through the painful corridors of family, early sexual encounters, and an eye-opening series of jobs caring for the sick and insane--the abandoned wards of the state. This is a book hell-bent on telling the truth about poor women, and how they do (and do not) get out of the hands of their families and the state. Without artifice or pseudonym, protagonist Eileen Myles boldly sets down a rich and graphic account of female experience in this world.Free-ranging and deadpan, tragic and joyful, this is a book about women, gender, class, bodies, escape, and what it means to be “inside.” Never more relevant, and now with an introduction by Chris Kraus."Eileen Myles is a genius!"--Dorothy Allison
Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel
by Taylor Jenkins Reid#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup—from the author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, and Carrie Soto Is BackREESE&’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NOW AN EMMY AWARD–NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERIES EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY REESE WITHERSPOON &“An explosive, dynamite, down-and-dirty look at a fictional rock band told in an interview style that gives it irresistible surface energy.&”—Elin HilderbrandONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Esquire, Glamour, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Parade, Paste, Shelf Awareness, BookRiot Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it&’s the rock &’n&’ roll she loves most. By the time she&’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she&’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road. Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend. The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.
With Every Great Breath: New and Selected Essays, 1995-2023
by Rick BassWinner of the National Outdoor Book Award"Master craftsman" (Los Angeles Times) and beloved author Rick Bass explores ecological, social, and personal landscapes through this collection that brings together his best-loved essays and brand-new piecesFor acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, the fragmented, the dead and dying and doomed to extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us.Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription, to inhabit, as deeply as possible, the greater depths of the beauty in each moment. With Every Great Breath ranges from the extremely local—a long-form essay about the community affected by the largest Superfund site in U.S. history, in Libby, Montana—to the far-flung: the Galápagos, Namibia, and Alaska. Throughout, Bass offers a portrait of our planet that is always alert to its wonders, even in the face of environmental crisis.
Homeseeking: A GMA Book Club Pick
by Karissa ChenA GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK&“Sweeping and epic…An impactful love story, told against the backdrop of historical events…One of the best debut novels of this century.&”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette &“Like any tried-and-true epic (think &“Pachinko&” or &“The Joy Luck Club&”… Homeseeking is just a genuine pleasure to read.&”—San Francisco ChronicleA single choice can define an entire life.Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen&’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi&’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.
The One We Fell in Love With
by Paige ToonIn the spirit of Colleen Hoover, a sweeping, poignant coming-of-age story about three identical sisters who each fall in love with the same boy next door, calling into question everything they know about themselves and their sisterhood.Three sisters. Three love stories. A secret that changes everything. Phoebe, Eliza, and Rose are three identical sisters who couldn&’t be more different. When they&’re seventeen, a beautiful boy moves in next door and nobody is surprised when Angus and Phoebe fall in love. Everybody loves Phoebe. But is she the sister he&’s meant to be with? When Phoebe spends a summer in the French Alps, she meets a man who makes her wonder the same question. Ten years later, it&’s two weeks until Phoebe&’s wedding when something unexpected changes all of their lives. Eliza will have to face a love from her past, one that could unmoor her or finally mend her broken heart. Meanwhile Rose, who has always been the responsible one, is ready for change—but is she ready for the man fate will bring? Angus will always be the boy next door in each of their hearts, but who is each sister meant to fall in love with?
Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art of Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together
by Gaby Dunn&“Humorous and forthright...[Gaby] Dunn makes facing money issues seem not only palatable but possibly even fun....Dunn&’s book delivers.&” —Publishers Weekly The beloved writer-comedian expands on his popular podcast with an engaging and empowering financial literacy book for Millennials and Gen Z. In the first episode of his Bad With Money podcast, Gaby Dunn asked patrons at a coffee shop two questions: First, what&’s your favorite sex position? Everyone was game to answer, even the barista. Then, she asked how much money was in their bank accounts. People were aghast. &“That&’s a very personal question,&” they insisted. And therein lies the problem. Dunn argues that our inability to speak honestly about money is our #1 barrier to understanding it, leading us to feel alone, ashamed, and anxious, which in turns makes us feel even more overwhelmed by it. In Bad With Money, he reveals the legitimate, systemic reasons behind our feeling of helplessness when it comes to personal finance, demystifying the many signposts on the road to getting our financial sh*t together, like how to choose an insurance plan or buy a car, sign up for a credit card or take out student loans. He speaks directly to her audience, offering advice on how to make that #freelancelyfe work for you, navigate money while you date, and budget without becoming a Nobel-winning economist overnight. Even a topic as notoriously dry as money becomes hilarious and engaging in the hands of Dunn, who weaves his own stories with the perspectives of various comedians, artists, students, and more, arguing that—even without selling our bodies to science or suffering the indignity of snobby thrift shop buyers—we can all start taking control of our financial futures.
