Fiction: literary and general non-genre
University of Iowa Press The Beckoning World: A Novel
Book SynopsisThe Beckoning World is set in the first quarter of the twentieth century and follows Earl Dunham. His weeks are comprised of six days mining coal, followed by Sundays playing baseball. Then one day a major-league scout happens on a game, signs Earl, and he begins a life he had no idea he could even dream. But dreams sometimes suffer from a lovely abundance, and in Earl’s case her name is Emily Marchand. They fall quickly and deeply in love, but with that love comes heartbreaking complications.The Beckoning World gathers a cast of characters that include Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig; a huge-hearted Pullman steward offering aphoristic wisdom; and countless others, not least of which is the 1918 Spanish flu taking vivid spectral form. At the center is a relentless love that Earl and Emily are defenseless against, allied as they are “in this business of their hearts.”
£15.15
Michigan State University Press Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks
Book SynopsisThe first novel to be translated from Wolof to English, Doomi Golo is a masterful work that conveys the story of Nguirane Faye and his attempts to communicate with his grandson before he dies. With a narrative structure that beautifully imitates the movements of a musical piece, Diop relates Faye’s trauma of losing his only son, Assane Tall, which is compounded by his grandson Badou’s migration to an unknown destination. While Faye feels certain that his grandson will return one day, he also is convinced that he will no longer be alive by then.Faye spends his days sitting under a mango tree in the courtyard of his home, reminiscing and observing his surroundings. He speaks to Badou through his seven notebooks, six of which are revealed to the reader, while the seventh, the “Book of Secrets”, is highly confidential and reserved for Badou’s eyes only. In the absence of letters from Badou, the notebooks form the only possible means of communication between the two, carrying within them tunes and repetitions that give this novel its unusual shape: loose and meandering on the one hand, coherent and tightly interwoven on the other.
£27.92
Michigan State University Press Bread and Tea: The Story of a Man from Karak
Book SynopsisIn this post–Arab Spring novel, Ahmad Tarawneh tells the story of conflicting loyalties between two Jordanian brothers, one who serves in the Jordanian national security division, and another who belongs to an extremist militant Islamic group. With boldness, clarity, and an insider’s eye, Tarawneh addresses the root causes and circumstances that lead a desperate young Jordanian to be recruited into a terrorist organization, tempted by the lure of glory purported by a skillful, self-serving sheikh. The novel depicts the positive and negative forces that influence the two brothers in their soul-searching quests for self-actualization that lead to more questions than answers—questions many Arab youth still ask today, while engulfed in their own raging struggles over tradition, religion, modernity, and secularism. Readers find themselves on an intimate journey into the minds and hearts of the protagonists to witness the tragedy and absurdity of this conflict and the magnitude of the human destruction it leaves behind.
£27.92
WW Norton & Co Biloxi: A Novel
Book SynopsisBuilding on her critically acclaimed novel The Last Days of California and her biting collection Always Happy Hour, Miller transports readers to this delightfully wry, unapologetic corner of the south—Biloxi, Mississippi, home to sixty-three-year-old Louis McDonald, Jr. Louis has been forlorn since his wife of thirty-seven years left him, his father passed, and he impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. These days he watches reality television and tries to avoid his ex-wife and daughter, benefiting from the charity of his former brother-in-law, Frank, who religiously brings over his Chili’s leftovers and always stays for a beer. Yet the past is no predictor of Louis’s future. On a routine trip to Walgreens to pick up his diabetes medication, he stops at a sign advertising free dogs and meets Harry Davidson, a man who claims to have more than a dozen canines on offer, but offers only one: an overweight mixed breed named Layla. Without any rational explanation, Louis feels compelled to take the dog home, and the two become inseparable. Louis, more than anyone, is dumbfounded to find himself in love—bursting into song with improvised jingles, exploring new locales, and reevaluating what he once considered the fixed horizons of his life. With her “sociologist’s eye for the mundane and revealing” (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books), Miller populates the Gulf Coast with Ann Beattie-like characters. A strangely heartwarming tale of loneliness, masculinity, and the limitations of each, Biloxi confirms Miller’s position as one of our most gifted and perceptive writers.Trade Review"This novel about a man and his dog is also about unexpected connections and the strange turns life can take.... Writing with insight and wit, Miller is both unsparing and sympathetic.... Miller's deliciously engaging, gently quirky, surprisingly hopeful novel seals her spot in the pantheon of Southern fiction writers." -- Kirkus Reviews [starred review]"Excellent... A witty, insightful exploration of masculinity and self-worth... In Louis, Miller captures the insecurities of an imperfect man beyond his prime as he tries to find his purpose in the world, and the result is a charming and terrific novel." -- Publishers Weekly"As disagreeable and contrary as they come, Louis is a narrator readers will want to throttle with equal urgency, sometimes simultaneously. Delightful at sentence-level, this is foremost the story of his sluggish-but-sure metamorphosis.... Miller, an absolute master of minutiae, relates Louis’ innermost self with poignancy and humor that never sacrifice an ounce of realism." -- Annie Bostrom, Booklist (starred review)"Miller (The Last Days of California) casts light on crushing loneliness in the form of a lost sixtysomething man at the heart of a sweet dog-saves-man story filled with plenty of surprises to keep one turning the pages.”" -- Beth Anderson, Library Journal"This is a story about second chances, the art of settling, and settling down. Mary Miller knows how to tell a simple story in a spectacular way. She is funny and peculiar and mysterious and wise." -- Helen Ellis, author of Southern Lady Code and American Housewife"If Lorrie Moore’s wicked sense of humor and Ernest Hemingway’s minimalism had a love-child that love-child would be Mary Miller’s Biloxi. Get ready to fall in love with cantankerous Louis McDonald Jr, a singular character as surprised by life as he is surprising. This book is a winner." -- Hannah Pittard, author of Visible Empire"Mary Miller’s new novel is a marvel, a deliberate, careful rendering of the slipping-away life of a sixty year old man who discovers, after more than his share of loneliness, desire and calamity, that there is always, after all, the wonder of hope." -- Frederick Barthelme"I’ve always been a huge fan of Mary Miller’s work. Now, with Biloxi, Miller gives us the singular new voice of Louis McDonald Jr., a man grieving his past, trapped in a state of emotional and mental paralysis — until the day he adopts a dog named Layla, who slowly begins to crack his heart open again. I was continually surprised, delighted, and above all moved while reading. A beautiful book from one of southern literature’s most important young authors." -- Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and I Want To Show You More
£17.09
WW Norton & Co Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: A Novel
