Catapult new york ny (560 risultati)

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. This is a gorgeous, delicately surprising piece of writing . . . It's like spirit photography, all fuzzy outlines and unaccountable light: a snapshot of something that may or may not exist. Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times Book ReviewWhen Frances met Charlie at a party in Melbourne, he was married with a young son. Now that the couple has moved to subtropical Sydney, a lusher and more chaotic city, Frances has an unshakable sense that the world has tipped on its axis. Everything seems alien, and exoticand Frances is haunted by the unknowability of Charlie's previous life. A young art historian studying the objects in paintingsthe material worldFrances takes mindclearing walks around her neighborhood with her dog. Behind the fence of one garden, she thinks she sees a woman in an oldfashioned gown, but something is not right. It's as if the garden exists in a vacuum suspended in time, "at an angle to life."Springtime is a ghost story that doesn't conform to the genre's traditions of dark and stormy nights, graveyards and ruins. It breaks new ground by unfolding in sunny, suburban Australia, and the realism of the characters and events make the story's ambiguities and eeriness all the more disquieting. The richness of observation here is immediately recognizable as Michelle de Kretser's, a writer who has been praised by Hilary Mantel as a master of ""the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail." "First published in Australia and the UK by Allen & Unwin"--Title page verso. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A collection of "elegant, original, and moving" stories "with the lyrical brilliance and bite of Sylvia Plath" set in a not-so bucolic Vermont, a land of antique stores, small towns, fading farms, and young women trying to figure out marriage, motherhood, sex and their own power (Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Almost Famous Women and Birds of a Lesser Paradise).Prepare Her tells the stories of young women at the brink of discovering their own power. The crossroads in their lives are not always the obvious kind--divorce, motherhood, coming of age--but sometimes much more private and dramatic. Kitty discovers that her ex-boyfriend has committed a murder; Renee navigates a friendship with Arla, a Jehovah's Witness; Emi realizes that her boyfriend is fetishizing her mental illness; Petra acts recklessly when faced with a client with a gun; and Rachel must grapple with the reality of raising a daughter in a world that she, herself, is still terrified of.Tempered by its rural and often haunting Vermont setting, this book explores the complexities of gender and power imbalances in a way that transforms normal life into something mysterious, uncharted, and sometimes bewildering. Through this lens, we can see the many subtle, yet staggering injustices endured by the women at the center of these stories, as well as identify what, or who might be responsible. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the Center for Fiction Debut Novel prize, this fableistic, "beautifully crafted, poetic" debut novel about a sister trying to hold back her brother from the edge of the abyss is for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Tommy Orange (The New York Times Book Review).In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother's ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina's vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In this striking debut collection, characters find unexpected moments of profound insight while navigating daily lifeIn this striking debut collection, characters find unexpected moments of profound insight while navigating the monotony of daily life. Here we find a man who drives to the wrong mountain, a hubcap cleaner who moonlights as a karaoke star, and a deliveryman whose urgent letters have no willing recipient. While lulled by the deceptively simple rhythm of the ordinary, Kevin Clouther offers the instant before momentous changethe view over the cliff, the intake of breath before a decision, a glimpse of stark vulnerability, of faith and hope."Clouthers first collection of stories shows an 'old' talentmeaning, his sophistication in treatment and technique and his wise observations of the human condition have the feel of an author who has the experience of several story collections behind him."Booklist, starred review"Sharply observed."Toronto Star"The 10 entries in Clouthers debut collection all display a surehanded grasp of craft."Publishers Weekly A stunning debut collection in which characters find unexpected moments of profound insight while navigating the monotony of daily life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Zaharieva packs several genres into one, including but not limited to pastoral idyll, sexual comingofage story, and feminist memoir. Ultimately, she presents life in all its messiness and possibility, vivid enough for the reader to almost taste.Publishers Weekly"This is powerful, controlled writing.Rain TaxiI turned up in the seaside town of Nesebaran inconvenient fouryearold grandchild, just as my grandmother was raising the last two of her six children, putting the finishing touches on the house, ordering the workmen around and doing some of the construction work herselfthank God for that, because at least it used up some of her monstrous energy. Otherwise who knows what would've become of me.In Bulgaria during the height of communism in the 1960s, sixyearold Manda survives her cruel grandmother and rural poverty by finding sheer delight in the worldplump vegetables, garden gnomes, and darkened attic corners. The young Manda endures severe beatings, seemingly indestructible. But as a middleaged artist in newly democratic Bulgaria, she desperately tries to feed her damaged soul with intrepid creativity and humor. An eccentric Bulgarian woman's restless enthusiasm defines her life from childhood onward as she strives for a life less ordinary. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. In 1999 Rochester, a mysterious spate of arsons threatens a hilarious and heart-breaking friendship based on a language of inside jokes in "one of the most inventive novels published this year" (The Los Angeles Review).Rochester, New York, 1999: An arsonist is loose on the streets of a city in decline. Gone are the days of Rioting in the Vomit Cruiser, searching for a possible Tokyo Rocking Horse. In this hilarious, wildly original debut novel, Nathan Gray and best friend Necro live by the code of Joke Royalty, a system of in-jokes known only to a select few. But as the reality of full-time employment, possible spouses, and Neo-Nazis encroaches, their friendship unravels, threatening their dreams of becoming Kodak Park Winjas.Among the gravest Hellstacheries: Necro's strangely vicious drawings and his sudden interest in a group of weapons enthusiasts who may or may not be responsible for the fires erupting through downtown. With no Holy Grail Points left to his name, Nate ventures into Rochester's strangest corners to find out if his best friend is a domestic terrorist Pinning Bow Ties on the Dead or simply Maverick Jetpantsing on with his life-perhaps even beyond The City of Quality."Bill Peters belongs in the ranks of serious literary artists."-The New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice Rochester, 1999; a mystery surrounding arson; a hilarious and heart-breaking friendship based on a language of inside jokes. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "exuberant, defiant and introspective" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America (The New York Times Book Review). Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect" (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut. Coloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival--domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife; threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush--Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived. Hailed as "one of the finest writers of her generation" (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. This fiercely original debut novel follows four Nigerian siblings over the course of two decades as they search for agency, love, and meaning in a society rife with hypocrisy. . . . lush, sharp, and shot through with hope!" Well-Read Black Girl I like the idea of a god who knows what its like to be a twin. To have no memory of ever being alone. Twin sisters Bibike and Ariyike are enjoying a relatively comfortable life in Lagos in 1996. Then their mother loses her job due to political strife, and the family, facing poverty, becomes drawn into the New Church, an institution led by a charismatic pastor who is not shy about worshipping earthly wealth. Soon Bibike and Ariyikes father wagers the family home on a sure bet that evaporates like smoke. As their parents marriage collapses in the aftermath of this gamble, the twin sisters and their two younger siblings, Andrew and Peter, are thrust into the reluctant care of their traditional Yoruba grandmother. Inseparable while they had their parents to care for them, the twins paths diverge once the household shatters. Each girl is left to locate, guard, and hone her own fragile source of power. Written with astonishing intimacy and wry attention to the fickleness of fate, Tola Rotimi Abrahams Black Sunday takes us into the chaotic heart of family life, tracing a line from the euphoria of kinship to the devastation of estrangement. In the process, it joyfully tells a tale of grace and connection in the midst of daily oppression and the constant incursions of an unremitting patriarchy. This is a novel about two young women slowly finding, over twenty years, in a place rife with hypocrisy but also endless life and love, their own distinct methods of resistance and paths to independence. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Two rivals-to-lovers indoor volleyball players juggle jealousy, tragedy, and a big tournament in this satire of sporty romances and their precious fandomsSix is 67, scheming to rejoin the starting lineup, and barely checks her phone. Green is 61, always building her brand, and secretly jealous of her more famous girlfriend. Together, theyre going where no Asian American trans woman has gone before: the mens pro indoor volleyball league. Our hot girls with balls just thought playing with the boys would spare them some controversy . . . haha.In between their rival teams away games across the globe, Six and Green stay connected on SpaceTime and selflessly broadcast their romance to fans on their weekly Instagraph live show. After a long season, theyll finally reunite for the championship tournament, the first to accommodate in-person fans since the COVIS pandemic struck the world a year ago. Just as they enter an airtight bro bubble of the worlds best, theyre faced with a crisis that demands an indisputably humiliating task: make a public statement online.Can Green stock up enough clout for her post-ball future? Can Six girlboss her teams seniority politics? Can they both take a time-out to just grieve? Their rabid fans and horny haters await their next move. Were all just desperate for a whiff of the sweaty feminine energy that makes that ball thwack with such spectacular force. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Fates and Furies meets Melancholia in this ominous and absorbing debut novel about marriage and motherhood in a time of ecological collapse, as mothers around the world begin to mysteriously vanish from their homesAdaa woman from Montreal living reluctantly in Michiganvanishes from her bed one night while her husband Danny is asleep beside her, her young son, Gilles, in the next room. Desperate to locate Ada before Gilles understands what has happened, Danny begins a search. But the feds are already involved: across the country and around the world, mothers are vanishing from their homes.Where did Ada go? What has she gone through? And how does the mystery relate to the forest that she seemed magnetically drawn to?Confronting the role of motherhood and the meaning of home in the wreckage of capitalism and climate change, The Forbidden Territory of a Terrifying Woman is that rare, dazzling debut that is both thrilling and profound. It is a mystery, a play on myths of metamorphosis, and above all, a story of lovebetween husband and wife, mother and childdeeply troubled by the future we face. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. From the author of A Good Happy Girl, a lesbian screwball comedy following two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic splitonly to end up seeing the same womanIn Sweetener, recently separated wives, both named Rebecca, cant seem to disentangle their lives. Lonely and depressed, Rebecca is scraping by as a part-time cashier at an organic grocery store. Despite having less than ten dollars in her bank account, she lists herself as a sugar mama on a lesbian hookup app. Enter Charlotte, a charismatic artist who, unbeknownst to Rebecca, is also dating her wife.Meanwhile, the other Rebecca, a newly sober doctoral student, has renewed her efforts to foster a child. The catch? Because the Rebeccas are still legally married, she needs her wife to attend parenting classes with her as part of the approval process.Neither of them asks whether this means theyre getting back together, but the idea alone sends Charlotte into a tailspin. As Charlotte navigates her desire for each Rebeccaor her desire for attentionher world becomes more and more Gumby-like and surreal. It doesnt help that shes been wearing a fake pregnancy belly to all of her dates, and only one of the Rebeccas knows it isnt real.Sumptuous, sticky, and slightly absurd, Sweetener brings together three women fixated on the fantasy of motherhood, and trying to figure out what kind of mother, partner, or sugar mama they want to be. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A visceral and stirring novel exploring free will, memory, faith, and constructions of reality and the self, following a woman faced with the question of whether her marriage is abusive, and the life-altering decision of ending itWhen we meet Vera, her body and mind are on a precipice. Shes just left her marital home to live with her father after her husbands violent outbursts reach a breaking point. Shes experiencing sudden losses of consciousness, spells of insomnia and difficulty eating. Over the course of the year that follows, she reignites a high school romance, looks to her divorced parents for guidance, attempts couples therapy, struggles to mother two young daughters, develops a brief cocaine dependency, and tries to rekindle her artistic practiceall while questioning, in Halaszs immediate, intimate prose, the infinite number of choices that led her to this difficult moment. Towards the end of the novel, we follow Vera into a surreal funhouse mirror of a courtroom scene, equally comical and horrifying, where she must confront the many conflicting narratives of her marriage and separation and decide which one rings true. With the emotional precision and formal elegance reminiscent of Natalia Ginzburg and Elena Ferrante, Halasz offers a meditation on agency, subjectivity, motherhood, and the artistic vocation with an ultimately optimistic conclusion: life consists of forward movement, in which the biggest challengeand privilegeis choice."Halaszs terse and unsparing syntax mirrors her protagonists disorientation, splicing together different conversations and memories in the span of a paragraph, sometimes even a single sentence . . . Its a testament to both Halaszs and Herberts narrative talents that even when Veras mind tips over a precipice, the reader is still able to parse her spiraling consciousness . . . Remarkable." Jane Hu, The New York Times Book Review Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. "[An] accomplished