The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy
by Richard DrakeWhat drives terrorists to glorify violence? In The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, Richard Drake seeks to explain the origins of Italian terrorism and the role that intellectuals played in valorizing the use of violence for political or social ends. Drake argues that a combination of socioeconomic factors and the influence of intellectual elites led to a sanctioning of violence by revolutionary political groups in Italy between 1969 and 1988. Drake explores what motivated Italian terrorists on both the Left and the Right during some of the most violent decades in modern Italian history and how these terrorists perceived the modern world as something to be destroyed rather than reformed. In 1989, The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy received the Howard R. Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical Studies. It was awarded for the best book that year on Italian history. The book is reissued now with a new introduction for the light it might shed on current terrorist challenges. The Italians had success in combating terrorism. We might learn something from their example. The section of the book dealing with the Italian "superfascist" philosopher, Julius Evola, holds special interest today. Drake's original work takes on new significance in the light of Evola's recent surge of popularity for members of America's alt-right movement.
Bertha Venation: And Hundreds of Other Funny Names of Real People
by Larry Ashmead“Expectant parents are always looking for inspiration about names, and might be glad of a warning.” —Financial TimesAn ideal gift book with personality and charm, Bertha Venation is a legendary editor’s lifetime collection of the amazing names of actual people, with his own inimitable wit, commentary, and stories.Roger Gotobed . . . Ida Slaptor . . . Formica Dinette . . . Honeysuckle Weeks . . . Gay Beach . . . Sappho Clissit . . . Dimple MysteryThis colorful collection of extraordinary names, sure to please every lover of miscellany, features: Celebrity Children, Weirdest Names in Sports, Aptly Named Professionals, Literary Highlights, Funny Name Marriages, Places and Houses with Strange Names, Long and Meaningless Names, and Pets.Barbara Fatt Heine . . . P. Enis . . . Razzle and Dazzle . . . Moondog . . . Casa Enima . . . Phydeaux . . . Phat Ho . . . Fitz Funfrock . . . Mone’t Elysea Ann . . . and Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Give + Take: A Novel
by Stona Fitch"A smart and original novel that flies from beginning to end...part noir, part anti-capitalist creed—its voice is both seductive and addictive." —Richard Price, author of Lush Life An unholy marriage of the classic American road narrative combined with the slyest moments of Thomas Pynchon, Give + Take is one part caper, one part social satire. Disillusioned after years of conspicuous consumption, jazz pianist Ross Clifton has become a talented thief, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. But when his teenage nephew, Cray, turns up to join him, his life on the road is turned upside down. Between his nephew's criminal aspirations and Ross' romance with an enigmatic singer, his grifter lifestyle is about to be in serious jeopardy. Fast, furious, and felonious, Give + Take races along to a thrilling climax.