Book Synopsis"I passed away at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday in August in 1869, in my beautiful mansion in the Catumbi district of the city." So begins Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas—at the end of the narrator’s life. Published in 1881, this highly experimental novel was not at first considered Machado de Assis’ definitive work—a fact his narrator anticipated, bidding "good riddance" to the critic looking for a "run-of-the-mill-novel". Yet in this coruscating new translation, Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson reveal a pivotal moment in Machado’s career, as his flights of the surreal became his literary hallmark. An enigmatic, amusing and frequently insufferable anti hero, Brás Cubas describes his Rio de Janeiro childhood spent tormenting household slaves, his bachelor years of torrid affairs and his final days obsessing over nonsensical poultices. A novel that helped launch modernist fiction, Brás Cubas shines a direct light to Ulysses and Love in the Time of Cholera.Trade Review"One of the wittiest, most playful, and therefore most alive and ageless books ever written." -- Dave Eggers"An offbeat, invigorating classic is perfect reading for a morbid summer." -- The Economist
£20.89
WW Norton & Co Biloxi: A Novel
Book SynopsisBuilding on her critically acclaimed novel The Last Days of California and her biting collection Always Happy Hour, Miller transports readers to this delightfully wry, unapologetic corner of the south—Biloxi, Mississippi, home to sixty-three-year-old Louis McDonald, Jr. Louis has been forlorn since his wife of thirty-seven years left him, his father passed away and he impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance cheque that may not come. These days he watches reality television and tries to avoid his ex-wife and daughter, benefiting from the charity of his former brother-in-law, Frank, who religiously brings over his takeway leftovers and always stays for a beer. Yet the past is no predictor of Louis’s future. On a routine trip to Walgreens to pick up his diabetes medication, he stops at a sign advertising free dogs and meets Harry Davidson, a man who claims to have more than a dozen canines on offer, but offers only one: an overweight mixed breed named Layla. Without any rational explanation, Louis feels compelled to take the dog home and the two become inseparable. Louis, more than anyone, is dumbfounded to find himself in love—bursting into song with improvised jingles, exploring new locales and reevaluating what he once considered the fixed horizons of his life. With her “sociologist’s eye for the mundane and revealing” (Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books), Miller populates the Gulf Coast with Ann Beattie-like characters. A strangely heartwarming tale of loneliness, masculinity and the limitations of each, Biloxi confirms Miller’s position as one of our most gifted and perceptive writers.
£12.34
University of Nevada Press A Lean Year and Other Stories
Book SynopsisIn this collection of sixteen short stories, Robert Laxalt illuminates the Nevada of the 1950s. Written when Laxalt was in his twenties, the stories are as fresh as if they were penned yesterday. Humanity good and bad, humor and cruelty, satire and adventure are found in these early stories of a Nevada poised on the brink of change.In the lead story, Cowboy Clint Hamilton laments that the town is "getting more like a big city every day" as the traditional gambling joints of earlier times give way to the gaudy casinos that will soon become modern glitz.Sobering experiences from his days as a reporter give Laxalt an insight into murderers and prison life and lethal gas chambers. In a chilling short story, "The Snake Pen," we find the seed of Robert Laxalt's celebrated novel, A Man In the Wheatfield.Trade ReviewThis is an entertaining collection of sixteen tales about buckaroos and injuns and beeves and miners and gamblers—or, broadly speaking, the Old West twice removed. Set and written in the 1950s when the author was in his twenties, these clever and ironic stories show us a Nevada we'll never see again." --Small Press Reviews
£18.36
Bucknell University Press,U.S. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of
Book SynopsisRobinson Crusoe, an adventure tale that fascinated such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and J. M. Coetzee, has been an international best-seller for three hundred years. An adventure tale involving cannibals, pirates, and shipwrecks, it embodies economic, social, political, and philosophical themes that continue to be relevant today. Moreover, the notion of isolation on a deserted island and a fascination with survival continue to be central to countless popular cinema and television programs. This edition of the novel with its introduction, line notes, and full bibliographical notes provides a uniquely scholarly presentation of the novel. There has been no other edition like it. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe revitalizes a classic text published three centuries ago. The scholarship displayed here--more than a decade in the making--provides full, expert annotation and an exhaustive textual collation. This is clearly the definitive edition, one that specialists and libraries alike will want to acquire." -- Anthony W. Lee * editor of Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle *"Edited by a trio of distinguished Defoe scholars, the Stoke Newington edition of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a welcome addition to the field. With its learned and wide-ranging introduction, its dense contextual and interpretive annotations, and its extensive bibliographical and textual apparatus, the volume will serve as the basis for scholarship and criticism for decades to come." -- Benjamin Pauley * Eastern Connecticut State University *" This book does all that you could ask of a thoroughly scholarly work, but won’t deter any enquirer; its introduction is thorough, judicious and wise, its bibliographical apparatus refrains from crowding the story and authentic illustrations are expertly annotated. Crisp footnotes, on the right page, are thorough, responsible and concise." * Times Literary Supplement *"Bucknell Press is to be commended for reviving this excellent project....A fine edition that scholars will want to acquire." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *"The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe revitalizes a classic text published three centuries ago. The scholarship displayed here--more than a decade in the making--provides full, expert annotation and an exhaustive textual collation. This is clearly the definitive edition, one that specialists and libraries alike will want to acquire." -- Anthony W. Lee * editor of Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle *"Edited by a trio of distinguished Defoe scholars, the Stoke Newington edition of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a welcome addition to the field. With its learned and wide-ranging introduction, its dense contextual and interpretive annotations, and its extensive bibliographical and textual apparatus, the volume will serve as the basis for scholarship and criticism for decades to come." -- Benjamin Pauley * Eastern Connecticut State University *" This book does all that you could ask of a thoroughly scholarly work, but won’t deter any enquirer; its introduction is thorough, judicious and wise, its bibliographical apparatus refrains from crowding the story and authentic illustrations are expertly annotated. Crisp footnotes, on the right page, are thorough, responsible and concise." * Times Literary Supplement *"Bucknell Press is to be commended for reviving this excellent project....A fine edition that scholars will want to acquire." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword Headnote Introduction Critical Reputation Source in Defoe’s Writing and Other Authors Contemporary Influences on the Novel The Novel as Historical Fiction Philosophical and Social Themes Religion as a Formal Structure and Practice Colonial and Post-Colonial Themes Language, Style, and Fiction Selected Bibliography Works Consulted Before 1731 Works Consulted After 1731 Notes to HeadnoteThe Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe The Preface The Journal Bibliographic Descriptions Variants Introduction to the List of Variants List of Variants List of Works Consulted Line Notes About the Editors
£107.20
Bucknell University Press,U.S. The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of
