Fiction: literary and general non-genre
SPCK - Kregel Unholy Hunger A Novel
Book Synopsis
£11.39
Kregel Publications,U.S. The Indebted Earl
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications Dawns Untrodden Green
Book Synopsis
£12.34
Kregel Publications,U.S. The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady A Novel
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications,U.S. The Debutantes Code
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications Children of the Shadows
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications,U.S. The Forgotten Life of Eva Gordon A Novel
Book Synopsis
£12.34
SPCK - Kregel 26 Below
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications 8 Down
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Kregel Publications We Three Kings
Book Synopsis
£12.34
Kregel Publications The Tangled Tale of the Woolgathering Castoffs
Book Synopsis
£13.29
SPCK - Kregel Something Borrowed
Book Synopsis
£12.34
SPCK - Kregel Where Trees Touch the Sky
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Seagull Books London Ltd The God Behind the Window
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsN
£11.77
University of Tennessee Press Oakseeds
Book Synopsis
£16.96
Cornell University Press Industrial Valley
Book SynopsisThis novel vividly portrays an industrial city crippled by the country's economic failures and also provides a stirring example of fiction predicated on social and political principlesTrade ReviewThis is reporting with a purpose; it is fact selected to provide illumination, not fact reported as a record of rainfall, and the result is brilliant history. * New Masses *Industrial Valley is perhaps the best American example of proletarian literature. Even though it is based completely on fact, I also offer it as one of our best collective novels. * New Republic *For sheer dramatic excitement, for effective organization as a story, there isn't one among all the strike novels to match this essentially true story. * New York Herald Tribune *Vividly portrays an industrial city crippled by the country's economic failures and also provides a stirring example of fiction predicated on social and political principles. * Midwest Book Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction by Daniel Nelson To Begin With Book One: JANUARY 1, 1932, TO JUNE 16, 1933 Book Two: JUNE 26, 1933, TO FEBRUARY 14, 1936 Book Three: FEBRUARY 14, 1936, TO MARCH 21, 1936 And Three Years After
£22.49
Cornell University Press Trepanation of the Skull
Book SynopsisThe author is widely recognized as one of the leading living Russian poets and prose writers. In this title, his story radiates out, relaying the poet's personal history through 1994, including his unique perspective on the 1991 coup by Communist hardliners resisted by Boris Yeltsin.Trade ReviewFew books capture the proverbial spirit of their time and place as effectively: for all its introspective, indeed confessional, character, this memoir is a paean to a motley crew of individuals who chose freedom of expression in obscurity over conformity in dishonor.... Those of us teaching courses on (not-so-) Soviet Russian literature should thank Fusso for giving us a chance to offset the effects of Venedikt Yerofeyev's Moscow to the End of the Line with this genuinely uplifting, if decidedly unorthodox, tale of survival and absolution. * Slavic and East European Journal *Susanne Fusso has done an admirable job with this immensely complicated text. * The Russian Review *This is a short, dense read (kudos to Fusso for her translation) that evokes all of the hopelessness and haplessness that filled life in that unusual period. And it is so beautifully written that is requires multiple visits. * Russian Life *Fusso's translation admirably retains Gandlevsky's dizzying cocktail of literary diction and slang, his relentless allusiveness to high and low culture. * Cosmonauts Avenue *That the poetry of [Gandlevsky's] prose resonates in translation is a tribute to Susanne Fusso's mastery of both modern, colloquial Russian and Gandlevsky's milieu. * World Literature Today *Fusso has provided an outstanding translation, drawing on her deep knowledge and understanding of Russian culture and language. Her choices of English equivalents for Gandlevsky's colloquial Russian and her sensitivity to English readers' need for additional cultural translation are remarkable. * Canadian Slavonic Papers *We owe Susanne Fusso a great debt of gratitude for resourcefully tackling the challenge of bringing a major contemporary Russian prose text to the attention of a wide range of readers. * Slavic Review *
£21.59
Cornell University Press On the Landing
Book SynopsisA Yiddish Book Center Translation In these sixteen stories, available in English for the first time, prize-winning author Yenta Mash traces an arc across continents, across upheavals and regime changes, and across the phases of a woman's life. Mash's protagonists are often in transit, poised "on the landing" on their way to or from somewhere...Trade ReviewEllen Cassedy has done marvelous work combing through Mash's four collections to select these stories and bringing them to life in an English that honors the beauty and texture of the author's vision. Highly recommended for all libraries. * Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews *Mash's compact stories draw from her difficult life—including her experiences in the Siberian gulag, her postwar decades in Kishinev and her immigration to Israel in the 1970s. These small gems give voice both to the insufficiently documented story of Jewish deportees in Siberia and to the unique experience of Bessarabian Jews. * J. The Jewish News of Northern California *Each story is a gem. Mash's narrative skill is quietly astonishing. * Jewish Book Council *Mash's collection keeps us alert to the riches to be discoveredshowing us the many worlds in which Yiddish thrived and suffered in the twentieth century. * In Geveb *Yenta Mash's stories are a must—a reminder that, through the persecutions in the Russian Pale, 'something very important has been lost,' but also that something strong survives. * Foreword Reviews *Dor ayn, dor oys, der emes blaybt! (From one generation to the next, the truth will out!) * Yiddish Branzhe *An important contribution... much appreciated. * Yiddish Forverts *Small gems. * jweekly.com *The stories provide nuanced insight into their perspectives and psychology, perhaps it is the extremity of many of the stories' settings that draws the reader's attention to the universal and away from the particular. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
£12.34
Ohio University Press Not Out of Hate A Novel of Burma
Book SynopsisMa Ma Lay’s 1955 novel of the marriage between a rural teenager to a powerful Anglophile twenty years her senior, set in prewar Burma, is an engaging drama, finely observed work of social realism, and stirring rejection of Western cultural dominance by Burma’s foremost female author and one of its preeminent voices for change.Trade Review“Altogether this book is much more than the mere translation of a representative work: it reveals a too well hidden culture, its refinement and its depth.” * Journal of Southeast Asian Studies *“(Not Out of Hate) is complemented well by Robert Vore’s interesting afterword. Vore draws a number of parallels between Ma Ma Lay’s novel and George Orwell’s earlier Burmese Days, in which Orwell, stationed in lower Burma when Ma Ma Lay was growing up there, makes a number of similar observations about British colonial rule.” * Asian Studies Review *
£20.69
Pushcart Press The Pushcart Prize XLVII
Book Synopsis
£15.19
University of Texas Press The Scarecrow
Book SynopsisThe Scarecrow is the final volume of Ibrahim al-Koni’s Oasis trilogy, which chronicles the founding, flourishing, and decline of a Saharan oasis. Fittingly, this continuation of a tale of greed and corruption opens with a meeting of the conspirators who assassinated the community’s leader at the end of the previous novel, The Puppet. They punished him for opposing the use of gold in business transactions—a symptom of a critical break with their nomadic past—and now they must search for a leader who shares their fetishistic love of gold. A desert retreat inspires the group to select a leader at random, but their “choice,” it appears, is not entirely human. This interloper from the spirit world proves a self-righteous despot, whose intolerance of humanity presages disaster for an oasis besieged by an international alliance. Though al-Koni has repeatedly stressed that he is not a political author, readers may see parallels not only to aTable of Contents Introduction: Al-Koni’s Demons The Omen The Prophecy The Scarecrow The Gifts The Edicts Blindness Wantahet The Epidemic The Raids The Beauty The Idol The Sacrificial Offering About the Author
£16.14
University of Texas Press The Quality of Life Report
Book SynopsisMeghan Daum''s unforgettable debut novel brings her sharp wit and courageous social commentary to the story of Lucinda Trout, a New York television reporter in search of greener pastures. Moving to the slower-paced, friendly, and vastly more affordable Midwestern town of Prairie City, Lucinda zealously creates a series of televised reports for her New York audience about her newfound quality of life. But when Lucinda falls for eccentric local Mason Clay, her naïveté about the real world leads her down an unexpected path, where she encounters, among other things, a drafty old farmhouse filled with children, an ever-growing menagerie of farm animals, and the harshest winter the region has seen in twenty years. In other words, simplicity just isn''t as simple as it is cracked up to be, and 'quality of life,' Lucinda learns, is much more complicated than she ever imagined.Trade ReviewDaum’s enormous comic gift—and her ability to use it in the service of fundamentally serious issues—is an unexpected delight. * New York Times Book Review *A crisp, wisecracking voice . . . an admirably nuanced view of the American heartland. * New Yorker *Funny, literate . . . this is a surprising, entertaining, and often touching story of a single woman lurching into her thirties looking for love and fulfillment, but mostly just finding herself. Top quality. * People *Daum has a charming, breezy style and a pretty wicked sense of humor. . . . The Quality of Life Report is great fun. * USA Today *The simple life never looked so complicated. * Time *Table of Contents Foreword Open Arms, Open Minds Alternative Lifestyle Alert A Serious, More Humanitarian Direction The Lay of the Land A Sociocultural Analysis of the Margin of Error Rode Hard and Put Away Wet How to Throw a Barn Dance for Under $300 The Hidden Benefits of Tanning Today’s Word Is Glamoricious The Guy in the Clouds Embrace, Empathize, Empower The Margin Widens One Year Later Acknowledgments An Interview with Meghan Daum A Note on the Author
