Narrative theme: sense of place

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Book SynopsisEileen MacPherson is a child of eight when her beloved sixteen-year-old brother, Francis, leaves home after a violent family episode. Over the next 25 years, everything she understands to be true changes but she never wavers in her yearning to understand the forces that have torn her family apart. The Light a Body Radiates tells the story of Eileens passionate search for explanations in whispered fragments of conversation she overhears whenever she can slip into a room unseen. She gathers a whole storehouse of truths and myths, including her own, that lead her to a deeper understanding of how people, who love each other deeply, can find it impossible to bridge the gulf dividing them. While navigating the uneven road that leads to becoming a woman, Eileens loyalty to family and home is pitted against her desire for love and art and a wider worldview. Along the way, she uncovers the cracks and crevices in her familys well-defended hearts and minds. The discovery that Francis is gay is only one piece of a larger puzzle-and when, in the end, it is a devastating AIDS diagnosis that brings Francis home, Eileen learns how love can transcend the forces of poverty and culture and distance. Set in working class Cape Breton, against the backdrop of the 60s revolution, the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, and the culturally imperative migration that urged so many away from the places they called home, The Light a Body Radiates is a story that engages powerfully with questions of place, secrets, loyalty, and what it means to take care of your own.

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Book SynopsisWelcome to Eldorado, a small mountain town in the Kootenays, chock-a-block with aging hippies, eccentrics, loggers, and protestors. When Roy Breen moves to Eldorado after over a decade of working as a journalist in Vancouver, he is impressed by the soaring glacial vistas and the friendliness of the townsfolk, as well as the quality of the coffee they pour. Unfortunately the threat of cutbacks is looming over the local hospital and Roy must find a way to balance his journalistic integrity with the need to join his new neighbours in fighting to keep the hospital open.In the vein of Stephen Leacock''s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, poet Sean Arthur Joyce''s debut novel Mountain Blues is a tale of warmth and joviality.

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Book SynopsisNobel winning author, Naguib Mahfouz's late-translated novella, Heart of the Night is now available for the first time in paperbackJaafar Ibrahim Sayyed al-Rawi is guided by his motto, “let life be filled with holy madness to the last breath.” He narrates his life story to a friend during one long night in a café in old Cairo. Through a series of bad decisions, he has lost everything: his family, his position in society, and his fortune. A man driven by his passions, he married a beautiful Bedouin nomad for love, and as a consequence pays a punishingly high price. From a life of comfort with a promising future guaranteed by his wealthy grandfather, he descended to the spartan life of a pauper, after being disinherited. Jaafar faces his tribulations with surprising stoicism and hope, sustained by his strong convictions, his spirituality, his sense of mission, and his deep desire to bring social justice to his people. Heart of the Night is a classic Mahfouz gem exploring marriage across class lines, spirituality, and the harsh realities of a precarious, life written by one of Egypt's most celebrated literary masters.Trade Review“Heart of the Night is rich in thought and vision. . . . For anyone interested in Mahfouz’s work and views on philosophy and religion, the novel is well worth the read.”—Al-'ArabiyyaPRAISE FOR NAGUIB MAHFOUZ:"The Arab world's foremost novelist"—The New York Times"Mahfouz's work is freshly nuanced and hauntingly lyrical."—The Los Angeles Times"A towering literary figure"—The Economist"Egypt's greatest living writer and one of the world's most humane literary figures"—Laila Lalami, The Nation"Timeless."—New Statesman"A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling"—The Guardian"Mahfouz is a storyteller of the first order in any idiom." —Vanity Fair"An elegant if perplexing tale by one of modern Arab literature's greatest voices."—Kirkus