Book SynopsisRobinson Crusoe, an adventure tale that fascinated such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and J. M. Coetzee, has been an international best-seller for three hundred years. An adventure tale involving cannibals, pirates, and shipwrecks, it embodies economic, social, political, and philosophical themes that continue to be relevant today. Moreover, the notion of isolation on a deserted island and a fascination with survival continue to be central to countless popular cinema and television programs. This edition of the novel with its introduction, line notes, and full bibliographical notes provides a uniquely scholarly presentation of the novel. There has been no other edition like it. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Trade Review"The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe revitalizes a classic text published three centuries ago. The scholarship displayed here--more than a decade in the making--provides full, expert annotation and an exhaustive textual collation. This is clearly the definitive edition, one that specialists and libraries alike will want to acquire." -- Anthony W. Lee * editor of Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle *"Edited by a trio of distinguished Defoe scholars, the Stoke Newington edition of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is a welcome addition to the field. With its learned and wide-ranging introduction, its dense contextual and interpretive annotations, and its extensive bibliographical and textual apparatus, the volume will serve as the basis for scholarship and criticism for decades to come." -- Benjamin Pauley * Eastern Connecticut State University *" This book does all that you could ask of a thoroughly scholarly work, but won’t deter any enquirer; its introduction is thorough, judicious and wise, its bibliographical apparatus refrains from crowding the story and authentic illustrations are expertly annotated. Crisp footnotes, on the right page, are thorough, responsible and concise." * Times Literary Supplement *"Bucknell Press is to be commended for reviving this excellent project....A fine edition that scholars will want to acquire." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword Headnote Introduction Critical Reputation Source in Defoe’s Writing and Other Authors Contemporary Influences on the Novel The Novel as Historical Fiction Philosophical and Social Themes Religion as a Formal Structure and Practice Colonial and Post-Colonial Themes Language, Style, and Fiction Selected Bibliography Works Consulted Before 1731 Works Consulted After 1731 Notes to HeadnoteThe Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe The Preface The Journal Bibliographic Descriptions Variants Introduction to the List of Variants List of Variants List of Works Consulted Line Notes About the Editors
£41.60
Bucknell University Press,U.S. The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: The
Book SynopsisDefoe’s The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was almost always published together with The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Only after 1950 was the first volume printed alone—a shorter work for some classes. But in addition to fulfilling the promise of the first volume, The Farther Adventures is an exciting adventure novel by itself. Crusoe returns to his island to learn about his colony, and then travels to Madagascar, India, and China before returning to England after some exciting encounters. Complete with an introduction, line notes, and full bibliographical notes, this is an edition like no other. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. Trade Review"With its informative introduction and annotations by Novak, Rothman, and Schonhorn, this new edition is a welcome attempt to restore The Farther Adventures’ status as an essential part of the Crusoe story. Continuing its hero’s exploration of global religious and cultural differences, Farther Adventures takes Crusoe from Europe to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Russia. The urgent questions Defoe explores will fascinate anyone interested in early eighteenth-century ideas about the nature of humanity and English understandings of the wider world. An exemplary instance of literary and bibliographical scholarship, the Stoke-Newington edition of The Farther Adventures is also a great adventure story with the power to enthrall readers." -- Nicholas Seager * coeditor of The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"With its informative introduction and annotations by Novak, Rothman, and Schonhorn, this new edition is a welcome attempt to restore The Farther Adventures’ status as an essential part of the Crusoe story. Continuing its hero’s exploration of global religious and cultural differences, Farther Adventures takes Crusoe from Europe to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Russia. The urgent questions Defoe explores will fascinate anyone interested in early eighteenth-century ideas about the nature of humanity and English understandings of the wider world. An exemplary instance of literary and bibliographical scholarship, the Stoke-Newington edition of The Farther Adventures is also a great adventure story with the power to enthrall readers." -- Nicholas Seager * coeditor of The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction *Table of ContentsContributors List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Note on the TextThe Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Notifications of Books Printed and Sold Textual Notes Bibliographic Descriptions Variants Selected Bibliography About the Editors Index
£107.20
Kales Press The Prodigal Child
Book Synopsis
£13.29
Collective Ink Steal a Few Cents
Book SynopsisMpho Mamela, a young accountant at a coal mine in the Middelburg coalfields of South Africa is killed one night when he gets caught in the rollers of a conveyor belt. He is mangled beyond recognition. There will be an official State enquiry into his death, by the Inspectorate of Mining. Stephen Wakefield, the in-house lawyer and a director of the company, begins preparing for the enquiry, but he struggles to understand what happened - Mamela should not have been anywhere near the place he was killed. Bit by bit, Stephen's investigation uncovers a story far removed from a simple workplace accident. A web of deception and massive fraud is unveiled; fraud perpetrated by a person who publicly insists on high standards of morality and honesty. It becomes clear to Stephen that Mamela had tried to blackmail the guilty party to help his lover, who is in prison for attempting to steal a trifling amount from the mining company. When the killer learns that his actions are about to be exposed, Stephen realises that his own life is now in danger...
£12.99
Liverpool University Press Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood: 2022
Book Synopsis“But when I close my eyes, I first fall as if drowning into the silty waters of the Chari River, which traces the border between Chad and Cameroon, and into which so many men, women and even children were thrown, sometimes still alive, their hands knotted behind their backs, or tied up in a shoulder bag. I sink with them towards the sand and the clay, down amidst the green and the brown, passing purple weeds, shards of pottery, and crocodile scales. My head is heavier than a cannonball and carries me toward the abyss: I dive into a bottomless bag where the letters collide or slip away, call out to or ignore each other, I bathe in an unlimited space free from the constraints of cycles and dates, and I enter into the time of childhood, which indeed has no concept of time. […] all my memories take flight in the wind of the sands, the past flows in the river, plays out in the branches, explodes in the foliage. The past is all around me now - and I laugh when I say ‘the past,’ because none of all this is past.” Michaël FerrierIn 1979, two young boys play Scrabble in a hot, dusty district of N’Djamena, Chad, while around them war rages, apparently destroying all in its path: people, places, and memories. And yet, just as the boys take their letters from the depths of the pouch, so Michaël Ferrier draws from the darkness words and images that he reassembles into a beautiful and moving tribute to the city, its people, and the childhood that seemed to end there in those days of chaos and destruction but which he brings miraculously back to life in a defiant, poetic statement on the power of friendship, family, and memory.