£12.34
Duke University Press Discovering Fiction
Book SynopsisOver the past twenty years, Chinese novelist Yan Lianke has emerged as one of the most important writers in the world. In Discovering Fiction, Yan offers insights into his views on literature and realism, the major works that inspired him, and his theories of writing. He juxtaposes discussions of the high realism of Leo Tolstoy and Lu Xun against Franz Kafka’s modernism and Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism, charting the relationship between causality, truth, and modes of realism. He also discusses his approach to realism, which he terms “mythorealism”—a way of capturing the world’s underlying truth by relying on the allegories, myths, legends, and dreamscapes that emerge from daily life. Revealing and instructive, Discovering Fiction gives readers an unprecedented look into the mind and art of a literary giant.Trade Review"Yan’s commentaries on the realist canon emerging over the last several hundred years are consistently insightful and often strikingly illuminating, as in his assessments of how the strongest writers, from Defoe to Turgenev and beyond, have continually shifted readers’ understanding of what counts as reality. . . . A sometimes dense but always discerning consideration of how truth emerges across an impressive array of global literature." * Kirkus Reviews *"A thought-provoking look at the state of literature, and how it came to pass." * Publishers Weekly *Table of ContentsTranslator's Introduction. Creating Reality and Surpassing Realism / Carlos Rojas ix 1. Realism's Four Levels of Truth 1 2. Zero Causality 35 3. Full Causality 51 4. Partial Causality 59 5. Inner Causality 83 6. Mythorealism 99 Appendix: Chinese Authors and Works 125 Notes 129 Bibliography 133 Index 137
£62.90
New York University Press Cecil Dreeme
Book SynopsisA curious gem of 19th-century gothic fictionCecil Dreeme is one of the queerest American novels of the 19th century. This edition, which includes a new introduction contextualizing the sexual history of the period and queer longings of the book, brings a rare, almost forgotten, sensational gothic novel set in New York's West Village back to light. Published posthumously in 1861, the novel centers on Robert Byng, a young man who moves back to New York after traveling abroad and finds himself unmarried and underemployed, adrift in the heathenish dens of lower Manhattan. When he takes up rooms in Chrysalis Collegea thinly veiled version of the 19th-century New York University building in Washington Squarehe quickly finds himself infatuated with a young painter lodging there, named Cecil Dreeme. As their friendship grows and the novel unfolds against the backdrop of the bohemian West Village, Robert confesses that he loves Cecil with a love passing the love of women. Yet, there are dark foTrade ReviewCecil Dreeme defies easy categorization. A mid-19th century queer/trans* novel, it mixes genres and perversities as it delights in combining Whitmanesque rhapsody with gothic dread, Wildean cosmopolitan seductions with very American scenes. This beguiling literary treasure provides us all with material for queer pleasure and pedagogy. -- Lisa Duggan,New York UniversityA story of treachery and tenderness,Cecil Dreemedescribes the spiritual struggles of an impressionable young American returned from Europe to the all-male haunts of lower Manhattan. This timely reprint of the popular nineteenth-century novel recalls the queer, Gothic past of the U.S. nation-state. Peter Coviellos lively introduction describes the ambiguous pleasures of ardent comradeship in a shifting erotic and political landscape. -- Heather Love,author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer HistoryCecil Dreemeis more than a great New York novel. It is also a key text for anybody interested in the history of gender and queerness in American thoughtnot just thought that has taken place on these shores, but the history of ideas precisely about this nation itself, its values, and its direction in history. * Public Books *Cecil Dreemeis remarkable, compelling, and completely unclassifiable...This prophetic and rich novel whose very existence must be seen as surprising against the backdrop of 21st century skepticism as to the possibility of 'gay' literature in pre-modern times. It deserves the widest possible readership. * The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review *
£62.90
New York University Press Cecil Dreeme
Book SynopsisA curious gem of 19th-century gothic fictionCecil Dreeme is one of the queerest American novels of the 19th century. This edition, which includes a new introduction contextualizing the sexual history of the period and queer longings of the book, brings a rare, almost forgotten, sensational gothic novel set in New York's West Village back to light. Published posthumously in 1861, the novel centers on Robert Byng, a young man who moves back to New York after traveling abroad and finds himself unmarried and underemployed, adrift in the heathenish dens of lower Manhattan. When he takes up rooms in Chrysalis Collegea thinly veiled version of the 19th-century New York University building in Washington Squarehe quickly finds himself infatuated with a young painter lodging there, named Cecil Dreeme. As their friendship grows and the novel unfolds against the backdrop of the bohemian West Village, Robert confesses that he loves Cecil with a love passing the love of women. Yet, there are dark foTrade ReviewCecil Dreeme defies easy categorization. A mid-19th century queer/trans* novel, it mixes genres and perversities as it delights in combining Whitmanesque rhapsody with gothic dread, Wildean cosmopolitan seductions with very American scenes. This beguiling literary treasure provides us all with material for queer pleasure and pedagogy. -- Lisa Duggan,New York UniversityA story of treachery and tenderness,Cecil Dreemedescribes the spiritual struggles of an impressionable young American returned from Europe to the all-male haunts of lower Manhattan. This timely reprint of the popular nineteenth-century novel recalls the queer, Gothic past of the U.S. nation-state. Peter Coviellos lively introduction describes the ambiguous pleasures of ardent comradeship in a shifting erotic and political landscape. -- Heather Love,author of Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer HistoryCecil Dreemeis more than a great New York novel. It is also a key text for anybody interested in the history of gender and queerness in American thoughtnot just thought that has taken place on these shores, but the history of ideas precisely about this nation itself, its values, and its direction in history. * Public Books *Cecil Dreemeis remarkable, compelling, and completely unclassifiable...This prophetic and rich novel whose very existence must be seen as surprising against the backdrop of 21st century skepticism as to the possibility of 'gay' literature in pre-modern times. It deserves the widest possible readership. * The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review *
£15.19
University of Nebraska Press Forget I Told You This
Book SynopsisWinner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction Amy Black, a queer single mother and an aspiring artist in love with calligraphy, dreams of a coveted artist's residency at the world's largest social media company, Q. One ink-black October night, when the power is out in the hills of Oakland, California, a stranger asks Amy to transcribe a love letter for him. When the stranger suddenly disappears, Amy's search for the letter's recipient leads her straight to Q and the most beautiful illuminated manuscript she has ever seen, the Codex Argentus, hidden away in Q's Library of Books That Don't Exist-and to a group of data privacy vigilantes who want her to burn Q to the ground. Amy's curiosity becomes her salvation, as she's drawn closer and closer to the secret societies and crackpot philosophers that haunt the city's abandoned warehouses and defunct train depots. All of it leads to an opportunity of a lifetime: an artist's residency deep in the holographic halls of Q headquarters. It's a dream come true-so long as she follows Q's rules. Trade Review"Confronting timely questions such as how to preserve free will in a data-driven society while also telling a humane tale about rising above tragedy and disappointment, Forget I Told You This is a memorable novel—an adventure through words and emotions."—Foreword Reviews, starred"I appreciate how Zaid—in addition to delivering a smart, surreal, and sexy thriller with a perfect ending—gets at the tensions between my generation's love of things we can hold in our hands and the increasingly overwhelming universe of digital media, Big Data, consumer surveillance, and AI—wherein we are fed things more often than we discover them."—Michael Mechanic, Mother Jones“Forget I Told You This sets our high-tech world of phones and apps vibrating against the beauty and history of pen and ink. Twisty and textured, rich and hyperreal, Hilary Zaid’s world is dense with mysterious invitations. In fact, her novel itself is exactly such an invitation—and I’m very glad I said ‘yes.’”—Robin Sloan, author of Sourdough and the New York Times bestseller Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore“Hilary Zaid has written a gorgeous delight, lush with things not often seen—a sexy midlife heroine, handmade magic, and love letters both as plot and to a certain time and place in San Francisco. I loved every word.”