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Book SynopsisThirty stories, collected in one volume for the very first time, from one of the South's best known and most acclaimed short story writers. With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Now Tom Franklin introduces this master of the form with a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections, including stories originally published in outlets like the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and many more. A lovelorn and chatty euthanasia vet arrives at a couples’ house to put down their dog, Probate; a father-to-be searches his workplace—a bar—for a replacement sonogram after recording an episode of Bonanza over the original; an unlikely romance sparks between a librarian and a professional bowler while they compete to win an RV; a father takes his son to visit the many ex-girlfriends that could have been his mother. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Lewis Nordan and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, its inexorable defeats and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More showcases the body of work, hilarious and incisive, that has cemented George Singleton’s place among the South’s greatest living writers.Trade Review"Singleton brings together his best work along with one new story in this smashing collection that combines satire, tragicomic premises, and small-town South Carolina locales. Items as innocuous as caulk or a VHS tape become the focus of droll yet moving meditations on the foibles of modern life or the misery of a marriage’s disintegration...Fans and newcomers alike will rejoice in reading these highlights from a Southern literary master." ―Publishers Weekly, Starred "Singleton’s fellow writers regard his work with an affection bordering on awe, but both comic writing and short fiction are underrated forms, which is how Singleton has become something like the John Prine or Tom Waits of Southern scribes: revered, honored, and esteemed but almost criminally underappreciated. Indeed, Singleton’s work is too original, too wildly hilarious and inventive to be imitated." ―Chapter16 "Although not presented chronologically by original publication date, there is a thoughtful ordering to the stories nonetheless, or rather, a heartbeat that rises and falls only to rise again throughout the collection. The final piece, “What Could Have Been?” is a story written as driving instructions giving way to directions to access life-defining memories. In this treasure trove of a collection, readers are directed to revisit and celebrate all that has been in Singleton’s career-defining work as sage storyteller and as chronicler and inquisitor of southern bedlam." ―Southern Review of Books "These stories have absurdist energy, wit, and inventiveness to burn, but antic comedy is their mode and métier, not their sole aim or reason for being. Singleton's work doesn't wear literariness on its sleeve; even when he channels canonical writers, as in "John Cheever, Rest in Peace," he does so in a way that's literal and can seem almost anti-literary—making the grandly metaphorical, life-spanning "The Swimmer" into a story in which a man suffers a heart attack on his riding mower and then, dead, cuts a gently arcing swath across his town before crashing into a silo. But these stories are often sneakily ambitious, sneakily moving. Singleton has Charles Portis' gift for writing a satire both ruthless and lined always with affection, and like that Southern icon, he's a master of and evangelist for the joys and idiosyncrasies of speech, especially the loquacious talk of barrooms and Little League fields and scrapbooking shops. For the uninitiated, a wonderful introduction to a Southern original." ―Kirkus Reviews, Starred "A greatest-hits album from a writer whose stories are like epic spitballs from the back of the class: high-arcing and unbearably funny protests against the absurdities of everyday life." ―Jonathan Miles, Garden & Gun "In his brilliant mix of comedy and tragedy and deep tenderness for the most “minor” characters among us, George Singleton is nothing less than the Shakespeare of South Carolina." ―Margaret Renkl, author of Late Migrations "George Singleton is one of the funniest writers in America. He's also the writer most attuned to the American freakshow―its hilarity, its hopes, its heartbreak. His fiction has mattered, a lot, for as long as he's been writing it, but it's never mattered more than now. You Want More is a major book from a major writer."―Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? "People always ask what the one book you’d take to a deserted island. For me, it might be this one." ―David Joy, author of When These Mountains Burn "Over his career, George Singleton has written unruly characters living unruly lives. His depictions of the American South―in particular the everyday tumult of white blue-collar men and women struggling to come to terms with this strange and chaotic world― are both tragic and comic, heartbreaking, surreal, and―when least expected―weirdly ebullient. Singleton is a brilliant storyteller; his vision is crystal clear and wonderfully warped." ―Julianna Baggott, author of Burn "Singleton’s South doesn’t look like anybody else’s." —The Atlanta-Journal Constitution "A disturbingly askew vision of the South." ―Entertainment Weekly "George Singleton is a madman. He's also one of the most talented writers the South has turned out in decades." —The Charleston Post and Courier

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