£19.99
Liverpool University Press Bardadrac
Book SynopsisHere is an unexpected Gérard Genette, looking back at his life and time with humour, tenderness and lucidity. ‘Bardadrac’ is the neologism a friend of his once invented to name the jumbled contents of her handbag. A way of saying that one finds a little bit of everything in this book: memories of a suburban childhood, a provincial adolescence and early years in Paris marked by a few political commitments; the evocation of great intellectual figures, like Roland Barthes or Jorge Luis Borges; a taste for cities, rivers, women and music, classical or jazz; contingent epiphanies; good or bad ideas; true and false memories; aesthetic biases; geographical reveries; secret or apocryphal quotations; maxims and characters; asides, quips and digressions; reflections on literature and language, with an ironic take on the medialect, or dialect of the media; and other surprises. At the intersection, for instance, of Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, Renard’s Journal, Roland Barthes’ Roland Barthes and Perec’s I Remember, this whimsical abecedarium invites you to stroll and gather. Gérard Genette (1930-2018) was research director at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and visiting professor at Yale University. Cofounder of the journal Poétique, he published extensively in the fields of literary theory, poetics and aesthetics, including, in English: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1980), Figures of Literary Discourse (1982), Fiction and Diction (1993), Mimologics (1995), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), The Work of Art: Immanence and Transcendence (1997), The Aesthetic Relation (1999), Essays in Aesthetics (2005).
£90.25
Liverpool University Press Bardadrac
Book SynopsisHere is an unexpected Gérard Genette, looking back at his life and time with humour, tenderness and lucidity. ‘Bardadrac’ is the neologism a friend of his once invented to name the jumbled contents of her handbag. A way of saying that one finds a little bit of everything in this book: memories of a suburban childhood, a provincial adolescence and early years in Paris marked by a few political commitments; the evocation of great intellectual figures, like Roland Barthes or Jorge Luis Borges; a taste for cities, rivers, women and music, classical or jazz; contingent epiphanies; good or bad ideas; true and false memories; aesthetic biases; geographical reveries; secret or apocryphal quotations; maxims and characters; asides, quips and digressions; reflections on literature and language, with an ironic take on the medialect, or dialect of the media; and other surprises. At the intersection, for instance, of Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, Renard’s Journal, Roland Barthes’ Roland Barthes and Perec’s I Remember, this whimsical abecedarium invites you to stroll and gather. Gérard Genette (1930-2018) was research director at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and visiting professor at Yale University. Cofounder of the journal Poétique, he published extensively in the fields of literary theory, poetics and aesthetics, including, in English: Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (1980), Figures of Literary Discourse (1982), Fiction and Diction (1993), Mimologics (1995), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (1997), Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1997), The Work of Art: Immanence and Transcendence (1997), The Aesthetic Relation (1999), Essays in Aesthetics (2005).
£28.49
Seagull Books London Ltd The Blue Soda Siphon
Book SynopsisA magnificent example of Widmer’s characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination. In the wildly entertaining novel The Blue Soda Siphon, the narrator unexpectedly finds himself back in the world of his childhood: Switzerland in the 1940s. He returns to his childhood home to find his parents frantic because their son is missing. Then, in another switch, the young boy that he was back then turns up in the present of the early 1990s, during the Gulf War, where he meets himself as an older man, and meets his adult self’s young daughter. These head-scratching, hilarious time shifts happen when both the adult narrator and his childhood self go to the cinema and see films, the subjects of which echo their own lives. Translated into English for the first time by Donal McLaughlin, this novel, in which the eponymous blue soda siphon bottle is a recurring symbol, is a magnificent example of Urs Widmer’s characteristic humor, literary genius, and unparalleled imagination.Table of ContentsImprint The Blue Soda Siphon
£10.16
Seagull Books London Ltd Against Nature – The Notebooks
Book SynopsisThe companion volume to Espedal's Against Art, written in his characteristic poetic prose. In contemporary Norwegian fiction Tomas Espedal’s work stands out as uniquely personal; it can be difficult to separate the fiction from Espedal’s own experiences. Against Nature, a companion volume to Espedal's earlier Against Art, is an examination of factory work, love’s labor, and the work of writing. Espedal dwells on the notion that working is required in order to live in compliance with society, but is this natural? And how can it be natural when he is drawn toward impossible things—impossible love, books, myths, and taboos? He is drawn into the stories of Abélard and Héloïse, of young Marguerite Duras and her Chinese lover, and soon realizes that he, too, is turning into a person who must choose to live against nature. “A masterpiece of literary understatement. Everybody who has recently been thirsting for a new, unexhausted realism, like water in the desert, will love this book.”—Die Zeit, on the Norwegian editionTrade Review“Revealing and forthright. . . . A powerful, well-wrought novel.” * Complete Review *“Espedal’s writing is wonderfully descriptive, flowing freely from one sentence into another. Such a style is fitting for a novel that seems to glide between thoughts as it questions whether society is natural and what should be done about it. Drawing particular attention to themes of work and love, Espedal’s book invites readers to ponder what is natural in life.” * World Literature Today *“Anderson is an incredible translator. The language is crisp and lucid, with passages that beg to be reread and underlined and read aloud. . . . Gorgeous, profound and exquisitely translated, Against Nature has made me an Espedal devotee and I will seek every book that carries his name.” * Mark Haber, Three Percent *Table of ContentsAgainst Nature Notes
£11.77
Seagull Books London Ltd Obscurity
Book SynopsisThe story of an intense encounter between two men who were once very close and now must grapple with the fractured ideals that separate them. After several years abroad, a young man returns to his hometown to seek the man he calls master. This master, a brilliant philosopher, had made the young man into a disciple before sending him out into the world to put his teachings into practice. Returning three years later, the disciple finds his master has abandoned his wife and child and moved into a squalid one-room flat, cutting himself off completely from his former life. Disillusioned and reeling from the discovery, the young man spends an entire night listening to his master’s bitter denunciation of the ideals they once shared. Written in 1960 during Jaccottet’s period of poetic paralysis, the novel seeks to harmonize the best and worst of human nature—reconciling despair, falsehood, and lethargy of spirit with the need to remain open to beauty, truth, and the essential goodness of humankind. Translated by Tess Lewis, Obscurity is Jaccottet’s only work of fiction, one that will introduce new readers to the multifaceted skills of this major poet. Table of ContentsObscurity Philippe Jaccottet Translated by Tess Lewis
£10.16
Seagull Books London Ltd A Fine Couple