—Claire McMillan, author of Alchemy of a Blackbird“[Forget I Told You This is] not about Torah, exactly—although Amy reflects that ‘on calfskin curled around two wooden rollers had been tattooed the history of the world’—but anyone who resonates to the sacredness of text and the fragility of memory will feel those ideas being delicately and elaborately explored. Amy’s emotional touchstone is a ‘dark soferet’ [female scribe] she once saw working away in a Jewish museum, ‘murmuring over her sacred words. . . . Because the text was more important than the scribe. That was our tradition.’ Zaid’s first novel, Paper Is White, was about Holocaust historians and survivors, and in this novel, too, memory and forgetting become something absolutely central.”—Amy E. Schwartz, Moment magazine “Deftly weaving together elements of a futuristic thriller, a family drama, and an ode to illuminated manuscripts, Forget I Told You This follows lonely scribe Amy Black on her quest to discover the mystery behind tech giant Q, a local resistance group seeking her help, and ultimately, herself. The prose is gorgeous, the plot tense, and Amy is a wonderfully flawed and sympathetic character whose intense battle between her artistic ambition, the demands of her family, and her own need for love form the beating heart of this gripping and imaginative novel.”—Erin Swan, author of Walk the Vanished Earth“Forget I Told You This, Hilary Zaid’s portrait of the artist as a face-blind queer scrivener obsessed with ancient texts takes us to the back alleys of Oakland and the secrets rooms of a social media giant that is god-like in its omniscience and omnipotence—a world very much like the present. In this literary thriller made up of shifting identities and realities, where nothing and nobody is as they seem, one thing is a constant: the penetrating insight and elegance of Zaid’s prose.”—Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade
£16.14
Cornell University Press Illegible
Book SynopsisSergey Gandlevsky''s 2002 novel Illegible has a double time focus, centering on the immediate experiences of Lev Krivorotov, a twenty-year-old poet living in Moscow in the 1970s, as well as his retrospective meditations thirty years later after most of his hopes have foundered. As the story begins, Lev is involved in a tortured affair with an older woman and consumed by envy of his more privileged friend and fellow beginner poet Nikita, one of the children of high Soviet functionaries who were known as golden youth.In both narratives, Krivorotov recounts with regret and self-castigation the failure of a double infatuation, his erotic love for the young student Anya and his artistic love for the poet Viktor Chigrashov. When this double infatuation becomes a romantic triangle, the consequences are tragic.In Illegible, as in his poems, Gandlevsky gives us unparalleled access to the atmosphere of the city of Moscow and the ethos of the late Soviet and post-SoTrade Review"The quality of the translation is superb. The work captures Soviet and anti-Soviet language, themes, and the ambience of the time and the place, but it does not 'read like a translation.' The naturalness of the language is stunning." -- Sarah Pratt, University of Southern California, author of Nikolai Zabolotsky"The translation is excellent, the notes informative. Gandlevsky's novella provides insight into the everyday life of Russian/Soviet poets and writers who were part of the unofficial culture of the 1970s." -- Alexandra Smith, University of EdinburghTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction 1. Chapter 1 2. Chapter 2 3. Chapter 3 4. Chapter 4 Appendix Notes
£18.99
Stanford University Press Ninette of Sin Street
Book SynopsisPublished in Tunis in 1938, Ninette of Sin Street is one of the first works of Tunisian fiction in French. Ninette's author, Vitalis Danon, arrived in Tunisia under the aegis of the Franco-Jewish organization the Alliance Israélite Universelle and quickly adopted—and was adopted by—the local community. Ninette is an unlikely protagonist: Compelled by poverty to work as a prostitute, she dreams of a better life and an education for her son. Plucky and street-wise, she enrolls her son in the local school and the story unfolds as she narrates her life to the school's headmaster. Ninette's account is both a classic rags-to-riches tale and a subtle, incisive critique of French colonialism. That Ninette's story should still prove surprising today suggests how much we stand to learn from history, and from the secrets of Sin Street. This volume offers the first English translation of Danon's best-known work. A selection of his letters and an editors' introduction and notes provide context for this cornerstone of Judeo-Tunisian letters.Trade Review"Any responsible teacher (or serious reader!) of modern Jewish literature already understands the urgency with which we need to find more diverse, compelling narratives that explore Jewish experiences throughout the Sephardi and Mizrahi diasporas. Vitalis Danon's Ninette seems, in this respect, almost too good to be true: a pioneering, charming Franco-Tunisian novella that manages, like the best monologues of Sholem Aleichem, to present us with the voice of one indefatigable, unforgettable Jewish woman, and through her, the complexities of Jewish life in a North African city."—Josh Lambert, academic director, Yiddish Book Center, and author, Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture"Ninette of Sin Street is a riveting tale of a poor unwed Jewish mother from Sfax struggling to provide for her son. Its intimate and intricate details, beautifully contextualized by Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, will fascinate and enrich all those interested in the paradoxes and power plays of colonial life when experienced from below."—Frances Malino, Wellesley College"Ninette of Sin Street, a novella by Vitalis Danon provides Anglophone readers with a rare window into Jewish life in interwar Tunisia. It also gives an excellent overview of the influence and legacy of the Alliance Isralite Universelle (AIU), a French-based institution that offered a European-style education to Jewish children across the Mediterranean basin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...Brozgal and Stein's introduction does an excellent job of introducing the reader to both Vitalis Danon and the history of the AIU...a valuable resource to both historians and literary scholars interested in Jewish life in the Maghreb in the age of colonialism."—Nadia Malinovich, H-France Review"Ninette of Sin Street is a precious resource as it brings us a taste of a world that is no more....The scholarly additions to the volume are also most valuable."—Judith Roumani, Sephardic HorizonsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Colonial Society from the Gutter Up 1. Ninette of Sin Street 2. Appendix B: A Visit to the Jews of Djerba (Travel Notes), 1929 3. Appendix A: A Flaneur in Sfax, 1918 4. Appendix C: Mission to Gabès, 1937 5. Appendix D: A Swan Song, 1963
£68.40
Stanford University Press Us&Them: A Novel
Book SynopsisLili and Goli have argued endlessly about where their mother, Bibijan, should live since the Iranian Revolution. They disagree about her finances too, which remain blocked as long as she insists on waiting for her son—still missing but not presumed dead yet—to return from the Iran–Iraq war. But once they begin to "share" the old woman, sending her back and forth between Paris and Los Angeles, they start asking themselves where the money might be coming from. Only their Persian half-sister in Iran and the Westernized granddaughter of the family have the courage to face up to the answers, and only when Bibijan finally relinquishes the past can she remember the truth. A story mirrored in fragmented lives, Us&Them explores the ludicrous and the tragic, the venal and the generous-hearted aspects of Iranian life away from home. It is a story both familial and familiar in its generational tensions and misunderstandings, its push and pull of obligations and expectations. It also highlights how "we" can become "them" at any moment, for our true exile is alienation from others. Acclaimed author Bahiyyih Nakhjavani offers a poignant satire about migration, one of the vital issues of our times.Trade Review"Us&Them is a timely exploration of the Iranian psyche, a nuanced reflection of the Iranian character: its largesse, its rich absurdity and genuine warmth, but also its complexity, its contradictions and internal conflicts. As an Iranian born in the U.K. I found it challenging, funny, moving and I'm now fretting about where I belong: am I one of 'us' or one of 'them'?" * Omid Djalili *"With Swiftian wit and prose both pithy and poetic, Us&Them offers a searingly honest satirical image of Iranian society and its large diaspora. In the alchemy of Bahiyyih Nakhjavani's masterful narrative, this becomes a tale of the traumas of exile, and of the human condition in a troubled time." -- Abbas Milani, Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies * Stanford University *"A glitteringly poignant novel. Beautifully cadenced, drily acute about human relationships, it keeps global and local perfectly in balance and addresses one of the central topics of our time: how to live within the losses and suspensions of diaspora while grieving the dead, honouring the family and being as honest as we can." -- Ruth Padel * author of Where the Serpent Lives and Darwin—A Life in Poems, Judge of 2016 International Man Booker Prize *"Sensitive, subtle, evocative. Bahiyyih Nakhjavani weaves threads of silk with her words, skillfully filling in the silences within and between cultures. It is a rare author who can write with such clarity of vision, compassion of heart and power of words and leave us readers in awe of her wisdom at the end." -- Elif Shafak * author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love *
£19.79
Stanford University Press Ninette of Sin Street
