In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity humor, and compassion. For whether Barnes's English characters come to France as conquerors or hostages, laborers, athletes, or aesthetes, what they discover, alongside rich food and barbarous sexual and religious practices, is their own ineradicable Englishness. The ten stories that make up Cross Channel introduce us to a plethora of intriguing, original, and sometimes ill-fated characters. Elegantly conceived and seductively written, Cross Channel is further evidence of Barnes's wizardry.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 523
This epic novel is set against the backdrop of the Sino-Japanese war, from the time Japan annexed Manchuria in the early 1930s until the end of the Second World War. During these years, a militaristic Japan pursued an aggressive dream to colonize not only China but also the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond. The brutal sacking of Chiang Kai-shek's new capital, Nanking, which refused to surrender to the Imperial Army, was a graphic example of Japanese retribution in a war of punishment. The story of these tumultuous years is told through the lives of a disparate group of fictional characters: a young Russian woman émigré caught between her complex love affair with a British journalist and a liberal-minded Japanese diplomat, an Indian nationalist working for Japanese intelligence, a Chinese professor with communist sympathies, an American missionary doctor and a Japanese soldier, who are all brought together by the monstrous dislocation of war. Enmeshed in a savage world beyond... Views: 523
This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works.This collection chronicles the fiction and non fiction classics by the greatest writers the world has ever known. The inclusion of both popular as well as overlooked pieces is pivotal to providing a broad and representative collection of classic works. Views: 522
One of the most influential works of modern American fiction is available for the first time as an eBook, featuring a new Author’s Note, as well as an Introduction by Joshua Ferris.
Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in estimation from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form and inspired an entire generation of writers. In six stories (“CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “Isabelle,” “The Wavemaker Falters,” “The 400-Pound CEO,” “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” “Downtrodden Mary’s Failed Campaign of Terror”) and a novella (“Bounty”), Saunders introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With original commentary from Joshua Ferris and Saunders himself, this eBook edition is the perfect occasion to discover or revisit a virtuosic, uniquely American voice.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from George Saunders's Tenth of December.
Praise for George Saunders and *CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
“There is no author I recommend to people more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers
“The debut of an exciting new voice in fiction . . . Saunders’s satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it’s also ferocious and very funny.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith
“George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him.”—Jonathan Franzen
“An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.”—Thomas Pynchon
“In CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders is improvising around a single scary note. Few writers have sounded it with such clarity, boldness, and wit.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing. Few writers can encompass that range of adjectives, but Saunders is a true original—restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane.”—Jennifer Egan
“This book is a rare event: a brilliant new satirist bursting out of the gate in full stride, wildly funny, pure, generous—all that a great humorist should be.”—Garrison Keillor
“[Saunders has] shades of both Denis Johnson and Raymond Chandler. . . . By turns he’s ferocious, witty, and uproarious, but what makes his fiction memorable is the gravitas of its dark portraiture of America.”—The Boston Globe* Views: 520
Imogen Waterstone has always prided herself on being a thoroughly independent young woman, but now she needs a man of implacable will and nerves of iron. That's why she invited Matthias Marshall, infamous Earl of Colchester, to her home in Upper Strickland. Who better than the legendary explorer to help her lay the perfect trap?
Her scheme is simple, really: She plans to let it be known that when she inherited her uncle's collection of antiquities, she also inherited a map to a fabulous ancient treasure. She's sure that her enemy would risk financial ruin in pursuit of the mythical artifact. And to make doubly sure the scoundrel took the bait, she wants Colchester to pretend that he's out to seduce Imogene so that he, too, could get his hands on her map.
Yet in all of her plotting, Imogene never anticipates Colchester's violent reaction to her request or her own electrifying reaction to him. Neither does she expect that a malevolent threat would emerge from the labyrinth of Londonsinister enough to endanger her and Colchester's lives. Views: 520
Shifra Horn's beautifully imagined novel tells the story of five generations of women in one family against the backdrop of one hundred years in Jerusalem.The story begins with the birth of the family's first boy to Amal, the last generation. Her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother are overjoyed, because the birth of a healthy boy means that the curse against the women of the family has been broken. They tell Amal the story of those "foremothers": Mazal, the orphan, whose ill-fated marriage initiates the curse; her daughter Sara, whose golden hair is a symbol for her power to heal; Sara's daughter Pnina-Mazal, the unwanted child whose talent for knowing others' thoughts brings both joy and sorrow; and her daughter Geula, Amal's mother, whose sharp intellect is her gift and her burden. Views: 519
SUMMARY:
Be careful what you wish for...One day, dayne Kuttner, a nurse, couldn't take it anymore. Sick at heart from doctors ordering her to maintain the life in patients who were already dead, saving people who didn't want the help, and most of all angry over the thought her recently deceased husband would rot in Hell for an eternity on a technicality, Dayne threw up a challenge to God. She asked that God should have sympathy for the Devil and those in Hell should get a second chance. Throughout the time of man, God had always answered people's prayers if they were done in perfect sincerity, purity and belief.So God grants Dayne's request. In His Fashion.A few of Hell's denizens are to be released to Earth so long as they follow a few rules. Lucifer, sensing a once-in-an-eternity opportunity, puts his second-in-command, Agonostis, in charge of the "Hellraised." Agonostis, currently out of favor with his leader, wonders if he's being set up. His suspicions are confirmed when Lucifer takes him aside to tell him about a second special mission while he's on Earth: within a month he must Damn Dayne's soul. A person unarguably on God's special list... Views: 516
Only one thing stands between a son and his father's killer: forty years of lies..