Book SynopsisThe story of the paradoxical relationship of two parents. As he clears out his parents’ house, Philipp, a photographer, comes across an object that has played a major role in his parents’ lives. Herta and Georg made a fine couple when they first met. Their son imagines the early days of their relationship and remembers how his father was forced to flee across the inner-German border to the West. When Herta and Philipp joined him a few days later, this could have signaled the start of a new era of happiness, but the seeds of their separation had already been sown. In gentle, probing prose, Gert Loschütz describes how Philipp gradually unravels the paradoxical nature of his parents’ relationship: it was love that destroyed their love. To his astonishment, Philipp discovers that Herta and Georg had been in contact all those years in a way they kept secret even from one another.Trade Review"A Fine Couple is a touching novel about unbroken vows and family bonds in Cold War-era Germany." * Foreword Reviews *
£18.04
Seagull Books London Ltd Revolving Door
Book SynopsisThe English debut of an idiosyncratic narrative voice. “What now?” wonders Asta, a nurse who has returned to Germany after a final assignment in Nicaragua. After over twenty years working for international aid organizations, her services are no longer needed. No one is waiting for her. She has nowhere to go. Even the language has lost its familiarity. She stands next to a revolving door at Munich airport, observing the other travelers as she smokes one duty-free cigarette after another. Some of these strangers resemble figures from her past, bringing memories of an adventurous life flooding back. Her catalog of tragicomic attempts at assistance in Germany, Nicaragua, India, Mongolia, and Tunisia raises questions about what it takes to help and whom we are really helping. Katja Lange-Müller’s works have been critically acclaimed for their dark humor and affectionate, nuanced portrayals of characters wrestling with knotty situations and relationships. Revolving Door marks a fitting English debut of this most idiosyncratic of narrative voices.Trade Review"An unpredictable and ethically charged read." * Words Without Borders *
£15.19
Seagull Books London Ltd Love
Book SynopsisA novel of intersecting historical threads.Love narrates celebrated Norwegian writer Tomas Espedal’s search for death. The decision blossoms within I—the I-person—"like some interior bloom, black and beautiful” on a warm spring day in May, and it is this resolution that fills his self-imposed final year with meaning: Death. It can be so beautiful. One must create this beauty for oneself. One must submit to this naturalness, one must choose it, like pulling the duvet over oneself in bed or jumping off a bridge. But almost immediately life deals I a wildcard: a new love affair brings some of the best days he’s ever known and threatens his pact with death. Will he be able to leave Aka and the child she’s carrying? He has put an endpoint on his life to intensify experience but is he sure that disappearing from their lives, becoming an absent father, is the best thing for all of them? Set against Espedal’s constant reference, the ebb and flow of the seasons, something close to ecstasy propels this most introspective of narratives towards a universal truth.
£13.99
Curbstone Press,U.S. What Night Brings
Book SynopsisWhat Night Brings focuses on a Chicano working-class family living in California during the 1960s. Marci-smart, feisty and funny-tells the story with the wisdom of someone twice her age as she determines to defy her family and God in order to find her identity, sexuality and freedom.""Carla Trujillo's What Night Brings puts one more wonderful Latina novelist on the must-read list right up there beside Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez and Cristina Garcia. This moving story, told in the completely convincing voice of its young protagonist, explores living with domestic abuse and longing for the maternal protection that always fails to materialize. We touch the mysteries of religion in a child's life, and are completely captivated by a young girl's budding lesbian identity. Character and situation building are exemplary, yet we are hit hard when the book takes its final turn. What Night Brings is a page-turner that lingers long after the last page has been turned.""-Margaret Randall""A story that is at once heartbreaking and hilarious, beautifully told by a wise and wise-cracking young girl.""-Sandra Cisneros
£15.15
Cornell University Press Dragonflies: Fiction by Chinese Women in the
Book SynopsisDragonflies is an anthology containing twelve selections ranging from short stories to novellas, and spans the century from the May Fourth Movement to the 1990s. The eleven authors represented are Ling Shuhua, Bing Xin, Zhang Ailing, Wei Junyi, Kang Yunwei, Ping Lu, Liao Huiying, Chi Li, Jiang Zidan, Wang Anyi, and Xi Xi. Rather than focusing on revolutionary or heroic role-models, the selected works portray women struggling to deal with the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity in a rapidly changing society. The most recent story in the collection, Wang Anyi's coolly analytical but heartbreaking "Sisters" (1996), illustrates the persistence of traditional social norms, while Jiang Zidan's "Waiting for Dusk" (1990) depicts a woman oppressed by nature itself. The introductory essay by Shu-ning Sciban traces the evolution of fiction by women writers in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong during the twentieth century. Dragonflies will appeal to readers with an interest in modern China, Chinese literature and gender studies.Trade ReviewThe latest high-quality volume to be published in the Cornell East Asia Series. The informative historical framework offered in the introduction is essential to the reader's understanding of the freedoms accorded women from the 1920s to the 1990s. Dragonflies is highly recommended for its historical, ethical, and aesthetic approach to women's matters, women's sensitivities, and their poetry. * World Literature Today *An interesting and helpful addition to the existing collections of modern Chinese fiction. * China Review International *
£17.59
Cornell University Press The Naked Tree: A Novel
Book SynopsisA coming-of-age novel set during the Korean War, by Pak Wan-Suh, one of Korea's leading contemporary writers. The award-winning author of more than twenty novels, and numerous short stories and essays, Park often deals with the themes of Korean War tragedies, middle-class values, and women's issues. The novel is rich with scenes of cultural clashes, racial prejudice, and the kinds of misunderstandings that many American soldiers and Koreans experienced during the war years.
£999.99
Pushcart Press Bad Guy: A Novel
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£12.34
Pushcart Press Suzanne and Gertrude: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£11.99
Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana La Estela de Caicedo: Miradas Críticas
Book SynopsisEn el estrecho lapso de los aproximadamente diez años que transcurren entre su primeras publicaciones y el año de su suicidio enigmático (1967-1977), ejecuta Andrés Caicedo en Cali, Colombia, su fascinante y perturbadora aportación a la literatura, al teatro, a la crítica de cine y al sensorium de su generación y las que le siguieron. Se puede hablar de un Evento Caicedo, en el sentido astrofísico de la expresión, a juzgar por el evento fugaz pero casi cósmico que representó este escritor para muchos jóvenes en su época y que creen experimentar todavía otros tantos en nuestros días al entrar en contacto con su obra. Se puede hablar también de una estela de Caicedo. De ser un objeto de culto impúblico en el margen del margen de Cali, Caicedo pasó a configurar un tema que cifra el presente tardomoderno en importantes ámbitos colombianos. ~ In the narrow period of approximately ten years that elapses between his first publications and the year of his enigmatic suicide (1967-1977), Andrés Caicedo performs in Cali, Colombia, his fascinating and disturbing contribution to literature, theater, film review and overall perceptions of his generation and those that followed. We can speak of a Caicedo Event, in the astrophysical sense of the expression, judging by the fleeting but almost cosmic influence that this writer represented for many young people in his time and that many others still believe to experience in our days upon coming in contact with his work. We can also speak of the trail of Caicedo. From being an object of infamous worship among the margins of the margins of Cali, Caicedo went on to configure a theme that shapes the late modern present in important Colombian domains.
