There's one simple rule in matchmaking...don't fall in love with the client.. . . Oops!Welcome to Billionaire Bachelor Mountain Cove. Off the grid, exclusive and remote, it's the best place for a spy novelist to disappear. Grantham Robbins takes on the biggest challenge of his writing career--finding the perfect date for a big event. Matchmaker Emily Wood comes to the rescue.Emily remembers Grant before he made it big... and they were best friends. There's not a better man out there, so why can't she find his match?Because when a matchmaker fails to keep the only rule of matchmaking, there are consequences . . .A second-chance homecoming romance inspired by Jane Austen's Emma. Views: 43
WARNING: BDSM, exhibitionism, and kink!Cassie is the girl next door, a librarian and book nerd. She loves to run and spend time with her best friend, she has even taken up rock climbing. The most excitement she normally experiences is in the sexy books she reads. Imagine her surprise when she becomes the center of sexy Zane's attention and he introduces her to the world of BDSM.Zane has been just surviving for years, ever since his parents were killed in a sailing accident and his world was turned upside down. He lacks interest and inspiration and suffers daily from his grief. The only thing that has kept Zane's attention over the past few years is mastering the craft of being a BDSM Dominant, but even that grows tiresome.When Zane meets quiet unassuming Cassie, will their chance encounter inspire in Zane passion for life again or will she just be another distraction from his painful grief. Views: 43
From Publishers Weekly
Reading this heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel is a bit like reliving an extraordinarily long dream. The leaps in time, the abundance of plot lines, the casual occurrence of unspeakable events and the persistent flashbacks all give the text a distinctly dreamlike quality. But the book is based in fact: it is set in Turkey between 1915 and 1917, when the government organized the systematic massacre of the Armenian population (Hitler was later to imitate some of the Turkish techniques). Marcom's form emphasizes the nature of her subject the many stories within stories, intertwined lives, murders and madness reflect the intricate interdependencies of a nation. A few of the many protagonists are Anaguil, an Armenian girl sheltering with a Muslim family, trying to hold on to her culture; Sargis, a student hiding from the Turkish police in his mother's attic, writing poetry as he loses his mind; Lucine, a servant at the American embassy, and the consul's mistress; Rachel, who has known all of them and who speaks after her death from the bottom of a well; Maritsa, a Muslim woman who wishes she were a boy these characters and others tell their stories in interconnected chapters. This is a novel in which chronology stretches and loops, the tale returning again and again to the central reality of brutality, cruelty and loss. The highly mannered style manifests a debt to the postmodern novel and the fairy tale, resulting in something between a cry and a reminiscence. This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
Here is a novel of import and style, set in 1915 - 1917, the years of the Ottoman Turkish government's brutal campaign that resulted in the deaths of more than a million Armenians. Through a series of chapters that have the weight and economy of poetry, Micheline Ahronian Marcom introduces us to the stories of Anaguil, and Armenian girl taken in by Turkish neighbors after the death of her parents who now views the remains of her world through a Muslim veil; Sargis, a poet hidden away in his mother's attic, dressed in women's clothing, and steadiy going mad; Lucine, a servant and lover of the American consul; Maritsa, a rage-filled Muslim wife who becomes a whore; and Dickran, an infant left behind under a tree on the long exodus from and Armenian village, who reaches with tiny hands to touch the stars and dies with his name unrecorded. Through these lives, we witness the vanishing of a people.
Three Apples Fell from Heaven is an elegy to the final days of Orientalism and an elegant memorial to the victims of the twentieth century's first genocide. Together, the stories of these lives form a narrative mosaic--faceted, complex, richly textured a devastating tableau.
About the Author
Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Los Angeles. She works as a counselor in the Upward Bound program, a federally funded college-preparatory program for low-income high school youth.