debut. . . . The novel is narrated entirely in the second person, a stylistic choice that produces moments of intense intimacy.The New Yorker"Geary enters the literary arena with a bang: this debut about an unconventional love affair between a teenage boy and an older woman is unassuming but gorgeously rendered."Publishers Weekly,starred and boxed reviewMontpelier Parade is just across town, but to Sonny it might as well be a different world. Working with his father in the garden of one of its handsome homes one Saturday, he sees a back door easing open and a beautiful woman coming down the path toward him. This is Vera, the sort of person who seems destined to remain forever out of his reach.Hoping to cast off his loneliness and a restless sense of not belongingat high school, in his parttime job at the butcher shop, and in the increasingly suffocating company of his own familySonny drifts into dreams of a different kind of life. A series of intoxicating encounters with Vera lead him to feel he has fallen in love for the first time, but why does her past seem as unknowable as her future?Unfolding over a bright, rainsoaked Dublin spring, Montpelier Parade is a rich, devastating debut novel about desire, grief, ambition, art, and the choices we must make alone. Vera is beautiful, wealthy, and unknowable; Sonny is young and hungry for the world. The moment they meet on Montpelier Parade will change the course of their lives. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Winner of the 2017 Maine Literary Award for Fiction One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, April 2016"Justin Tussing rocks the rock novel. Vexation Lullaby is pure raw pleasure from start to finish."Lily King, author of EuphoriaPeter Silver is a young doctor treading water in the wake of a breakuphis exgirlfriend called him a ""mama's boy"" and his best friend considers him a ""homebody,"" a squanderer of adventure. But when he receives an unexpected request for a house call, he obliges, only to discover that his new patient is aging, chameleonic rock star Jimmy Cross. Soon Peter is compelled to join the mysteriously ailing celebrity, his band, and his entourage, on the road. The socalled ""first physician embedded in a rock tour,"" Peter is thrust into a way of life that embraces disorder and risk rather than order and discipline. Trailing the band at every tour stop is Arthur Pennyman, Cross's numberone fan. Pennyman has not missed a performance in twenty years, sacrificing his family and job to chronicle every show on his website. Cross insists that ""being a fan is how we teach ourselves to love,"" and, in the end, Pennyman does learn. And when he hears a mythic, asyetunperformed song he starts to piece together the puzzle of Peter's role in Cross's past. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Landslide is that rare book that somehow succeeds in being both knowing and openhearted, both formally sly and emotionally direct. Its timeless subjectsgrief, storytelling, the giving up of childish thingsare rendered in ways that are as movingly honest as they are probing and unfamiliar. A swift, compelling read. Adam Haslett, author of Imagine Me GoneMinna Zallman Proctor's Landslide is a captivating collection of interconnected personal essays. These true stories explore the authors complicated relationship with her motherwho was diagnosed with cancer at age fiftyseven and died fifteen years laterand the ways in which their connection was long the prime mover of Proctors life, the subtle force coursing beneath her adulthood. As such, these vibrant essays also narrate the trials and triumphs of Proctors own lifeshifting between America and Italy (and loving being a foreigner, the constant sense of unfamiliarity that supplanted all of my expectations and disappointments), her bumpy first marriage, the profound pleasure she takes in motherhood, and the confounding experience of trying to arrange a Jewish burial for her Jewish, not quite Jewish mother. Proctor has an integrity and humor that is never extinguished despite lifes mounting difficulties. She also slyly questions her own narrative throughout. Not having told this story before means I never fixed many details in my memory, she writes. [I] have to rely on flashes, the transparent stills that hang in my mind, made of smell, the way the light casts, the wind on skin. The essays in this book are a sharply intelligent exploration of what happens when death and divorce unmoor you from certainties, and about the unreliable stories we tell ourselves, and others, in order to live. Minna Proctor's Landslide is a collection of interconnected essays exploring the author's complicated relationship with her mother--who was diagnosed with cancer at age 57 and died a decade later--and the ways in which their connection was long the "prime mover" of Proctor's life, the subtle force coursing beneath her adulthood. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A "haunting and unsettling" psychological portrait for readers of true crime classics such as My Dark Places, The Stranger Beside Me, and I'll Be Gone In the Dark, one of Argentina's most innovative writers brings to life the story of a serial killer who, in 1982, murdered four taxi drivers without any apparent motive (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year).NPR, One of the Best Books of the YearA "chilling but fascinating portrait"of a serial killer, and"a must-read for true crime fans" who enjoyed My Dark Places, The Stranger Beside Me, or I'll Be Gone In the Dark (Buzzfeed)One of Argentina's most innovative writers brings to life the story of a teenager who murdered 4 taxi drivers in 1982 Buenos Aires-without any apparent motive.Over the course of one ghastly week in September 1982, the bodies of 4 taxi drivers were found in Buenos Aires, each murder carried out with the same cold precision. The assailant: a 19-year-old boy, odd and taciturn, who gave the impression of being completely sane. But the crimes themselves were not: 4 murders, as exact as they were senseless.More than 30 years later, Argentine author Carlos Busqued began visiting Ricardo Melogno, the serial killer, in prison. Their conversations return to the nebulous era of the crimes and a story full of missing pieces. The result is a book at once hypnotic and unnerving, constructed from forensic documents, newspaper clippings, and interviews with Melogno himself. Without imposing judgment, Busqued allows for the killer to describe his way of retreating from the world and to explain his crimes as best he can. In his own words, Melogno recalls a visit from Pope Francis, grim depictions of daily life in prison, and childhood remembrances of an unloving mother who drove her son to Brazil to study witchcraft. As these conversations progress, the focus slowly shifts from the crimes themselves, to Melogno's mistreatment and misdiagnosis while in prison, to his current fate: incarcerated in perpetuity despite having served his full sentence.Using these personal interviews, alongside forensic documents and newspaper clippings, Busqued crafted Magnetized, a captivating story about one man's crimes, and a meditation on how one chooses to inhabit the world, or to become absent from it. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Set in rural, poverty-stricken North Carolina, this "beautiful, gritty, and piercing" novel follows two young womenbest friendsas they "journey through the highs and lows of friendship, love, and addiction," perfect for readers of Julie Buntin's Marlena (Erika Carter, author of Lucky You).Irene, a lonely nineteen-year-old in rural North Carolina, works long nights at the local pool hall, serving pitchers and dodging drunks. One evening, her hilarious, magnetic coworker Luce invites her on a joy ride through the mountains to take revenge on a particularly creepy customer. Their adventure not only spells the beginning of a dazzling friendship, it seduces both girls into the mysterious world of pills and the endless hustles needed to fund the next high.Together, Irene and Luce run nickel-tossing scams at the county fair and trick dealers into trading legit pharms for birth-control pills. Everything is wild and wonderful until Luce finds a boyfriend who wants to help her get clean. Soon the two of them decide to move away and start a new, sober life in Floridaleaving Irene behind.Told in a riveting dialogue between the girls' addicted past and their hopes for a better future, Bewilderness is not just a brilliant, funny, heartbreaking novel about opioid abuse, it's also a moving look at how intense, intimate friendships can shape every young woman's life. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Nineteen leading literary writers from around the globe offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their livesincluding essays by Lydia Millet, Alexandra Kleeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and moreIn this riveting anthology, leading literary writers reflect on how climate change has altered their lives, revealing the personal and haunting consequences of this global threat. In the opening essay, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet mourns the end of the Saguaro cacti in her Arizona backyard due to drought. Later, Omar El Akkad contemplates how the rise of temperatures in the Middle East is destroying his home and the wellspring of his art. Gabrielle Bellot reflects on how a bizarre lionfish invasion devastated the coral reef near her home in the Caribbeana precursor to even stranger events to come. Traveling through Nebraska, Terese Svoboda witnesses cougars running across highways and showing up in kindergartens. As the stories unfoldfrom Antarctica to Australia, New Hampshire to New Yorkan intimate portrait of a climate-changed world emerges, captured by writers whose lives jostle against incongruous memories of familiar places that have been transformed in startling ways. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A multilayered and rhythmic debut novel about her life as a Black German woman living in Berlin and New York during the chaos of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from playwright Olivia Wenzel.A young woman attends a play about the fall of the Berlin Walland realizes she is the only Black person in the audience.She and her boyfriend are hanging out by a lake outside Berlinand four neo-Nazis show up.In New York, she is having sex with a stranger on the night of the 2016 presidential electionand wakes up to panicked texts from her friends in Germany about Donald Trumps unlikely victory.Engaging in a witty Q&A with herselfor is it her alter ego?she takes stock of our rapidly changing times, sometimes angry, sometimes amused, sometimes afraid, and always passionate. And she tells the story of her family: Her mother, a punk in former East Germany who never had the freedom she dreamed of. Her Angolan father, who returned to his home country before she was born to start a second family. Her grandmother, whose life of obedience to party principles brought her prosperity and security but not happiness. And her twin brother, who took his own life at the age of nineteen.Heart-rending, opinionated, and wry, Olivia Wenzels remarkable debut novel is a clear-sighted and polyphonic investigation into origins and belonging, the roles society wants to force us into and why we need to resist them, and the freedoms and fears that being the odd one out brings. "A multilayered and rhythmic debut novel about her life as a Black German woman living in Berlin and New York during the chaos of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from playwright Olivia Wenzel"-- Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Hardcover. Condizione: new. Hardcover. On Shirley Hazzard is a vibrant and personal tribute in which the Miles Franklin Awardwinning novelist Michelle de Kretser offers a masterclass in writing and reading. She celebrates the precision and musicality of Hazzards prose and illuminates the humor and humanity in her work. This exhilarating book is both a brilliant introduction to Hazzard and a gift for her longtime readers.On Shirley Hazzard reveals Michelle de Kretsers lively intelligence at work and her distinctive wit. This testament to her sustained engagement with Hazzards work is, at its core, an appreciation of the significance and joy of good fiction. Receptiveness when reading is a prerequisite for perceptive analysis, according to both de Kretser and Hazzard. And for prose, the simple and precise, the transient and insignificant are key qualities: Not moonlight but the glitter of broken glass, for de Kretser as for Chekhov. Selective biographical details about Hazzard are relayed, tooher leaving Australia and formal education at the age of sixteen, her working, unhappily, at the United Nations in Manhattan, her long friendship with Graham Greene. Hazzards morality is also invokedsolidarity with the vulnerable and pacifism being of prime importance.Shirley Hazzard (19312016) published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1961. The magazine continued to publish her work in the decades thereafter, including excerpts from her most successful and beloved novel, the bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award winner, The Transit of Venus (1980). Michelle de Kretsers insightful and provocative appreciation does Hazzard fine justice. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. For readers of Roberto Bolano's Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, this "sublime" and "delightfully unhinged" metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet's spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a plagiarist? (Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums).A scandal has shaken the literary world. As the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls discovers at a cultural festival in central London, the offender is Solomon Wiese, a poet accused of plagiarism. Later that same evening, at a bar near Waterloo Bridge, our narrator encounters the poet in person, and listens to the story of Wiese's rise and fall, a story that takes the entire nightand the remainder of the novelto tell.Wiese reveals his unconventional views on poetry, childhood encounters with "nothingness," a conspiracy involving the manipulation of documents in the public domain, an identity crisis, a retreat to the country, a meeting with an ex-serviceman with an unexpected offer, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, an entanglement with a secretive poetry cult, and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits, and faked social media accountsplans in which our narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated.Dead Souls is a metaphysical mystery brilliantly encased in a picaresque romp, a novel that asks a vital question for anyone who makes or engages with art: Is everyone a plagiarist? Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"A radiant first novel. . . . [Neon in Daylight] has antecedents in the great novels of the 1970s: Renata Adlers Speedboat, Elizabeth Hardwicks Sleepless Nights, Joan Didions Play It as It Lays. . . . Precisionof observation, of languageis Hobys gift. Her sentences are sleek and tailored. Language molds snugly to thought." Parul Sehgal, The New York TimesNew York City in 2012, the sweltering summer before Hurricane Sandy hits. Kate, a young woman newly arrived from England, is staying in a Manhattan apartment while she tries to figure out her future. She has two unfortunate responsibilities during her time in America: to make regular Skype calls to her miserable boyfriend back home, and to catsit an indifferent feline named Joni Mitchell.The city has other plans for her. In New York's parks and bodegas, its galleries and performance spaces, its bars and clubs crowded with bodies, Kate encounters two strangers who will transform her stay: Bill, a charismatic but embittered writer made famous by the movie version of his only novel; and Inez, his daughter, a recent high school graduate who supplements her Bushwick cafe salary by enacting the fantasies of men she meets on Craigslist. Unmoored from her old life, Kate falls into an infatuation with both of them.Set in a heatwave that feels like it will never break, Neon In Daylight marries deep intelligence with captivating characters to offer us a joyful, unflinching exploration of desire, solitude, and the thin line between life and art. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A life-altering neurological disorder. A traumatic birth. An unlikely survival. Pieces You'll Never Get Back is a harrowing and redemptive memoir, in which a new mother must reconstruct her shattered mind, her relationship to her religious upbringing, and her life's purposeAt 29, as a young writer working on her first novel, Samina Ali nearly died giving birth to her son. Miraculously, she survived the unchecked eclampsia that had endangered her pregnancy, instead sustaining major brain injury and falling into a coma as she gave birth. When she woke up, only her deepest memories were intact. Her husband was a stranger to her, she didnt remember having a baby, and any language other than her native Urdu was foreign. Medical consensus was she would never recovermuch less writeagain. Advised to think of her brain as a shattered puzzle, Ali began the long and difficult journey of piecing herself back together: learning to walk, speak, and accomplish basic human tasks alongside her newborn. She attempted to reckon with her past identity as a writer and a wife, and her new identity as a mother. Despite her miraculous survival, the disconnect between the old and the new self was devastating. It would be three years before she felt remotely normal, and seven before she was mended and could fully connect with her son. Ali pairs the story of her death and recovery with the parallel narrative of her relationship to her Islamic upbringing and her fluctuating connection to her faith, incorporating meditations on religious narratives of death, the afterlife, resurrection, and reincarnation. Both deeply personal and steeped in religious thought, Pieces You'll Never Get Back is a uniquely propulsive, searching, and ultimately, inspiring work of memoir. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the PEN Translation PrizeFrom the author of Witches, a gripping, kaleidoscopic tale of two women in 1940s Mexicoone whose daughter has just been kidnapped and another who has just adopted a little girlWhen the kidnapping of a little girl shocks the Mexican capital, the lives of two very different women become forever intertwined. Gloria Felipe lives a comfortable upper-class life with her husband and five children. Nuria Valencia comes from a working-class background and has been desperately trying to get pregnant in order to save her marriage. After traditional methods produce no results, she subjects herself to horrific fertility treatments designed and administered by men, and ultimately tries to adopt but is rejected on the basis that a woman in her early thirties is too old to adopt a baby. Failed time and again by the system and about to lose hope, she is presented with an opportunity that seems almost too good to be true.Through the eyes of a wry unnamed narrator, we witness the battle of the Felipe family to recover their youngest member and the anguished attempts of the Valencia family to save their daughter from potential danger. With the twists and turns of a thriller, and Brenda Lozano's sharp yet poignant sense of humor, the novel asks how far mothers are willing to go in the name of love for their children, and at what cost. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A hilarious, suspenseful metaphysical thriller following a day in the life of an English professor who would rather be lifting weights from the author of the cult hit The Novelist Harold, a middling literature professor at a liberal arts college, lives in a state of dissatisfaction and fear. His colleagues and students evoke nothing but disgust and disdain. None of them understand strength, power, and spiritual actualization like he does. His universitys campusseemingly picturesqueconstantly threatens to reveal something sinister.Over the course of a single afternoon, he wanders the halls, sits in meetings, steals from a student, and goes to the gymall while reflecting on his professional and existential situation. With every line of Harolds frenetic consciousness, his mundane routine transforms into something more foreboding, culminating in an ingenious twist.Brilliantly imagined and darkly funny, Muscle Man is as much a critique of resentment and contemporary masculinity as a satire on the state of higher education, exploring weakness and strength, rationality and irrationality, the spirit and the flesh, and the individual and the collective.With his minute-to-minute occupation of Harolds existential disquietude, Castro imbues the novels philosophical inquiries with thrilling suspense. Is Harold a raving lunatic whose disdain stems from his own perilous inadequacies, or is there something truly sinister about his colleagues? When all is said and done, is strength a virtue, or a mirage? Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayA new collection of pieces on literature and life by the author of Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the NBCC Award for CriticismStationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Seymour Orner wrote a letter every day to his wife, Lorraine. She seldom responded, leading him to plead in 1945, Another day and still no word from you. Seventy years later, Peter Orner writes in response to his grandfathers plea: Maybe we read because we seek that word from someone, from anyone.From the acclaimed fiction writer about whom Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote, You know from the second you pick him up that hes the real deal, comes Still No Word from You, a unique chain of essays and intimate stories that meld the lived life and the reading life. For Orner, there is no separation. Covering such well-known writers as Lorraine Hansberry, Primo Levi, and Marilynne Robinson, as well as other greats like Maeve Brennan and James Alan McPherson, Orners highly personal take on literature alternates with his own true stories of loss and love, hope and despair. In his mothers copy of A Coney Island of the Mind, hes stopped short by a single word in the margin, YES!which leads him to conjure his mother at twenty-three. He stops reading Penelope Fitzgeralds The Beginning of Spring three quarters of the way through because he knows that finishing the novel will leave him bereft. Orners solution is to start again from the beginning to slow the inevitable heartache.Still No Word from You is a book for anyone for whom reading is as essential as breathing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the NBCC Award for AutobiographyA deeply reflective memoir weaving together the personal story of Hester Kaplan's acclaimed biographer father and his fraught effect on her artistic development with a rich portrait of twentieth century intellectual life and a meditation on family intimacy, identity, and the art of writingTwice Born opens with the death of Hester's father, Justin Kaplan, known for his award-winning biographies of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Despite his relatively prolific output, Justin rarely wrote, or said, much about himself-even to his daughter. Standing at his open casket, Hester has the realization that while alive, her father never looked her in the eyes.Hester takes on the challenge of piecing together as intimate a biography of her own father as possible, comparing his story to the lives of his biographical subjects and dissecting the various personas he presents to the world-from which the name "dad," "daddy," or even "father" is conspicuously and painfully absent. Parallel to Justin's story runs Hester's own journey of development as a writer and a thinker, which begins in the shadow of not only her talented father, but also her novelist mother, and the fiercely protective union the two of them had built, often to the exclusion of their own children.In sensitive, intimate writing, Kaplan paints a rich picture of the twentieth century literary world that she grew up in, all while reflecting on the deceptive nature of memory, the loneliness of creative pursuits, and the dovetailing paradoxes of biographical and autobiographical writing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. "Dina Nayeri's powerful writing confronts issues that are key to the refugee experience."Viet Thanh Nguyen From the author of The Ungrateful Refugeefinalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Kirkus PrizeWho Gets Believed? is a groundbreaking book about persuasion and performance that asks unsettling questions about lies, truths, and the difference between being believed and being dismissed in situations spanning asylum interviews, emergency rooms, consulting jobs, and family lifeWhy are honest asylum seekers dismissed as liars?Former refugee and award-winning author Dina Nayeri begins with this question, turning to shocking and illuminating case studies in this book, which grows into a reckoning with our cultures views on believability. From persuading a doctor that shed prefer a C-section to learning to bullshit gracefully at McKinsey to struggling, in her personal life, to believe her troubled brother-in-law, Nayeri explores an aspect of our society that is rarely held up to the light.For readers of David Grann, Malcolm Gladwell, and Atul Gawande, Who Gets Believed? is a book as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, human psychology, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…

Paperback. Condizione: new. Paperback. A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector, and Fleur JaeggyWhen the narrator of The Hearing Test, an artist in her late twenties, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness, but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her yeara score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attunedwhile living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounterswith neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians, and philosophersmaking meaning becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival. At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, The Hearing Test is a work of vitalizing intellect and playfulness which marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression, and intent. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…