Book SynopsisPublished in Tunis in 1938, Ninette of Sin Street is one of the first works of Tunisian fiction in French. Ninette's author, Vitalis Danon, arrived in Tunisia under the aegis of the Franco-Jewish organization the Alliance Israélite Universelle and quickly adopted—and was adopted by—the local community. Ninette is an unlikely protagonist: Compelled by poverty to work as a prostitute, she dreams of a better life and an education for her son. Plucky and street-wise, she enrolls her son in the local school and the story unfolds as she narrates her life to the school's headmaster. Ninette's account is both a classic rags-to-riches tale and a subtle, incisive critique of French colonialism. That Ninette's story should still prove surprising today suggests how much we stand to learn from history, and from the secrets of Sin Street. This volume offers the first English translation of Danon's best-known work. A selection of his letters and an editors' introduction and notes provide context for this cornerstone of Judeo-Tunisian letters.Trade Review"Any responsible teacher (or serious reader!) of modern Jewish literature already understands the urgency with which we need to find more diverse, compelling narratives that explore Jewish experiences throughout the Sephardi and Mizrahi diasporas. Vitalis Danon's Ninette seems, in this respect, almost too good to be true: a pioneering, charming Franco-Tunisian novella that manages, like the best monologues of Sholem Aleichem, to present us with the voice of one indefatigable, unforgettable Jewish woman, and through her, the complexities of Jewish life in a North African city."—Josh Lambert, academic director, Yiddish Book Center, and author, Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture"Ninette of Sin Street is a riveting tale of a poor unwed Jewish mother from Sfax struggling to provide for her son. Its intimate and intricate details, beautifully contextualized by Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, will fascinate and enrich all those interested in the paradoxes and power plays of colonial life when experienced from below."—Frances Malino, Wellesley College"Ninette of Sin Street, a novella by Vitalis Danon provides Anglophone readers with a rare window into Jewish life in interwar Tunisia. It also gives an excellent overview of the influence and legacy of the Alliance Isralite Universelle (AIU), a French-based institution that offered a European-style education to Jewish children across the Mediterranean basin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...Brozgal and Stein's introduction does an excellent job of introducing the reader to both Vitalis Danon and the history of the AIU...a valuable resource to both historians and literary scholars interested in Jewish life in the Maghreb in the age of colonialism."—Nadia Malinovich, H-France Review"Ninette of Sin Street is a precious resource as it brings us a taste of a world that is no more....The scholarly additions to the volume are also most valuable."—Judith Roumani, Sephardic HorizonsTable of ContentsIntroduction: Colonial Society from the Gutter Up 1. Ninette of Sin Street 2. Appendix B: A Visit to the Jews of Djerba (Travel Notes), 1929 3. Appendix A: A Flaneur in Sfax, 1918 4. Appendix C: Mission to Gabès, 1937 5. Appendix D: A Swan Song, 1963
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Italian Chronicles
Book SynopsisNineteenth-century French writer Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, is one of the earliest leading practitioners of realism, his stories filled with sharp analyses of his characters’ psychology. This translation of Stendhal’s Chroniques italiennes is a collection of nine tales written between 1829 and 1840, many of which were published only after his death. Together these collected tales reveal a great novelist working with highly dramatic subject matter to forge a vision of life lived at its most intense.The setting for these tales is a romanticized Italy, a place Stendhal viewed as unpolluted by bourgeois inhibitions and conformism. From the hothouse atmosphere of aristocratic convents to the horrors of the Cenci family, the tales in Italian Chronicles all feature passionate, transgressive characters engaged in “la chasse au bonheur”—the quest for happiness. Most of the tragic, violent tales are based on historical events, with Stendhal using history to validate his characters’ extreme behaviors as they battle literal and figurative oppression and try to break through to freedom.Complete with revenge, bloody daggers, poisonings, and thick-walled nunneries, this new translation of Italian Chronicles includes four never-before-translated stories and a fascinating introduction detailing the origins of the book. It is sure to gratify established Stendhal fans as well as readers new to the writer.Trade Review"Italian Chronicles remains rugged rather than polished in MacKenzie’s arch rendering. But as the author insists, the intensity of these reimagined Italian lovers, fighters, and plotters is best captured bluntly."—PopMatters"Italian Chronicles nevertheless throws down a timely challenge to our plague of political correctness, that grimly self-inflicted version of what he called ‘popery’."—London Review of BooksTable of ContentsContentsTranslator’s IntroductionStendhal’s PrefacesItalian Chronicles (1855)Vanina Vanini; or, Particulars concerning the Most Recent Gathering of a Cell of the Carbonari—Discovered in the Papal StatesVittoria Accoramboni: Duchess of BraccianoThe Cenci: 1599The Duchess of PallianoThe Abbess of CastroItalian Stories The JewSan Francesco a RipaToo Much Favor Is Deadly: A Tale of 1589Suora Scolastica: A Story That Shocked All Naples in 1740Translator’s Notes
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Laurentian Divide: A Novel
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short StoryPoignant portrayals of life on the edge in northern Minnesota border country, from the best-selling author of These Granite Islands and Vacationland Bitter winters are nothing new in Hatchet Inlet, hard up against the ridge of the Laurentian Divide, but the advent of spring can’t thaw the community’s collective grief, lingering since a senseless tragedy the previous fall. What is different this year is what’s missing: Rauri Paar, the last private landowner in the Reserve, whose annual emergence from his remote iced-in islands marks the beginning of spring and the promise of a kinder season. The town’s residents gather at the local diner and, amid talk of spring weather, the latest gossip, roadkill, and the daily special, take bets on when Rauri will appear—or imagine what happened to him during the long and brutal winter. Retired union miner and widower Alpo Lahti is about to wed the diner’s charming and lively waitress, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri still unaccounted for, celebration seems premature. Alpo’s son Pete struggles to find his straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy might be having second thoughts. Weaving in and out of each other’s reach, trying hard to do their best (all the while wondering what that might be), the residents of this remote town in all their sweetness and sorrow remind us once more of the inescapable lurches of the heart and unexpected turns of our human comedy.Trade Review"Hilarious, smart, moving, and kind, Laurentian Divide is good for the soul, or anyway, it was good for mine."—Richard Russo"There aren’t many writers on the planet who can take a reader’s heart apart and put it back together again with the sureness of Sarah Stonich, who does exactly that over and over again in Laurentian Divide, her best yet. Funny and wise in equal measure, here’s a novel for everyone. What a treasure."—Peter Geye, author of Wintering"With seamless grace, Sarah Stonich has again woven the towering majesty of Minnesota's Arrowhead Country with the endearing miscellany of its denizens, creating a tapestry both elegant and earthy. Here, reader, are joy and artistry."—Faith Sullivan, author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse"Laurentian Divide is rich, funny, and overflowing with life—Sarah Stonich at the top of her powers."—Will Weaver, author of Sweet Land"With a nimble hand and wry voice, Sarah Stonich pilots this generous tale—incisive, musical, and spiced with pungent observation so that Laurentian Divide becomes the best sort of trip."—Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River and Virgil Wander"It was a pleasure to spend time with these characters again and see the family they have created within their community. Sarah Stonich’s beautiful prose, sly humor, and obvious fondness for her subject matter make Laurentian Divide a must-read."—Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books"Thanks to Stonich’s keen depictions, this is a small town peopled with actual people: diverse individuals united by a common experience of place. Laurentian Divide transports attention to a ‘scrap of near-nowhere’ because ‘life isn’t something that happens to you—how you choose to react to what happens is life.’"—Foreword Review"Stonich weaves past and present into a lyrical, immersive novel. Fans of Kent Haruf and Paulette Jiles will fall in love with Stonich’s depiction of Minnesota: harsh and welcoming, friendly and unforgiving, all at once. Exploring the consequences of actions set in motion months, years, or even decades ago, Stonich’s slow burn of a novel questions what—and who—can belong to us."—Booklist "Laurentian Divide does what a good sequel should. It fills in details and updates on the characters that we love, but also tells a compelling story of its own. There is an understanding of the bittersweet realities of life, an acceptance of the good and bad that comes with the simple act of living." —Nicole M. Burrell
£14.24
University of Minnesota Press Once in a Blue Moon Lodge: A Novel