The Ambitious Elementary School: Its Conception, Design, and Implications for Educational Equality
by Lisa Rosen Stephen W. Raudenbush Elizabeth McGhee HassrickThe challenge of overcoming educational inequality in the United States can sometimes appear overwhelming, and great controversy exists as to whether or not elementary schools are up to the task, whether they can ameliorate existing social inequalities and initiate opportunities for economic and civic flourishing for all children. This book shows what can happen when you rethink schools from the ground up with precisely these goals in mind, approaching educational inequality and its entrenched causes head on, student by student. Drawing on an in-depth study of real schools on the South Side of Chicago, Elizabeth McGhee Hassrick, Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Lisa Rosen argue that effectively meeting the challenge of educational inequality requires a complete reorganization of institutional structures as well as wholly new norms, values, and practices that are animated by a relentless commitment to student learning. They examine a model that pulls teachers out of their isolated classrooms and places them into collaborative environments where they can share their curricula, teaching methods, and assessments of student progress with a school-based network of peers, parents, and other professionals. Within this structure, teachers, school leaders, social workers, and parents collaborate to ensure that every child receives instruction tailored to his or her developing skills. Cooperating schools share new tools for assessment and instruction and become sites for the training of new teachers. Parents become respected partners, and expert practitioners work with researchers to evaluate their work and refine their models for educational organization and practice. The authors show not only what such a model looks like but the dramatic results it produces for student learning and achievement. The result is a fresh, deeply informed, and remarkably clear portrait of school reform that directly addresses the real problems of educational inequality.
The Girls (Belt Revivals)
by Edna FerberWith &“much humor&” and &“awareness of family dynamics&” this classic novel &“stands as an enduring portrait of women torn between duty and self-fulfillment&”(Publishers Weekly). First published in 1921, Edna Ferber&’s The Girls revolves around the &“three Charlottes&” of the Thrift family—Great-Aunt Charlotte, her niece Lottie, and Lottie&’s niece Charley. All single &“old maids,&” as the narrator describes them, their lives weave together as they deal with issues involving money, work, friendship, family, and love as they strive to join Chicago&’s growing middle class in the early twentieth century. With a historic span that travels from the Civil War to World War I, Ferber highlights how the three generations of Charlottes lead very different lives. But we also see the ways their experiences rhyme with one another and how, despite the social advances in America, as Kathleen Rooney writes in her introduction, all three have to confront &“a sexist and claustrophobic societal atmosphere in which any little act of self-assertion can feel like a leap from a precipice.&” Told through Ferber&’s assured and generous style, and full of her signature strong female characters, The Girls is an American classic. &“This is one of those books that nails setting and character so well that plot is mostly beside the point. . . . Ferber splits the difference with clearer prose and keener insight than [Sister Carrie author Theodore] Dreiser managed, while incorporating some of the same dry humor that [Babbitt author Sinclair] Lewis used to describe midwestern strivers.&” —Dmitry Samarov, Chicago Reader &“Written with such verve and insight that it could be a piece of historical fiction produced last week.&” —Patrick T. Reardon, Third Coast Review
The Courage to Be a Single Mother: Becoming Whole Again After Divorce
by Sheila EllisonPutting the Pieces Back TogetherStep One: I Do Love MyselfStep Two: I Know What I WantStep Three: My Family Is Still WholeStep Four: I Can Choose Who I AmFour simple steps. A world of truth. At last, a source of compassion and support for divorced mothers facing the realities of raising children when their lives are at their most vulnerable and their self-images at their most fragile. Filled with more than a book on coping -- it is a source of understanding, encouragement, and strength that will help single women to nurture their children, resurrect their spirits, and create the life they want.
Saints: Faith without Borders (A\critical Inquiry Book Ser.)
by Francoise Meltzer and Jas ElsnerWhile the modern world has largely dismissed the figure of the saint as a throwback, we remain fascinated by excess, marginality, transgression, and porous subjectivity—categories that define the saint. In this collection, Françoise Meltzer and Jas Elsner bring together top scholars from across the humanities to reconsider our denial of saintliness and examine how modernity returns to the lure of saintly grace, energy, and charisma.Addressing such problems as how saints are made, the use of saints by political and secular orders, and how holiness is personified, Saints takes us on a photo tour of Graceland and the cult of Elvis and explores the changing political takes on Joan of Arc in France. It shows us the self-fashioning of culture through the reevaluation of saints in late-antique Judaism and Counter-Reformation Rome, and it questions the political intent of underlying claims to spiritual attainment of a Muslim sheikh in Morocco and of Sephardism in Israel. Populated with the likes of Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and Padre Pio, this book is a fascinating inquiry into the status of saints in the modern world.
Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France
by Paul Christopher JohnsonWhat distinguishes humans from nonhumans? Two common answers—free will and religion—are in some ways fundamentally opposed. Whereas free will enjoys a central place in our ideas of spontaneity, authorship, and deliberation, religious practices seem to involve a suspension of or relief from the exercise of our will. What, then, is agency, and why has it occupied such a central place in theories of the human?Automatic Religion explores an unlikely series of episodes from the end of the nineteenth century, when crucial ideas related to automatism and, in a different realm, the study of religion were both being born. Paul Christopher Johnson draws on years of archival and ethnographic research in Brazil and France to explore the crucial boundaries being drawn at the time between humans, “nearhumans,” and automata. As agency came to take on a more central place in the philosophical, moral, and legal traditions of the West, certain classes of people were excluded as less-than-human. Tracking the circulation of ideas across the Atlantic, Johnson tests those boundaries, revealing how they were constructed on largely gendered and racial foundations. In the process, he reanimates one of the most mysterious and yet foundational questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?
Imagining Deliberative Democracy in the Early American Republic
by Sandra M. GustafsonDeliberation, in recent years, has emerged as a form of civic engagement worth reclaiming. In this persuasive book, Sandra M. Gustafson combines historical literary analysis and political theory in order to demonstrate that current democratic practices of deliberation are rooted in the civic rhetoric that flourished in the early American republic.Though the U.S. Constitution made deliberation central to republican self-governance, the ethical emphasis on group deliberation often conflicted with the rhetorical focus on persuasive speech. From Alexis de Tocqueville’s ideas about the deliberative basis of American democracy through the works of Walt Whitman, John Dewey, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., Gustafson shows how writers and speakers have made the aesthetic and political possibilities of deliberation central to their autobiographies, manifestos, novels, and orations. Examining seven key writers from the early American republic—including James Fenimore Cooper, David Crockett, and Daniel Webster—whose works of deliberative imagination explored the intersections of style and democratic substance, Gustafson offers a mode of historical and textual analysis that displays the wide range of resources imaginative language can contribute to political life.
The End of East: A Novel
by Jen Sookfong LeeIn the tradition of Amy Tan and Jhumpa Lahiri, a moving portrait of three generations of family living in Vancouver's ChinatownFrom Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction program--launching grounds for Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees--comes this powerfully evocative novel.At age eighteen, Seid Quan is the first in the Chan family to emigrate from China to Vancover in 1913. Paving the way for a wife and son, he is profoundly lonely, even as he joins the Chinatown community.Weaving in and out of the past and the present, The End of East pieces together the spellbinding tale of Seid Quan's family: his wife Shew Lin, whose hope for her family are threatened by her own misguided actions; his son Pon Man, who struggles with obligation and desire; his daughter-in-law Siu Sang, who tries to be the caregiver everyone expects, even as she feels herself unraveling; and his granddaughter Sammy, who finds herself embroiled in a volatile mixture of seduction, grief, and duty.An exquisite debut of isolation, immigration, romance, and insanity, The End of East sets family conflicts against the backdrop of Vancouver's Chinatown--a city within a city where dreams are shattered as quickly as they're built, and where history repeats itself through the generations. It is a bold and accomplished debut from one of Canada's brightest new literary stars.
Night of the Jaguar: A Novel
by Joe GannonIn Joe Gannon's debut novel, Night of the Jaguar, a former Sandinista guerrilla comandante turned cop investigates a series of murders that appear to be political executions.Sandinista Police Captain Ajax Montoya is six days sober and losing his mind. How else to explain his nights waking in bed, his hand wrapped around that bloody-minded stiletto from the old days, or the presence outside his window, a face with no eyes watching him?How far the heroic have fallen. Ajax was once the gallant comandante guerrillero. A hero of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries in their long uprising against the Ogre and his hated National Guard. Back then he'd been the guy who got the bloody missions -- as a lowly grunt with that blade, or the commander of an entire front. Back then he knew what was what and who to trust. But as the clarity of war gave way to the hazy reality of peace, Ajax fared less well. And after he took the fall for an assassination he had no part of, he tumbled into a bottle, and maybe out of his mind. Now he's a homicide investigator in Managua solving murders and sweating through the nightmares from his guerilla days. When he's called to investigate a robbery turned gruesome murder, Ajax recognizes the marks of a surprising enemy - the CIA mercenary army known as The Contra. This isn't just a random murder; this is an execution, a call to war. Or is it? And why does no one want to know but Ajax? As the bodies pile up and a red-headed gringa who should be his enemy enchants his thoughts, Ajax questions whether he can stay sober, sane, and alive long enough to figure it all out.