£35.00
Western Michigan University, New Issues Press Rot
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£13.00
Tupelo Press, Incorporated The Lake Has No Saint
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£10.18
Cornell University Press Of Birds Crying: A Novel
Book SynopsisOf Birds Crying (Naku tori no, 1985), the recipient of the Noma Bungei Prize, is loosely based on the author's own life, recounting six months in the lives of Yurie Mama, a well-established middle-aged novelist married to a scientist. In this deeply psychological novel, a tapestry of extraordinary moments expands and interconnects via interior monologues and dialogues ranging from the humorous and farcical to the somber and meditative. Acutely perceptive social and cross-cultural commentaries fill the narrator's voice and the characters' conversations. Long-forgotten incidents come back to life, triggered by the sight of an ancient tree, the name of a flower, or the crying of a bird, and memories spawn tales within tales. Despite the fact that the characters' motives for their actions defy prediction, these seemingly disparate elements are woven into a coherent whole, a reflection of the interdependency of humanity and nature in its wholeness that is one of the many underlying threads of the story.
£84.00
Cornell University Press On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from
Book SynopsisCollected here are translations into English of six classic stories from colonial Korea (1910-1945) as well as the time of liberation (1945-1948). Each piece takes a different perspective on a defining process in Korean history—the colonization and modernization under Japanese rule. The volume demonstrates the rich variety of registers, settings, styles, and thematic concerns that characterized the literary production of early modern Korea.The editor's introduction places the collection in the context of modern Korean literary history, and short biographies precede each story. In its judicious selection of classic texts, On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore the intellectual complexity and artistic richness of colonial Korean literature.
£22.39
Cornell University Press Of Birds Crying: A Novel
Book SynopsisOf Birds Crying (Naku tori no, 1985), the recipient of the Noma Bungei Prize, is loosely based on the author's own life, recounting six months in the lives of Yurie Mama, a well-established middle-aged novelist married to a scientist. In this deeply psychological novel, a tapestry of extraordinary moments expands and interconnects via interior monologues and dialogues ranging from the humorous and farcical to the somber and meditative. Acutely perceptive social and cross-cultural commentaries fill the narrator's voice and the characters' conversations. Long-forgotten incidents come back to life, triggered by the sight of an ancient tree, the name of a flower, or the crying of a bird, and memories spawn tales within tales. Despite the fact that the characters' motives for their actions defy prediction, these seemingly disparate elements are woven into a coherent whole, a reflection of the interdependency of humanity and nature in its wholeness that is one of the many underlying threads of the story.
£19.99
Cornell University Press Rat Fire: Korean Stories from the Japanese Empire
Book SynopsisThis volume brings together twelve short stories by colonial Korean proletarian writers, as well as two works written in 1946 under U.S. military occupation. The volume provides a diverse, ever-changing portrait of the complex movements of people and ideas that constituted both colonial Korea and the Japanese empire, adding the tumultuous experiences of those from the Korean peninsula to the existing international canon of socialist and feminist literature.
£19.99
Western Michigan University, New Issues Press The Nature of Remains
Book SynopsisIn Flyshoals, Georgia, karma is writ small enough to witness. When Doreen Swilley discovers that her boss and lover of thirty years intends to fire her to placate his dying wife, she devises a plan to steal his business from him. Her plan just might work too, if she is not thwarted by a small town’s enmeshed histories and her family’s own dark secrets. Set during the 2009 recession, The Nature of Remains rests at the intersection of class, gender, education and place. Through extended geological metaphor, readers witness the orogeny, crystallization, and weathering of the human soul. Doreen’s journey reveals the ways even a woman’s most precious connections—her children, her grandchildren, her lover—operate within larger social structures capable of challenging her sovereignty.
£15.00
Cornell University Press Gendered Landscapes: Short Fiction by Modern and
Book SynopsisGendered Landscapes presents ten short stories and novellas by representative modern Korean women writers dating from the 1930s to the end of the 1990s. Signature pieces selected from the acclaimed novelists' repertoire, these narratives address issues related to Korean women as gendered beings in a Confucian-governed patriarchal society. Thematically interlinked and compellingly articulated, they bring into full view the vivid and colorful mosaic of Korean women's lives over the past seven decades, engendered under the formidable sway of centuries-old Confucian gender ideologies and practices. Collectively, these literary gems represent bold and astute counter-narratives to Confucian master discourses that have determined gender norms, woman's identity, familial and conjugal morality, and other kin and interpersonal relationships in modern and contemporary Korean society. These texts testify to their authors' creative ingenuity and refined craftsmanship in utilizing the power of storytelling and stand as powerful beacons both for the personal voyages of fictional characters and for the transformation of reading communities at large. Readers who are interested in the interrelationships among Korean, and even East-Asian, literature, women, culture, and society, will find the stories in Gendered Landscapes especially informative, illuminating, and enriching. This new anthology is a welcome companion volume to the translator's earlier work, Questioning Mind: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers (2010).
£56.70
Cornell University Press Gendered Landscapes: Short Fiction by Modern and
Book SynopsisGendered Landscapes presents ten short stories and novellas by representative modern Korean women writers dating from the 1930s to the end of the 1990s. Signature pieces selected from the acclaimed novelists' repertoire, these narratives address issues related to Korean women as gendered beings in a Confucian-governed patriarchal society. Thematically interlinked and compellingly articulated, they bring into full view the vivid and colorful mosaic of Korean women's lives over the past seven decades, engendered under the formidable sway of centuries-old Confucian gender ideologies and practices. Collectively, these literary gems represent bold and astute counter-narratives to Confucian master discourses that have determined gender norms, woman's identity, familial and conjugal morality, and other kin and interpersonal relationships in modern and contemporary Korean society. These texts testify to their authors' creative ingenuity and refined craftsmanship in utilizing the power of storytelling and stand as powerful beacons both for the personal voyages of fictional characters and for the transformation of reading communities at large. Readers who are interested in the interrelationships among Korean, and even East-Asian, literature, women, culture, and society, will find the stories in Gendered Landscapes especially informative, illuminating, and enriching. This new anthology is a welcome companion volume to the translator's earlier work, Questioning Mind: Short Stories by Modern Korean Women Writers (2010).