Book SynopsisSet adrift when her mother sells the salon that has been a neighborhood institution for decades, Nora Rolvaag takes a camping trip, intending to do nothing more than roast marshmallows over an open fire and under a starry sky. Two chance encounters, however, will have enormous consequences, and her getaway turns out to be more of a retreat from her daily life than she ever imagined. But Nora is the do-or-die-trying daughter of Patty Jane, who now must embrace the House of Curl’s slogan: “Expect the Unexpected.”With her trademark wit and warmth, Lorna Landvik follows Nora and an ever-growing cast of characters between city and wooded retreat, Minnesota and Norway, a past that’s secret and a future that’s promising, but uncertain. Responding to a mysterious letter with a Norwegian postmark, Nora’s grandmother Ione travels to her native land to tend to a dying cousin and her husband—two people who played a painful, pivotal role in her past. Nora accompanies her and is surprised by her grandmother’s long-ago love story—but even more surprised by the beginning of her own.A book about making new beginnings out of old endings, Once in a Blue Moon Lodge invites readers to check in, set down their baggage, and spend time with the kind of people who understand that while they can’t control all that life throws at them, they can at least control how they catch it. And as anyone who has stopped in at Patty Jane’s House of Curl will tell you: you’re in for a rollicking good time with characters whose strengths, foibles, and choices will have you laughing and crying. Hankerings for coffee and gingerbread cookies may also be experienced.Trade Review"At long last! Patty Jane and her irresistible band of big-hearted merry-makers return to us. Lorna Landvik’s humor is wrapped around a core of love, common sense, and good cooking. Pull up an easy chair, pour a glass of wine, and enjoy this grand family reunion."—Faith Sullivan, author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse"Lorna Landvik creates characters and places so warm and real that reading Once in a Blue Moon Lodge feels like coming home (if you're lucky enough to be surrounded by people and places as weird and wonderful as Lorna's—I think I am)."—Nora McInerny, author of It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too)"There is a charm and warmth to this hopeful tale in which love is the glue that holds people together. Landvik's love for her characters is evident."—Kirkus Reviews"A people lover's book. This refreshingly simple family tale provides a comfy diversion from the everyday world."—Kirkus Reviews"Her characters, their gentle humor and world view, feel like home."—Always Packed for Adventure"The many twists and turns in the story will provide excellent fodder for book-club discussions."—Foreword Reviews"Landvik’s characters are generous and witty. They are big-hearted and inclusive. They inspire others, welcome strangers and appreciate practical things done well."—Star Tribune"This novel is suffused with love—between parents and children, between spouses or lovers, between people who are unrelated but considered family. There is a gentle humor and good-heartedness in all of Landvik’s books, a fondness for her characters that touches the reader."—Pioneer Press"A book about making new beginnings out of old endings, Once in a Blue Moon Lodge invites readers to check in, set down their baggage and spend time with the kind of people who understand that while they can't control all that life throws at them, they can at least control how they catch it."—Where the Reader Grows"I fell in love with the characters."—Reviews of Books On My Nightstand"The ties that bind the family and the truths that come out over time are evident and true to form for what you would expect from a feel-good contemporary novel."—Clues and Reviews"You’ll get caught up in short order, and you’ll get wrapped up even faster."—The Bookworm Sez"With pockets of humor and the lighthearted nature of a small town, this work of fiction will appeal to those who enjoy cozy mysteries."—Green Bay Press-Gazette
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes): A
Book SynopsisA bittersweet, seriously funny novel of a life, a small town, and a key to our troubled times traced through a newspaper columnist’s half-century of taking in, and taking on, the world The curmudgeon who wrote the column “Ramblin’s by Walt” in the Granite Creek Gazette dismissed his successor as “puking on paper.” But when Haze Evans first appeared in the small-town newspaper, she earned fans by writing a story about her bachelor uncle who brought a Queen of the Rodeo to Thanksgiving dinner. Now, fifty years later, when the beloved columnist suffers a massive stroke and falls into a coma, publisher Susan McGrath fills the void (temporarily, she hopes) with Haze’s past columns, along with the occasional reprinted responses from readers. Most letters were favorable, although Haze did have her trolls; one Joseph Snell in particular dubbed her “liberal” ideas the “chronicles of a radical hag.” Never censoring herself, Haze chose to mollify her critics with homey recipes—recognizing, in her constantly practical approach to the world and her community, that buttery Almond Crescents will certainly “melt away any misdirected anger.”Framed by news stories of half a century and annotated with the town’s chorus of voices, Haze’s story unfolds, as do those of others touched by the Granite Creek Gazette, including Susan, struggling with her troubled marriage, and her teenage son Sam, who—much to his surprise—enjoys his summer job reading the paper archives and discovers secrets that have been locked in the files for decades, along with sad and surprising truths about Haze’s past. With her customary warmth and wit, Lorna Landvik summons a lifetime at once lost and recovered, a complicated past that speaks with knowing eloquence to a confused present. Her topical but timeless Chronicles of a Radical Hag reminds us—sometimes with a subtle touch, sometimes with gobsmacking humor—of the power of words and of silence, as well as the wonder of finding in each other what we never even knew we were missing.Trade Review"A comic love letter to journalism and literature, Lorna Landvik’s newest novel is smart, funny, and intimate, with a terrifically memorable cast of small-town characters. Read the book, then head for the kitchen and start baking. Delicious!"—Julie Schumacher, author of The Shakespeare Requirement"With a sprinkle of some very special Minnesota magic, Lorna Landvik has once again created an absolute delight on the page. Chronicles of a Radical Hag is a tribute to hardworking journalists, the power of feminism, and, as always, the importance of friends and family. Book clubs will be gathering with platters of Almond Crescents and coffee as they talk long into the night."—Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books"Landvik uses wisdom and her trademark humor to encourage readers to have a thoughtful response to the world and the people with whom they share it. A pleasure to read."—Kirkus Reviews"At a time when local newspapers are nearing extinction, and reporters are deemed enemies of the people, Landvik’s smart and lovely paean to journalists is a welcome reminder of the important role they play in the lives of those who depend on newspapers for more than just information."—Booklist"Landvik’s heartwarming novel is packed with big-hearted people tenderly and hilariously learning to appreciate the past and each other by visiting the planet of the town’s octogenarian columnist and coming away the richer for it."—Star Tribune"This is a real tribute to all of the small-town, warmhearted, big-mouthed ‘radical hags’ out there, and a truly fun read for them, too."—The Washington Post"Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) uncovers secrets, cures heartaches, changes assumptions and offers opportunities."—Hutchinson Leader"Your book club wants this book. Put it by your easy chair, bedside, lunch box, or tuck it in the car. Find it in the library or the bookstore because Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes) is a book you’ll want to take with you."—Rushville Republican
£13.29
University of Minnesota Press In the Night of Memory: A Novel
Book SynopsisWinner: Northeastern Minnesota Book Award - Fiction Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association U.P. Notable Book AwardTwo lost sisters find family, and themselves, among the voices of an Ojibwe reservation When Loretta surrenders her young girls to the county and then disappears, she becomes one more missing Native woman in Indian Country’s long devastating history of loss. But she is also a daughter of the Mozhay Point Reservation in northern Minnesota and the mother of Azure and Rain, ages 3 and 4, and her absence haunts all the lives she has touched—and all the stories they tell in this novel. In the Night of Memory returns to the fictional reservation of Linda LeGarde Grover’s previous award-winning books, introducing readers to a new generation of the Gallette family as Azure and Rain make their way home.After a string of foster placements, from cold to kind to cruel, the girls find their way back to their extended Mozhay family, and a new set of challenges, and stories, unfolds. Deftly, Grover conjures a chorus of women’s voices (sensible, sensitive Azure’s first among them) to fill in the sorrows and joys, the loves and the losses that have brought the girls and their people to this moment. Though reconciliation is possible, some ruptures simply cannot be repaired; they can only be lived through, or lived with. In the Night of Memory creates a nuanced, moving, often humorous picture of two Ojibwe girls becoming women in light of this lesson learned in the long, sharply etched shadow of Native American history.Trade Review"With In the Night of Memory, Linda LeGarde Grover offers us a gift of story across generations of Native American women. This book examines what it means to grow up poor, grow up female, and grow up in a place that should be home but feels far from belonging. Grover creates a tapestry of history and imagination, a weaving of perspectives beautiful and wise, a collection of truths that anchors and honors the experiences of Indigenous women."—Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father"In the Night of Memory is a moving story of loss and recovery in Native America. Linda LeGarde Grover has created fully realized characters pushed to the margins of their own lives but who, nevertheless, manage to live on their own terms. Riding on the wave of this poignant novel are some of the most important issues affecting American Indians today, including the loss of family and heritage and the destruction and disappearance of American Indian women. A remarkable achievement."