Dante & the Limits of the Law
by Justin SteinbergIn Dante and the Limits of the Law, Justin Steinberg offers the first comprehensive study of the legal structure essential to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Steinberg reveals how Dante imagines an afterlife dominated by sophisticated laws, hierarchical jurisdictions, and rationalized punishments and rewards. He makes the compelling case that Dante deliberately exploits this highly structured legal system to explore the phenomenon of exceptions to it, crucially introducing Dante to current debates about literature’s relation to law, exceptionality, and sovereignty. Examining how Dante probes the limits of the law in this juridical otherworld, Steinberg argues that exceptions were vital to the medieval legal order and that Dante’s otherworld represents an ideal “system of exception.” In the real world, Dante saw this system as increasingly threatened by the dual crises of church and empire: the abuses and overreaching of the popes and the absence of an effective Holy Roman Emperor. Steinberg shows that Dante’s imagination of the afterlife seeks to address this gap between the universal validity of Roman law and the lack of a sovereign power to enforce it. Exploring the institutional role of disgrace, the entwined phenomena of judicial discretion and artistic freedom, medieval ideas about privilege and immunity, and the place of judgment in the poem, this cogently argued book brings to life Dante’s sense of justice.
Poor White (Belt Revivals)
by Sherwood Anderson&“A story that pays careful attention to what it meant (and means) to live in the Midwest, open to both its charms and its challenges.&” —Sarah Laskow, The Millions Hugh McVey moves from Missouri to the agrarian town of Bidwell, Ohio. He invents a mechanical cabbage planter to ease the burden of famers, but an investor in town exploits his product, which fails to succeed. His next invention, a corn cutter, makes him a millionaire and transforms Bidwell into a center of manufacturing. McVey, perennially lonely and ruminative, meets Clara Butterworth, who attends college at nearby Ohio State and is perennially harassed by her potential matches. Published in 1920, one year after his classic short story collection, Winesburg, Ohio, Poor White has a modernist style, a realist attention to everyday life, and an eerily contemporary resonance. &“Belt Revivals wisely brings Anderson back onto the radar during this political moment&” —New York Times &“For the past five years, a small press called Belt Publishing has been bringing out intriguing nonfiction books about the Midwest; now they've started a new series called &“Belt Revivals,&” to publish classic Midwestern fiction as well as nonfiction.&” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR
Atropos (The Clifford Driscoll Novels #3)
by William L. DeAndreaAn electric thriller where spies go to battle, and the free world is at stakeIn the final installment in William DeAndrea&’s Clifford Driscoll series, master spy Driscoll is &“going tame&”—that is, recovering from a near-death accident and enjoying domestic peace. Driscoll, now known as Allan Trotter, hasn&’t killed anyone in more than a year. He still works for the Agency—a super-secret intelligence unit of the US government known only to the president and its founding congressman—but he&’s too full of pins and plates to be a field agent anymore. To top it off, he&’s so smitten with beautiful media mogul Regina Hudson that he&’s contemplating settling down. But Trotter&’s new life is rudely interrupted when he learns that Soviet spies are bent on taking charge of the upcoming US presidential election. Their instrument is an influential senator, Hank Van Horn, a womanizing bad seed who— despite an upstanding reputation—once murdered one of his own staffers. And as if the election plot wasn&’t perilous enough, Van Horn&’s relentless son, Mark, soon gets involved in a very bloody way.
A Prelude: Landscapes, Characters and Conversations from the Earlier Years of My Life
by Edmund WilsonThe leading literary critic Edmund Wilson shares his travels and adventures from his young life in this intellectual autobiography, A Prelude.From his early childhood in Red Bank, New Jersey, to his undergraduate years in Princeton, to his later time spent in the army, this personal study, told partly in diary form, provides an illuminating look inside the mind of one of the twentieth century's towering man of letters. Also included in this volume is two short stories by Wilson, both based on actual events: "The Death of a Soldier," about the death of a young soldier from pneumonia just before going to the front. And "Lieutenant Franklin" concerning a young officer in the Army of Occupation in Germany after the war.
Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form (New Jewish Philosophy and Thought)
by Sarah ScottA new collection of essays highlighting the wide range of Buber's thought, career, and activism. Best known for I and Thou, which laid out his distinction between dialogic and monologic relations, Martin Buber (1878–1965) was also an anthologist, translator, and author of some seven hundred books and papers. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form, edited by Sarah Scott, is a collection of nine essays that explore his thought and career.Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form shakes up the legend of Buber by decentering the importance of the I-Thou dialogue in order to highlight Buber as a thinker preoccupied by the image of relationship as a guide to spiritual, social, and political change. The result is a different Buber than has hitherto been portrayed, one that is characterized primarily by aesthetics and politics rather than by epistemology or theology. Martin Buber: Creaturely Life and Social Form will serve as a guide to the entirety of Buber's thinking, career, and activism, placing his work in context and showing both the evolution of his thought and the extent to which he remained driven by a persistent set of concerns.
Night Falls on Damascus: A Novel
by Frederick HighlandA crime of passion brings on a harrowing criminal investigation in a divided landSet in the exotic and turbulent world of Syria in the 1930s, Night Falls on Damascus tells the story of a French-Syrian police inspector, Nikolai Faroun, caught up in a complex murder investigation of a beautiful and controversial woman from a prominent Damascus family.Vera Tamiri made enemies for her good works as well as her cosmopolitanism. On one hand was she was a social reformer who had tried to advance the health and welfare of Arab women in a volatile community hemmed in by custom and hostile to social change. However, Vera had a shadowy side: she cultivated a Bohemian pose, gambled recklessly, and was not always wise in her choice of companions---and lovers.Faroun suspects that she may have fallen victim to a gruesome crime of passion. However, he soon realizes that there is more to this crime than a jealous lover. In a country chafing under foreign rule and divided by sectarian strife, Vera Tamiri made a tempting political target. In a city seething with anger and revolt, Inspector Faroun begins unraveling a conspiracy from Syria's troubled past, a secret that Vera may have uncovered---at the cost of her life.As the elements of a sinister and elusive crime bubble to the surface, Faroun must be careful not to bring to light secrets of his own---the real reason for his presence in Damascus and a compromising relationship with the beautiful and willful wife of a well-connected French businessman. All games, in the end, must be played against the dark backdrop of a city that has been the center of Middle Eastern intrigue for millennia, the stony ground where Cain slew Abel, where Saladin once ruled, and where Nikolai Faroun must discover the key to the murder of a courageous woman who dared to disturb the ancient order. A gripping murder mystery, Night Falls on Damascus richly evokes a time and place where the deadly conflict between modernism and tradition in the Middle East first came into play.Praise for Ghost Eaters"A swashbuckling, seafaring novel with mystical overtones."---Publishers Weekly"An exciting, smoothly written naval adventure set in Malaysia during 1875. Touching on the politics of war, the power of superstition, and the fragility of civilization, this is exhilarating escapist fare."---Booklist"The book is peopled with rich, enigmatic characters whose pasts are shrouded in mystery and whose motives are close held secrets."---Jim Nelson, author of the Revolution at Sea series"Glorious shades of Joseph Conrad, but with wry humor! Splendidly written and an intriguing adventure /mystery in the grand old style."---Dewey Lambdin, author of the Alan Lewrie series "Unashamedly and convincingly Conradian in its subject matter and scope, and in the raw and elemental language of its telling . . . this is the work of a devoted and accomplished storyteller, and of a gifted writer and craftsman, for whom the completed tale is considerably more than the sum of its parts." ---Robert Edric, author of The Broken Lands
The Common Cause: Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy, 1900 to 1955
by Leela GandhiEuropeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in The Common Cause, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism—an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antifascist practices devoted to ordinariness and abnegation that ranged from doomed mutinies in the Indian military to Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual discipline. Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought and offers it to us as a key to democracy’s future. In doing so, she defends democracy as a shared art of living on the other side of perfection and mounts a postcolonial appeal for an ethics of becoming common.