£28.00
Cornell University Press Silvery World and Other Stories: Anthology of
Book SynopsisThis anthology is an exciting new collection of Korean fiction in translation from the early years of the twentieth century that demonstrate the political and ideological divides that Koreans experienced during this time.
£23.74
BkMk Press of the University of Missouri-Kansas City This Is Not Your Country: Stories
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£16.76
Acre Books Her Adult Life – Stories
Book SynopsisThe characters who populate Jenn Scott’s debut collection are both trapped and adrift. Stuck in dead-end jobs or stagnant relationships or simply caught in the grip of their own inertia, they opt out, act out, and strike out, searching for emotional sustenance in a landscape of pointless patterns and dwindling hopes. Cuttingly clever remarks and excoriating observations act as shields—thrown up to protect an aching vulnerability, a bewildering sense of loss . . . of being lost in a world rife with expectations, where responsibility is ritualistic and meaning elusive. “The beauty of being young was, in fact, the ability to project all that might happen. She recognizes, suddenly, how less grandiose the projection of her plans has become. It’s like she was once standing looking an expanse of field, but now she’s trapped in a hallway hung with too many pastel prints of landscapes that refuse to interest her. It’s as if she’s moved her entire life inside a dental office, minus the gas that sings a person to sleep while their cavities are filled, their roots fixed.” Assumed identities, Russian mail-order brides, pie theft, lost (and found) cleavers, coworkers who commit murder, the sudden ballooning of breasts, conversations with the (surprisingly opinionated) vegetables in a restaurant’s walk-in cooler: in stories sharply funny and deeply poignant, situations that delight and discomfit, Scott explores “the complicated, or simple, ways in which we settle.”
£13.00
Acre Books Every Human Love – Stories
Book SynopsisThe fourteen stories in Every Human Love redefine our sense of reality. Set seemingly in the quotidian, these tales veer into the unexpected, the uncomfortable, occasionally the eerie, thrusting characters in crisis into still greater quandaries, where the world of weddings and work, of frustrated hopes and mundane dissatisfactions, collides with a realm of legend, of fairy tale, of nightmare.
£13.00
Acre Books Big Familia – A Novel
Book SynopsisBig Familia follows Juan Gutiérrez, a self-employed single father, as he navigates a tumultuous year of inescapable change. His daughter, Stella, is on the verge of moving away to college; his lover, Jared, is pressing him for commitment; and his favorite watering hole—a ramshackle dive presided over by Bob the Bartender—is transforming into a karaoke hotspot. The story is set in a neighborhood that is also changing, gentrification inciting the ire of the established community. Upon the unexpected death of one of the bar’s regulars, Juan is sent reeling, and a series of upheavals follow as he both seeks and spurns intimacy, pondering the legacy of distant parents and a failed marriage and grappling with his sexuality—all the while cycling and dating, drinking at Nicks Lounge, and parenting a determined and defiant child-become-woman. When his incarcerated father dies and Stella reveals she’s pregnant, Juan is forced to examine the emotional bonds that both hold and hinder him, to reassess his ideas of commitment, of friendship, of love. His encounters with various characters—his mother, his ex-wife, a middle-aged punker, an aspiring acupuncturist, a dapper veteran—lead Juan to the realization that he himself must change to thrive. This is a story of making family and making mistakes, of rending and of mending. As a Latinx queer father with a mixed-race daughter, Juan exemplifies the ways identity connects and divides us. With wit, insight, and tenderness, Big Familia explores the complexities of desire, devotion, and the mysteries of the heart.
£15.00
Acre Books Keeping Time – A Novel
Book SynopsisA crumbling marriage. An ancient mystery. And a way to change the past . . . When archaeologist Aaron Keeler finds himself transported eighteen years backward in time, he becomes swept up in a strangely illicit liaison with his younger wife. A brilliant musician, Violet is captivated by the attentive, “weathered” version of her husband. The Aaron she recently married—an American expat—has become distant, absorbed by his excavation of a prehistoric site at Kilmartin Glen on Scotland’s west coast, where he will soon make the discovery that launches his career. As Aaron travels back and forth across the span of nearly two decades, with time passing in both worlds, he faces a threat to his revelatory dig, a crisis with the older Violet—mother of his two young children—and a sudden deterioration of his health. Meanwhile, Violet’s musical performances take on a resonance related to the secrets the two are uncovering in both time frames. With their children and Aaron’s lives at risk, he and Violet try to repair the damage before it’s too late.
£15.20
University of Cincinnati Press Grace for Grace – Stories
Book SynopsisGrace for Grace brings celebrated cult filmmaker Steve De Jarnatt’s distinctive voice and cinematic vision to the page. Lush inner lives, idiosyncratic syntax, and sweeping scale characterize these wildly imaginative stories, which present characters in search of meaning and belonging, and often, at the same time, redemption and revenge. “Rubiaux Rising” (a Best American Short Stories selection) is a tale of triumph amid calamity during Hurricane Katrina, while “Her Great Blue” a surreal interspecies love story. “Mulligan” reveals the private pain of parents traveling across the country to give away their children, and “Wraiths in a Swelter” is both a ghost story and a confessional memoir—following a deliriously exhausted EMT through a deadly Chicago heat wave. Many of the stories in Grace for Grace are set against the backdrop of natural or manmade catastrophes. These disasters test the characters’ limits as they confront sudden changes and extremes, discovering through their unexpected resourcefulness and endurance something beyond suffering. . . something that approaches the sublime.