—David Treuer"Once again Linda LeGarde Grover skillfully knots together the lives of Anishinaabeg connected to the fictional Mozhay Point Reservation. Like lace, the knotted pattern has gaps, absence, loss, and a design because of what—because of who—is missing. Set across decades and told through generations of relatives, In the Night of Memory mirrors actual history, from government removal of American Indian children to our current crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women in the United States and Canada. The intimate and interested narrative voices carry the readers, keeping them witnessing and understanding how what happened in the past never stops happening—and continues to impact communities today."—Heid Erdrich "I love this book! What a beautiful story of love and loss—from the pain of intergenerational effects to the trauma of the child welfare system to the hopefulness of community re-engagement. I felt an instant connection with the poetically named Rainfall Dawn and Azure Sky, and their mother Loretta, too. The whole family lived and breathed on the page and filled me right up as if I were there with them. I was sad to finish this one."—Katherena Vermette, author of The Break "In the Night of Memory is character driven and lyrical. Its vast, distinct chorus of matrilineal American Indian voices ring in melancholic yet dauntless tones, clarifying that community and nurturing can ameliorate absence."—Foreword Reviews, starred review "This coming of age story brings together themes of missing women, family and community, complicated histories and collective wisdoms."—Ms. Magazine "The tragic legacy of Indian boarding schools, including Rainy’s fetal alcohol syndrome, hovers over Grover’s sad but ultimately uplifting tale."—Booklist "Told with vibrancy by an Ojibwe professor and poet, this own voices story of Ojibwe girls in a situation only too common for indigenous families shouldn’t be missed."—Library Journal "Readers will come to love the strong, capable women who tell their stories here, from Azure and Rain to Dolly, with whom the girls live after they return to the reservation, their cousin Artense and women who remember Loretta as a neglected child."—Twin Cities Pioneer Press "With gorgeous imagery and verdant prose, LeGarde Grover’s novel lays bare the pain and loss of indigenous women and children while simultaneously offering a ray of hope."—Publishers Weekly "A gorgeously written story of inherited trauma and inherited resilience."—Shondaland "Powerful and moving. This is a tale of loss, of caring for others who cannot care for themselves, of trying to right a past that is deeply wrong, and of acceptance that life is never easy. It’s a tale of how, despite life’s hardships, people continue to hope, find happiness, try to find where they belong, and learn to be grateful for what few good things come into their lives."—Marquette Monthly "A must read for students and scholars alike. Grover’s ability to connect historical trauma to the problems currently facing Indigenous women are outstanding and her attention to detail creates a lasting connection to the story."—Tribal College "In the Night of Memory is a novel you won't want to put down once you've read the first page." —Ely Summer TimesTable of ContentsContentsThe Surrender of ChildrenMiskwaaMesabiDuluthTannenbaum GreenGolden ManorMoccasin Flower
£12.34
University of Minnesota Press Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma
Book SynopsisDogged by depression, doubt, and—as a trip to the Mayo Clinic has revealed—emphysema, 66-year-old Sherlock Holmes is preparing to return to England when he receives a shock: a note slipped under his hotel room door, from a vicious murdererTrade Review "I always look forward to a Larry Millett book. I’ve read every one of them."—Steve Thayer, New York Times best-selling author of The Weatherman "Larry Millett breathes new life into the classic character of Sherlock Holmes in this intriguing, home-grown mystery. Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma is both elegant and entertaining."—Allen Eskens, author of The Life We Bury Larry Millett breathes new life into the classic character of Sherlock Holmes in this intriguing, home-grown mystery. Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma is both elegant and entertaining.—Allen Eskens, author of The Life
£14.24
University of Minnesota Press The Streel: A Deadwood Mystery
Book SynopsisWomen Writing the West WILLA Award FinalistFrom “the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries” (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century DeadwoodWhen I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America.The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland’s potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul—or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed.Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue’s new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.Trade Review"With a poet’s eye, Mary Logue evokes the harsh world of frontier Deadwood, South Dakota. The Streel relates the journey of a scrappy young Irish woman as she’s forced from her homeland to the American midwest. Tersely and beautifully, Logue recreates the muddy streets of Deadwood, the haphazard keeping of the peace, and the rugged hearts and souls of those seeking their fortune in the Black Hills gold rush of the late 1800s. The Streel is both a taut mystery and a cautionary tale of the evils of greed. I loved the redoubtable heroine, Brigid Reardon, and I loved every stunning line of this fine story."—William Kent Krueger, author of This Tender Land"Mary Logue is, hands down, one of my favorite writers. The Streel shows her at the top of her game. The novel is a rich combination of elements—part history, part gripping mystery, and part immigrant saga. Highly recommended!"—Ellen Hart, author of Twisted at the Root"Mary Logue blends family lore and the history of the Irish diaspora in The Streel, a lively tale of teenage immigrants in 1880s America. Brigid finds work as a servant in St. Paul, then joins her brother and his friends in the gold fields of South Dakota, where she solves a murder and strikes it rich. Our great-grandmothers had the Right Stuff."—Elizabeth Gunn, author of Burning Meredith"Introduces a gritty, charming, clever protagonist whose musings provide a perfect period feel."—Kirkus Reviews"A well-constructed plot, lilting prose, and a heroine who’s determined to escape constricting female roles make this an exceptional regional historical."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Her background as a poet... lends her books a concise crispness not always to be found in today’s overly long novels. While this book clocks in at a little over 200 pages, it’s packed with character and action from the first page to the last."—Mystery Scene Magazine"The author of the Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins series is off on a winning new tangent with Brigid Reardon." —The Washington Post"Logue does a wonderful job of putting the reader into what is barely a town at the end of the civilized world... From Galway to New York to a grand house in St. Paul that could be on Summit Avenue, and then to Deadwood, Brigid learns she can depend only on herself as she builds a life in the new world."—Pioneer Press"In young Brigid Reardon, she has created a unique detective with a winning story. Readers will not be disappointed."—The Emporia Gazette"[Logue] brings her signature brio and nerve to this new thriller, following a young immigrant caught in a deadly plot twist, surviving by her wits and grave in 19th century America."—Northern Wilds
£13.29
University of Minnesota Press Reeling: A Novel
Book SynopsisRayAnne’s next adventure takes our intrepid heroine, haunted by her beloved grandmother’s death, to New Zealand to film a new season of her all-women fishing talk show What stage of grief is it when your grandmother’s ghost keeps popping up on your electronic devices? Denial? For RayAnne that seems to be the stage for launching the second season of Fishing!—in New Zealand. Ready or not, she is taking public television’s first all-women fishing talk show on the road, putting the cold Minnesota winter in the rearview mirror—which, it turns out, Gran is haunting, too.After a challenging first season, and RayAnne’s serendipitous ascension to host, there’s a lot at stake. With camera-wielding twins Rongo and Rangi along as crew and tour guides, RayAnne and her indefatigable producer Cassi set out across New Zealand in search of noteworthy women who fish: a skipjack boat captain navigating sexist harbors; a writer of historical suffragette fiction, which is, apparently, a thing; a reclusive Māori octogenarian who ties fishing flies for dignitaries. Their stories, and a good dose of the country’s history, are almost enough to take the edge off RayAnne’s homesickness and grief, to say nothing of jetlag—and it doesn’t hurt to discover a bird dog who fishes, an anti-fashionista, a pair of sisters fishing their way through recovery, and . . . a Hobbit? Meanwhile, the romantic and family entanglements she left behind at home haven’t exactly come untangled in her absence.Those who met RayAnne in Fishing!, Sarah Stonich’s first outing with the intrepid, accidental talk-show host, will encounter familiar and unexpected pleasures in her latest antics—and a story whose lighthearted surface and surprising depths will charm readers who now find her for the first time.Trade Review "This is a fun read, important and tender."—Star Tribune "There isn’t a whole lot of fishing in this book but that’s OK because its really about family love and the characters are wonderful."—Pioneer Press "You'll be glad there are two novels because you won't want the first one to end."—Ely Winter Times
£13.29
University of Minnesota Press Olav Audunssøn: II. Providence