On a remote Arizona ranch, a man who has known loss, fear, and war weeps for the first time since he was a child. His tears are for the father taken from him four decades before in a deadly shoot-out. And his grief will lead him back to the place where he was born, where his father died, and where a brutal conspiracy is about to explode.
For Bob Lee Swagger, the world changed on that hot day in Blue Eye, Arkansas, when two local boys rode armed and wild in a '55 Fairlane convertible. Swagger's father, Earl, a state trooper, was investigating the brutal murder of a young woman that day. By midnight Earl Swagger lay dead in a deserted cornfield.
Now Bob Lee wants answers. He wants to know the truth behind the shoot -out that took his father's life, a mystery buried in forty years of lies. Because for Bob Lee Swagger, the killing didn't end that day in Blue Eye, Arkansas. The killing had just begun...
Weaving together characters from his national bestsellers Point of Impact and Dirty White Boys, Stephen Hunter's gripping thriller builds to an exhilarating climax--and an explosion of gunfire that blasts open the secrets of two generations. Views: 514
The Magic Wedding DressAnd the bride wore... What?Gentry Northcross was determined to marry the man of her dreams in the wedding gown of her choice. She would not, under any circumstances, put on the "magic" wedding dress her father had purchased for her, and she scoffed at the purported claims that it could reveal the wearer's true love.One by one, Gentry had her bridesmaids try on the "magic" gown, and one by one, they all fell in love. Gentry grew more nervous by the minute, sure that if she put the dress on, she'd see Jake Daniels, her charming, yet irreverent--and all-too-available--ex...and definitely not her intended! Views: 505
Matthew Scudder knows that justice is an elusive commodity in the big city, where a harmless man can be shot dead in a public place criminals fly free through holes in a tattered legal system. But now a vigilante is roaming among the millions, executing those he fees deserve to die. He calls himself "The Will of the People"—an ingenious serial killer who announces his specific murderous intentions to the media before carrying through on his threats. A child molester, a Mafia don, a violent anti-abortionist—even the protected and untouchable are being ruthlessly erased by New York's latest celebrity avenger. Views: 505
Szrapnel to osobista opowieść o wojnie widzianej oczami osiemnastoletniego żołnierza. Druga wojna światowa dla Williama Whartona jest pasmem udręk, w którym nie ma miejsca na bohaterstwo. Szrapnel to swojego rodzaju spowiedź autora, zbiór opowieści, którymi nigdy nie dzielił się nawet z najbliższymi. Opowieści śmiesznych, choć i tragicznych, zmuszających do zastanowienia się nad absurdalnością wojny. Wharton jak zwykle pisze ciepło, po ludzku, przemawiając prosto do serc czytelników.
[wyd.Salamandra, 1996] Views: 502
From his triumphant debut with Snow Crash to the stunning success of his latest novel, Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson has quickly become the voice of a generation. In this now-classic political thriller, he and fellow author J. Frederick George tell a savagely witty, chillingly topical tale set in the tense moments of the Gulf War.
**When a foreign exchange student is found murdered at an Iowa University, Deputy Sheriff Clyde Banks finds that his investigation extends far beyond the small college town—all the way to the Middle East. Shady events at the school reveal that a powerful department is using federal grant money for highly dubious research. And what it’s producing is a very nasty bug.
Navigating a plot that leads from his own backyard to Washington, D.C., to the Gulf, where his Army Reservist wife has been called to duty, Banks realizes he may be the only person who can stop the wholesale slaughtering of thousands of Americans. It’s a lesson in foreign policy he’ll never forget.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 501
NOW A HALLMARK MOVIES & MYSTERIES ORIGINAL STARRING CANDACE CAMERON BURE!In this mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris, part-time librarian Aurora “Roe” Teagarden lands smack in the middle of a baffling murder case—when death comes from out of the blue… Roe never liked Detective Sergeant Jack Burns, but she never wanted to see him dead—especially dropped from a plane right into her own front yard. Luckily, even Lawrenceton, Georgia’s finest know that Roe couldn’t possibly be in two places at once, so her name is crossed off the suspect list. But then other strange things happen around Roe, ranging from peculiar (her irascible cat turns up wearing a pink ribbon) to violent (her assistant at the library is attacked) to potentially deadly (her ex-lover is stabbed). Clearly there is a personal message in this madness that Roe must decipher—before it is too late... Views: 491
The complete collection of the WOLF short story serial (9 stories), plus 4 newly published short stories available only in the Collection.How do you cope when your eyes are opened to the reality of monsters, and you've become one of them?1 - WOLF: Turned - College student Tanya Sikes never believed in monsters. Though life has thrown her some difficult personal curve balls on occasion, she’s lived a sheltered life as far as the evil in the world at large. Nothing could’ve prepared her for being kidnapped or to meet the man who would rescue her from captivity too late to keep her from becoming one of the monsters. Why has God forsaken her?2 - WOLF: Family - Tanya Sikes desires justice for the women who’ve died and closure for their frightened families. She’s still uncertain why God let her survive. Her family grieves, wondering what has become of her. She wants to reassure them, but how can she face them, knowing... Views: 489
