Search results for ""author ann petry""

FROM A BESTSELLING AUTHOR With a new introduction by TAYARI JONES, author of An American Marriage'The prose is clear, the plot is page-turning, the characters are utterly believable' CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE'The first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies' NEW YORK TIMES'My favourite type of novel, literary with an astonishing plot' TAYARI JONESNew York City, 1940s. In a crumbling tenement in Harlem, Lutie Johnson is determined to build a new life for herself and her eight-year-old boy, Bub - a life that she can be proud of. Having left her unreliable husband, Lutie believes that with hard work and resolve, she can begin again; she has faith in the American dream. But in her struggle to earn money and raise her son amid the violence, poverty and racial dissonance of her surroundings, Lutie is soon trapped: she is a woman alone, 'too good-looking to be decent', with predators at every turn.

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BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE STREETWith a new introduction by Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie'Petry is the writer we have been waiting for . . . insightful, prescient and unputdownable' TAYARI JONES 'A masterpiece' NEW YORK TIMES 'A powerful and moving book . . . A book to watch' KIRKUS REVIEWS It's past midnight, and thick fog rolls in from the river like smoke. Link Williams is standing on the dock when he hears quick footsteps approaching, and the gasp of a woman too terrified to scream. After chasing off her pursuer, he takes the woman to a nearby bar to calm her nerves, and as they enter, it's as if the oxygen has left the room: in the dim light, they can see that he's Black and she's white.Link is a brilliant Dartmouth graduate, who, because of the lack of opportunities available to him, tends bar; Camilo is a wealthy, married heiress who has crossed the town's racial divide to relieve the tedium of her privileged life. Brought together by chance, Link and Camilo draw each other into furtive encounters that violate the rigid and uncompromising social codes of their times.

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Originally published in 1947, Ann Petry’s classic Country Place depicts a predominantly white community disillusioned by the indignities and corruption of small-town life.Johnnie Roane returns from four years of military service in World War II to his wife, Glory. They had been married just a year when he left Lennox, Connecticut, where both their families live and work. In his taxi ride home, Johnnie receives foreboding hints that all has not been well in his absence. Eager to mend his fraying marriage, Johnnie attempts to cajole Glory to recommit to their life together. But something sinister has taken place during the intervening years—an infidelity that has not gone unnoticed in the superficially placid New England town.Accompanied by a new foreword from Farah Jasmine Griffin on the enduring legacy of Petry’s oeuvre, Country Place complicates and builds on the legacy of a literary celebrity and one of the foremost African American writers of her time.

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