Book SynopsisThe second volume in the Nobel Prize–winning writer’s epic of medieval Norway, finely capturing Undset’s fluid, natural style in a new English translation, the first in nearly a century As Norway moves into the fourteenth century, the kingdom continues to be racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas that serve as the backdrop for Sigrid Undset’s masterful story about Olav Audunssøn and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. Betrothed as children and raised as foster siblings, their unbridled love for each other sets in motion a series of dire events—with a legacy of betrayal, murder, and disgrace that will echo for generations. In Providence, the second of Olav Audunssøn’s four volumes, Olav settles in at his ancestral estate of Hestviken and soon brings Ingunn home as his wife. Both hope to put their troubles behind them as they start a new life together, but the crimes and shameful secrets of the past have a long reach and a tenacious hold. The consequences of sin, suspicion, and familial obligations may prove a greater threat to the pair’s happiness than even their long years of separation.Set in a time when royalty and religion vie for power, and bloodlines and loyalties are effectively law, Providence summons a powerful picture of Northern life in the medieval era, as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding Undset the Nobel Prize. Conveying both the intimate drama of Olav and Ingunn’s marriage and the epic sweep of their story, it is at once a moving and vivid recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution. As with her classic Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset immersed herself in legal, religious, and historical writings to create in Olav Audunssøn an astoundingly authentic and compelling portrait of Norwegian life in the Middle Ages. And as in her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, Tiina Nunnally does full justice to Undset’s fluid prose. Undset’s writing style is by turns straightforward and delicately lyrical, conveying the natural world, the complex culture, and the fraught emotional territory against which Olav’s story inexorably unfolds.Table of ContentsContentsTranslator’s NoteMap of Olav and Ingunn’s NorwayGenealogy and KinshipOlav Audunssøn’s HappinessHoly Days and Canonical HoursNotes
£14.24
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Their Pavel
Book SynopsisTranslation of nineteenth-century novel of life in a still-feudal Moravian village. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916) is Austria's most important nineteenth-century woman writer, but her works have remained largely unknown to English speakers, even her most important, the compelling Their Pavel, firstpublished serially in 1887. Based on a true incident, Their Pavel investigates the troubled social relations of a Moravian village that is endowed with the right of local governance but steeped in the habits of its feudalrelationship to the local barony. The novel explores the parallel fates of the children of a hanged murderer and thief. Milada, the appealing and alert daughter, is adopted on a whim by the aging baroness, while Pavel, the awkwardand taciturn son, is thrown upon the uncertain mercy of the village, but both suffer the stigma of their father's crime. In her sometimes grimly humorous picture of village life, the author spares neither the Catholic Church northe landed aristocracy nor the villagers themselves. Lynne Tatlock is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Distinguished Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington Universityin St. Louis.Trade ReviewEbner-Eschenbach's story of the slow and indefatigable rise of the orphaned son of an executed murderer, who is reared by his village only out of a sense of its legal obligation, is consistent with prevailing Victorian and Hapsburg era literary tastes. This highly readable rendition preserves both the spirit and the tenor of the original. Not a book just for students and scholars of literature, readers of all backgrounds and tastes should enjoy it. * CHOICE *Still captivates the reader... * SEMINAR *Tatlock succeeded admirably in paralleling the native idiom to reflect the local setting by flavoring her English text in changing moods. * GERMANIC NOTES & REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Translator's Note Their Pavel Notes
£23.74
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Stechlin
Book SynopsisFirst English translation of the final work of Theodor Fontane, one of Germany's most significant novelists. Theodor Fontane (1819-98), widely regarded as Germany's most significant novelist between Goethe and Thomas Mann, pioneered the German novel of manners and upper-class society, following a trend in European fiction of the period.The Stechlin is Fontane's last book and his political testament. Like Effi Briest, his great work on the place of women in Bismarck's empire, it is set at the apex of the Wilhelmine era, both in Berlin and on the estate of a Prussian Junker on the shores of Lake Stechlin. It is a significant historical and cultural document, probably the finest chronicle of the lifestyle of the German upper classes in the late nineteenth century; Fontane portrays the best in the life and ways of the passing Prussian aristocracy, while describing his hopes for the future of Germany and its nobility, which were never to be fully realized. Although this novel has been translated into many languages, it has never before been available in English; this edition thus fills an important gap in the significant works of European literature accessible to English readers.Trade ReviewZwiebel has produced a masterpiece in this translation of Fontane's last major work. * GERMANIC NOTES AND REVIEWS *Table of ContentsIntroduction Castle Stechlin Wutz Convent To the Egg Cottage Election in Rheinsberg-Wutz On Mission in England Engagement: Christmas Excursion to Stechlin Wedding Sunset But Stay a While - Deth - Burial - New Days Notes
£31.34
The University of Alabama Press Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories
Book SynopsisInterconnected stories depicting the last years of a WWII bomber pilot, his relationship with his daughter as both child and adult, and his drift into infirmity and death. When life dwindles to its irrevocable conclusion, recollections are illuminated, even unto the grave. Such is the narrative of Paradise Field: A Novel in Stories , whose title is taken from a remote airfield in the American Southwest, and while the father recalls his flying days, his daughter–who nurses the old man–reflects as well. Pamela Ryder's stories vary in style and perspective, and time lines overlap as death advances and retreats. This unique and shifting narrative explores the complexities of a relationship in which the father–who has been a high-flying outsider–descends into frailty and becomes dependent upon the daughter he has never really known. The opening story, �Interment for Yard and Garden,� begins as a simple handbook for Jewish burial and bereavement, although the narrator cannot help but reveal herself and her motives. From there, the telling begins anew and unfolds chronologically, returning to the adult daughter's childhood: a family vacation in France, the grotesqueries of the dinner table, the shadowy sightings of a father who has flown away. A final journey takes father and daughter back to the Southwest in search of Paradise Field. Their travels through that desolate landscape foreshadow the father's ultimate decline, as portrayed in the concluding stories that tell of the uneasy transformation in the bond between them and in the transcendence of his demise. Taken together, the stories in Paradise Field are an eloquent but unsparing depiction of infirmity and death, as well as solace and provocation for anyone who has been left to stand graveside and confront eternity.Trade ReviewLet's not futz around. I'm old, a Jew, a man who, but for the fates in charge of the trivialities, might have been Ryder's father. Well, for all that, I am Ryder's father or, anyhow, a father of Ryder, and will, accordingly, go agreeably to my grave praising her name as if my doing so might work for my daughter the favor of the gods. Let me tell you - in the matter of my thinking what must be said when an occasion such as this has come to take me by the heart: it was with tears in my eyes that I made my way through the pages recording Ryder's mission to bury her dead in a manner unique among the methods practiced by humankind. Her art is water for the thirsty, sustenance for the deprived. I ask you, which of us is not perishing from the logic of the insufficiency woven into the world's conceivable answer to our unappeasable cries? Ryder, her soul, her sentences, they are one thing, and this totality is given as an exception - the valedictory gesture of a mensch, this Pamela Ryder, enacting her livelong promise via the ceremonies of Paradise Field. Listen to me - my daughter brings comfort, brings balm, brings the exhilarations of loving and kinship to all those who would, by words, be cured."" - Gordon Lish, author of Peru""Ryder writes with wit, brio, and laser-like honesty about her father - a man who, having eluded her for decades, is now at the end of his life. The Kafkaesque nature of caretaking and the obscene depredations of age are interlaced with a kind of cockeyed delight: eating a blintz in hell, regarding the clouds, giving death the (frail) finger. Ryder has both the ear of a poet and the soul of a warrior."" - Dawn Raffel, author of The Secret Life of Objects
£14.36
The University of Alabama Press Pet Thief: A Novel
Book SynopsisThe Pet Thief is a dystopian fable of science, rebellion, humankind’s inhumanity, and the struggle for identity and survival in a post-human world.When scientists, the government, and venture capitalists conspire to hybridise humans with animals—cats, specifically—for organ harvesting, drug testing, and military applications, the experiment is an irredeemable failure, producing human-like beings with uncanny abilities who are nonetheless fundamentally defective.Oboy and his mentor/tormentor Freda are two wayward hybrids, “cat people,” who have escaped with others to the depths of a rundown European city being levelled for reconstruction. They are members of a street gang led by an ominous leader called Swan.Oboy is unable to think or speak except in mimicry, but he is a physical savant, which serves Freda’s mission. Enraged at what has been done to her, Freda wants to “rescue” every pet she can. When Oboy returns with a human baby after his first solo outing, their world and the truths of their existence come unravelled.