From Library Journal
This first novel is not an easy read not because of any stylistic complexity (its prose is as supple and clear as a mountain brook) but because of the grim subject: the 1915-17 genocide of the Armenians by the Ottoman government, an act of brutal inhumanity modern Turkey has yet to acknowledge. Drawing on the experiences of her grandmother, a survivor, Marcom seeks to record the many voices of the Armenian massacre and diaspora through fiction. Her book is not a novel in the conventional sense but rather a collection of vignettes, short stories, prose poems, and fables, all presenting these many voices, from Anaguil, a young Armenian girl taken in by her Turkish neighbors after her parents' deaths, to Dickran, a baby abandoned under a tree during a forced exodus. This unusual narrative device is both the book's strength and its weakness. By introducing so many characters, Marcom conveys the incomprehensible scope of the slaughter, yet this also has the unintended effect of distancing the reader. So many characters appear briefly and promptly disappear that it is difficult to connect to any particular one. Still, Marcom does an important service of calling attention to an almost forgotten 20th-century tragedy. For larger fiction collections. Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
"Who does now remember the Armenians?" Hitler said in 1939. He was referring to the Turkish genocide in 1915, when nearly one million Armenians were driven from their homes and slaughtered. This powerful first novel tells that story through the voices of individual people caught up in the massacre. A teenage boy is in hiding disguised as a girl, as the soldiers get nearer; they've already killed his brothers. A girl is dragged from her house, driven for days through the wilderness, raped and beaten, her mother killed. An infant speaks from the dead, telling how he was born on the death march. A soldier is cutting off limbs. The many changing, interweaving voices don't make for easy reading, but they certainly re-create the madness and confusion of the personal experience while helping to distance the horror. In contrast, the American official's report to his superiors is almost bland: horrified at the facts of the brutality, pitying, but also racist about the victims. This is an important addition to Holocaust collections. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“The fierce beauty of her prose both confronts readers with many breathtaking cruelties and carries us past them…But the novel is much more than a catalog of horrors, however brilliantly described. It is also about love and tenderness, the pleasures of custom and ritual, the moments of unexpected generosity and courage and, above all, the necessity of remembering — oneself, one’s family, one’s language, one’s history.” —Margot Livesey, The New York Times Book Review
“Powerful…Marcom’s writing is intensely poetic.” —Washington Post Book World
“An exquisite, vivid, heartbreaking book…breathtaking.” —Cristina Garcia, author of The Aguero Sisters
“Marcom opens up a human and historical drama in startling ways. This is an impressive debut.” —Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate
“Like those who write about the Jewish Holocaust, Marcom faces the well-nigh impossible task of speaking the unspeakable; unlike them, she cannot count on her readers to be familiar with the outlines of the story already. She rises to this double challenge not with a diatribe or a lengthy historical account but by writing a relatively short, intensely vivid, novel...as we turn the pages of this dark and brilliant book, we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a noble act.” —Margot Livesey, The New York Times Book Review
“Chronicles the 20th century’s first genocide with an unnervingly effective blend of imagination, artistry and grisly historical fact…these unsparingly visceral vignettes assume an almost unbearable potency.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Lyrical…from the start you feel as though you are in the presence of an authentic voice, in this case a voice that weeps and wails and growls and shouts and chants and moans and sings about the 20th Century’s first — but least-known — ethnic massacre…Marcom is so talented…[ Three Apples Fell From Heaven ] will stay with its readers a good long while.” —Chicago Tribune
“A disturbing, powerful work…Marcom’s writing is intensely poetic…The effect is surreal, imparting the sense of how it is to continue living when all normal things have gone awry.” —Washington Post Book World
“Reading Three Apples Fell From Heaven , I can believe that poetry can stop war. Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s elegy to the Armenian dead — her family, her people, precious individual lives — sings so strong, rings so true that surely the hell of genocide can never happen again. She has written an invaluable work in this age of devastation.” —Maxine Hong Kingston
“[A] heartbreaking, beautiful, painful first novel…the highly mannered style manifests a debt to the postmodern novel and the fairy tale, resulting in something between a cry and a reminiscence. This book is not for the faint of heart, but its readers will be well rewarded.” —Publishers Weekly
“Micheline Aharonian Marcom has woven a heartrending tapestry from the lost time, lost places, and lost voices of the Armenian genocide. Spectacularly gifted, tender, wise, and terrible in rage, Marcom has produced a powerful novel that attempts to retrieve one of the most infamous crimes of the twentieth century from the event horizon of history.” —Junot Díaz, author of Drown
“This is an exquisite, vivid, heartbreaking book. It lushly restores one’s soul while giving voice to the many silenced souls of the Armenian genocide.” —Cristina Garcia, author of The Aguero Sisters and Dreaming in Cuban
“Micheline Aharonian Marcom has written a poetic and inventive novel set in eastern Turkey, in the epicenter of the Armenian genocide of 1915. With a Joycean affinity for detail, character, and cultural nuance, Marcom opens up a human and historical drama in startling ways. This is an impressive debut.” —Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate
“[Marcom] has chosen an unusual structure, a tapestry of many vignettes that depict a shattered Armenian culture and way of life through the memories of victims and bystanders, those who hid, those who died, and those who tried vainly to help…her story has a certain brutal force that stays in the memory.” —Kirkus Reviews
“As a third-generation American-Armenian, Micheline Aharonian Marcom bears the weight of her own family history with extraordinary grace…moving…Marcom doesn’t resort to sentiment or shock tactics, but lovingly renders each scene with slow, languorous rhythms.” —The Guardian (London)
“Animated by a resolve that ancestral stories will not be forgotten, and that those who are dead will continue to be cherished.” —The Daily Telegraph (London)
“Powerful.” —Scotland on Sunday Views: 43
