Erotica/Romance. 10420 words long. First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2011 Views: 37
"Biography at its best aims at resurrection. Anne Boyd Rioux has brought the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson back to life for us. Hurrah!"?Robert D. Richardson, author of the Bancroft Prize–winning William James: In the Maelstrom of American ModernismConstance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894), who contributed to Henry James's conception of his heroine Isabelle Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, was one of the most accomplished American writers of the nineteenth century. Yet today the best-known (and most-misunderstood) facts of her life are her relationship with James and her probable suicide in Venice. This first full-length biography of Woolson provides a fuller picture that reaffirms her literary stature.Uncovering new sources, Anne Boyd Rioux evokes Woolson's dramatic life. She was a grand-niece of James Fenimore Cooper and was born in New Hampshire, but her family's ill fortunes drove them west to Cleveland. Raised to be a conventional woman,... Views: 36
"Compelling, insightful and important, Beneath a Ruthless Sun exposes the corruption of racial bigotry and animus that shadows a community, a state and a nation. A fascinating examination of an injustice story all too familiar and still largely ignored, an engaging and essential read." —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just MercyFrom the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Devil in the Grove, the gripping true story of a small town with a big secret.In December 1957, the wife of a Florida citrus baron is raped in her home while her husband is away. She claims a "husky Negro" did it, and the sheriff, the infamous racist Willis McCall, does not hesitate to round up a herd of suspects. But within days, McCall turns his sights on Jesse Daniels, a gentle, mentally impaired white nineteen-year-old. Soon Jesse is railroaded up to the state hospital for the insane, and locked away without trial. But crusading... Views: 36
Life is suddenly looking up for William Wooding. Thirty-five, overweight, sedately employed and unhappily married, he is given the chance to escape to a new life in South America.There he runs the English Bookshop and discovers a different kind of existence: anarchic staff, a beautiful prostitute called Theresa, intrigue at Maria's Tango Club (the local house of pleasure) and a country heading for a bloody coup. Wooding discovers that the country's young president is an old school friend and as a consequence finds himself recruited by the mysterious Mr Box of British Intelligence to investigate what is going on...Tango is a hugely enjoyable mixture of sexual escapades, revolutionary politics, and intelligence-gathering in exotic landscapes. It confirms Alan Judd as the contemporary successor to Evelyn Waugh.'Very entertaining...it makes you want to turn the pages. No mean achievement' Sunday Telegraph'Well-constructed, witty and at times moving' Independent'An... Views: 36
Including his most memorable pieces – his 'Postcard from Rome', his observations on Margaret Thatcher, his insights into Heaney, Larkin and Orwell – this book also contains brilliantly funny examinations of characters like Barry Humphries, as well as showcasing James's more thoughtful, analytical side. From Germaine Greer to Marilyn Monroe, from the nature of celebrity to German culpability for the Holocaust, Reliable Essays is an unmissable collection from one of the best writers of our time. 'He has widened the "tonal range" of criticism, permitting it to be both sober and skittish, learned and lewd, rhetorically rambunctious and epigrammatically concise . . . an intellectual as well as a joker, a wise man as well as a wit' Peter Conrad, Observer 'His writing is impeccably witty, flexible and urbane . . . immensely enjoyable to read. It's a pleasure to see the metropolitan critic back in action' Christopher Taylor, Sunday Telegraph 'He can both get to the heart of... Views: 36