£15.26
The University of Alabama Press Mother Box and Other Tales
Book SynopsisThe eleven stories and one novella of Mother Box, and Other Tales bring together everyday reality and something that is dramatically not in compelling narratives of new possibilities.In language that is both barb and bauble, bitter and unbearably sweet, Sarah Blackman spins the threads of stories where everything is probable and nothing is constant. The stories in Mother Box, and Other Tales occur in an in-between world of outlandish possibility that has become irrefutable reality: a woman gives birth to seven babies and realizes at one of their weddings that they were foxes all along; a girl with irritating social quirks has been raised literally by cardboard boxes; a young woman throws a dinner party only to have her elaborate dessert upstaged by one of the guests who, as it turns out, is the moon. Love between mothers and children is a puzzling thrum that sounds at the very edge of hearing; a muted pulse that, nevertheless, beats and beats and beats.In these tales, the prosaic details of everyday life—a half-eaten sandwich, an unopened pack of letters on a table—take on fevered significance as the characters blunder into revelations that occlude even as they unfold.Trade Review“These lucid stories hearken to the spiritual and cerebral fiction of Katherine Mansfield and Joy Williams. They breathtakingly face what comes next in the world—whether terrible snout or beautiful child—hallucinating what is entirely real.”—Kate Bernheimer, author of The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold and Horse, Flower, Bird|“Sarah Blackman is a wizard at rendering the odd intricacies of the domestic sphere. Her insights are stunning, her eye is keen, and her sentences are unbudgeably right. An excellent debut.”—Noy Holland, author of Swim for the Little One First|It is a triumph when a sentiment as banal as One must travel around and pick things up and put them down again” nevertheless sounds profound; or when a sentiment as bizarre as She would be a body and next, who knew?, a house” seems undeniable and even inevitable. This can only be a result of Blackman’s carefully measured prose. And when it comes to storytelling and the enrapture of her audience, Blackman again excels. Consider, for instance, the eerie Many Things, Including This,” or Conversation,” or The Dinner Party,” all tales that kept this reader turning pages, eager to dispel the dread that hangs over them and to find out what happens next.” Kenyon Review Online
£14.20
The University of Alabama Press Hum: Stories
Book SynopsisWinner of the fC2 Catherine doctorow innovative fiction Prize.A new collection of stories by bestselling author Michelle Richmond, Hum presents a cautionary political fable, a celebration of the complexities of marriage, and a meditation on modern-day alienation.Thirteen years after the publication of her first story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Richmond returns with Hum, a collection of ten stories that examine love, lust, and loyalty from surprising angles.In “Hum,” a young couple that is paid to live in a house filled with surveillance equipment becomes “quietly lost to each other,” as the wife’s infatuation with the subject of their surveillance turns to obsession.In “Medicine,” a woman grieving over the death of her sister finds her calling as a manual medical caregiver. In “Boulevard,” a couple who has been trying to have a child for seven years finds themselves in an unnamed country at the height of a revolution, summoned there by the enigmatic H. “Scales,” the story of a woman who falls in love with a man whose body is covered with scales, parses the intersection of pain and pleasure. The narrator of “Lake” must choose whether to walk in the foot- steps of her famous grandfather, The Great Amphibian, who disappeared while performing a feat of daring in Lake Michigan. What does it mean to be heroic? How much should one sacrifice in the name of love? These questions and more are explored with tenderness, wit, and unerring precision in Hum.
£14.20
Temple University Press,U.S. The American Diary of a Japanese Girl: An
Book SynopsisA ground-breaking work of Asian-American fiction in a brand new editionTrade Review"Yone Noguchi was an enormously important figure in the early twentieth-century cross-cultural and cross-literary interaction between not only Japan and the US but also Japan and Britain...Laura Franey's careful introduction and Edward Marx's well-conceived and knowledgeable afterword frame The American Diary precisely in terms that will define for contemporary readers its importance as cultural history." David Ewick, Chuo University "A literary curiosity, it offers Noguchi's insights on Japanese culture and American mores and manners, and through these, the actual conditions under which he lived his expatriate life." Japan Times "There are many very beautiful poetic moments in the novel that show the author's eventual status as a celebrated poet. The book captures a moment in time that is both innocent yet reveals some of the underlying differences that would culminate in the Pacific theater of World War II forty years after the book was published." The Asian Review of Books on the Web "The Diary, with its whimsical English, is a delight; upon re-reading (with attention to editors Edward Mark and Laura E. Franey's comprehensive notes) it gains greatly as a unique, highly perceptive commentary on cultural differences. Genjiro Yeto's illustrations (from 1902) are a grace note." ForeWord October 07 "The work remains a charming, sly, remarkable volume. ...If Noguchi's Diary seems delightfully strange now, imagine how it was received by contemporary reviewers, though many found it at least light and entertaining. In any event, Noguchi's book is worth reissuing and--cultural studies professors take note--rereading in this annotated edition. It has a rightful place among other East-West cross-cultural exchanges..." The American Book ReviewTable of Contents1. Introduction: Biographical, Historical, and Literary Contexts, by Laura Franey; 2. The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, by Yone Noguchi; 3. Afterword: Publication, Reception, and Genre, by Edward Marx
£24.29
Modern Language Association of America Esfinge: Um romance neo-gótico do Brasil
Book SynopsisA work of supernatural fantasy that questions gender divisions.At his boardinghouse in Rio de Janeiro, the Englishman James Marian is seen as handsome but eccentric. Then another boarder learns Marian's secret: a fusion of a female head and a male body, Marian is the creation of a surgeon with occult powers. Despite his wealth and mysterious abilities, Marian is unable to live fully as either a man or a woman, traveling the world in order to repress his sexual desire and withdraw from society.Sphinx (Esfinge) explores the binaries of science and magic, body and spirit, male and female, attraction and horror, presenting its sexually ambiguous protagonist with sympathy. Ornately descriptive, this 1908 neo-gothic novel exemplifies the era's taste for the sensual and the fantastic. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it stands as a classic of Brazilian science fiction.
£28.01
Modern Language Association of America Sphinx: A Neo-Gothic Novel from Brazil
Book SynopsisA work of supernatural fantasy that questions gender divisions.At his boardinghouse in Rio de Janeiro, the Englishman James Marian is seen as handsome but eccentric. Then another boarder learns Marian's secret: a fusion of a female head and a male body, Marian is the creation of a surgeon with occult powers. Despite his wealth and mysterious abilities, Marian is unable to live fully as either a man or a woman, traveling the world in order to repress his sexual desire and withdraw from society.Sphinx (Esfinge) explores the binaries of science and magic, body and spirit, male and female, attraction and horror, presenting its sexually ambiguous protagonist with sympathy. Ornately descriptive, this 1908 neo-gothic novel exemplifies the era's taste for the sensual and the fantastic. With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it stands as a classic of Brazilian science fiction.
£28.01