£14.00
Acre Books Here Is a Game We Could Play – A Novel
Book SynopsisA dreamlike novel set in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, Here Is a Game We Could Play is the story of Claudia, an intelligent eccentric trapped in the rundown industrial town she grew up in—a place plagued with troubling memories and hidden threats. Seeking escape from tedium, loneliness, and her obsessive fear of poisoning, Claudia retreats into books. . . and into a fantasy life with her perfect lover, to whom she addresses letters about her life, all the while imagining outlandish sexual scenarios. In each fantasy, her lover takes a different form, ranging from a prison guard in a world where metaphor is forbidden, to a more-than-brotherly Hansel from the Grimms’ fairy tale, to a tentacled mind-reading space alien. All share a desire for a deep intimacy that eludes Claudia, even as she forms new real-life relationships and reconsiders her sexual identity—building a rapport with an elderly volunteer at the library, striking up a friendship with a wily temp at her dead-end job, and embarking on a passionate affair with Rose, the town’s new librarian. When paranoia threatens to ruin her relationship with Rose, Claudia is forced not only to combat her anxiety but to face the unresolved trauma in her past—the disappearance of her father on a night she has long repressed. Funny, dark, inventive, and moving, Here Is a Game We Could Play is an original debut novel recalling the work of Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, Rebecca Brown, and Margaret Atwood.Trade Review"Capturing just how much belonging shapes a person, in its absence as much as its presence, the novel strains between those two poles; like any true connection, it is a 'terrible and beautiful thing.'" * Foreword Reviews, starred review *"The fast pace, visceral imagery, and endlessly endearing protagonist make this book a must-read for fans of Alissa Nutting and Melissa Broder." * Booklist * “Here Is a Game We Could Play is a tour de force, a swirl of fantasies within a scaffolding of obsession, insecurity, poisoning, loneliness, longing, and humiliation, all layered over the complex trilogy of food-sex-death and the narrator’s fear of each. . . . Bitner’s language is beautifully wrought (but not overwrought). Her debut is highly imaginative in its form and framing, yet deftly controlled. Here Is a Game We Could Play stands, in the end, as a critique of pure honesty." * PopMatters *"Tender, yearning, and dangerously imagined. . . A book to pluck you out of your cage and reintroduce you to the wild.” * Ben Loory, author of "Tales of Falling and Flying" *"Here Is a Game We Could Play is a piercing and poignant novel with an unforgettable narrator. A haunting debut." * Vanessa Hua, author of "A River of Stars" *"This is a beautiful and deeply honest book. Claudia is that innocent voice lost inside each of us, the one that speaks the truth about the unknowable weirdness of our desires. I loved her and I cheered for her on every page." * Rachel Howard, author of "The Risk of Us" *"Smart and playful, candid and inventive, this debut novel set in the 1990s brims with desire and unexpected plot twists. I fell deeply in love with the main character. As a child, Claudia liked to spend time in her closet. Now, as a 23-year-old, she feels confined in the small Pennsylvania steel town where she was born. She isn't particularly interested in boys or babies. Is she a lesbian? She's not sure. The label, any label, seems too confining for her. Elaborate sexual fantasies become Claudia's secret super-power: they allow her to seek pleasure outside the narrow heteronormative model, and to build relationships to her own taste. Claudia embodies a long-standing feminist dream of empowerment and liberation, and yes, there's a darker side to her story too." * Olga Zilberbourg, author of "Like Water and Other Stories" *"Funny and strange, frank and incisive, Here Is a Game We Could Play circles deep fears and desires with the intimacy of a discovered diary. In a small town poisoned by industry, Claudia keeps a list of peculiar games to play with a potential lover, until these hypotheticals give way to a very real love affair set charmingly in a library, and a revelation about Claudia’s fascination with poison." * Katie M. Flynn, author of "The Companions" *
£15.20
Acre Books This Fierce Blood – A Novel
Book SynopsisA multicultural saga, This Fierce Blood follows three generations of women in the Sylte family. In rural late-nineteenth-century New England, Wilhelmina Sylte is a settler starting a family with her Norwegian immigrant husband. When she forms an inexplicable connection with a mountain lion and her cubs living near their farm, Mina grapples with divided loyalties and the mysterious bond she shares with the animals. In 1927 in southern Colorado, Josepa is accused of witchcraft by a local priest for using the healing practices passed down from her Native mother. Fighting for her family’s reputation and way of life, Sepa finds strength in worldly and otherworldly sources. When Magdalena, an ecologist, inherits her great-grandmother Wilhelmina’s Vermont property, she and her astrophysicist husband decide to turn the old farm into a summer science camp for teens. As Magda struggles with both personal and professional responsibilities, the boundary between science and myth begins to blur. Rich in historical and cultural detail, This Fierce Blood combines magical realism with themes of maternal ancestral inheritance, and also explores the ways Hispano/Indigenous traditions both conflicted and wove together, shaping the distinctive character of the American Southwest. Readers of Téa Obreht and Ruth Ozeki will find much to admire in this debut novel.Trade Review"Malia Márquez’s intense multigenerational novel incorporates magical realism into its story of three women struggling with family and social expectations. . . . Attentive to the pressures facing women across historical eras, the lush novel This Fierce Blood shows the power of strong women staying true to themselves." * Foreword Reviews *“Passion, faith, identity, trauma, love, and loyalty. . . through the interwoven stories of three women spanning generations, Malia Márquez dramatizes these urgent-as-ever themes. Taken individually, the stories of Wilhelmina, Josepa, and Magdalena are equally gripping. But like voices in a chorus, united in the sublime oratorio that is This Fierce Blood, their tales strike chords, harmonies, and syncopations greater than the sum of their distinct parts. Márquez has written a singular and passionate first novel.” * Peter Selgin, author of 'The Inventors' and 'Duplicity' *“This Fierce Blood traverses time, culture, and distance with gorgeous, sure-footed prose and a compelling cast of characters. By showing us all that separates these generations of Sylte women, Márquez deftly guides us toward what binds them. A wholehearted debut with a whisper of magic and deep, twisting roots in the natural world, this novel announces the arrival of a very special writer.” * Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of 'Good Morning, Midnight' *“This Fierce Blood is a wonder of a novel—at once epic and intimate, all of it deeply alive. Malia Márquez writes with compassion and precision, writes, to borrow words from these pages, ‘Like a song. Or a spell.’ I’m grateful to have been pulled into the magic of this book, grateful for my time with its generations of unforgettable, wild-hearted women.” * Gayle Brandeis, author of 'Many Restless Concerns' and 'The Book of Dead Birds' *“This Fierce Blood is a gorgeous and ecologically tender generational odyssey. The rebellious, loving, and brilliant Sylte women at the heart of this magical debut novel offer us a vision of what is possible when we consider both the power of our familial bonds and a natural world beyond the human. Malia Márquez has given us a spellbinding novel that remembers and fiercely reclaims our shared histories.” * Michael Zapata, author of 'The Lost Book of Adana Moreau' *"This Fierce Blood is compelling and beautiful. It is a multigenerational saga that captures the beauty, difficulty, and importance of merging and growing cultures. It clashes and it mends relationships across generations and cultures in a thoughtful and lovely way. It’s absolutely stunning." * Bookish Brews *
£15.20
Ohio University Press Distributed Titles Allegiance: Stories
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£15.29
West Virginia University Press Roxy and Coco: A Novel
Book Synopsis
£19.76
Eris Press Death of a Prince
£7.67