All Roads Lead to the Sea Views: 49
The renowned author of A Natural History of the Senses takes readers in search of the "rarest of the rare, " species likely to disappear before most of us have ever seen them. From Brazil to the Pacific to Japan, Ackerman shares her concern at the animals' plight, rejoices at the chance to experience them, and cheers those who work to save these fantastic creatures.From the Hardcover edition. Views: 49
Dead Down East, a fictional murder mystery, is both detective noir and smart screwball comedy rolled into one. Jesse Thorpe, a young private investigator, receives a mysterious phone call from a former client, Cynthia Dumais. She begs to be rescued from an island south of Brunswick, Maine, within a mile of where William Lavoilette, the governor of Maine, was assassinated the night before. Views: 49
Two Cambridge academics, the historians Nick and Sarah Mallinson, take a sabbatical with their three small and lively girls in a remote Languedoc farmhouse. But the farmhouse contains its own histories, far darker and murkier than the Mallinsons are used to dealing with. As the illusion of Eden retreats, the couple begin to feel the vulnerability of being among strangers... Views: 49
From BooklistStarred Review Fiction can express pain and suffering as little else can, as in this slim novel set in Afghanistan in October 1979, a time between coups and the Soviet invasion. Narrator Farhad, a 21-year-old university student in Kabul, goes out drinking with a friend, forgets the curfew and password, and is apprehended by jackbooted soldiers who beat and kick him, leaving him unconscious in a sewer. Mahnaz, the widowed mother of a young son (her husband was jailed as a political prisoner and executed), takes him into her home. What might seem a simple, compassionate act is not only brave, exposing Mahnaz to danger when the returning soldiers search for the student, but also prohibited by the Muslim culture. Farhad, hallucinating and between life and death, stays for days with a woman without a husband and sees not only her hair but also her breast, as she offers her milk to her brother, a young man traumatized by repeated military torture. In prose that is spare and incisive, poetic and searing, prizewinning Afghani author Rahimi, who fled his native land in 1984, captures the distress of his people. --Michele Leber Review“The language has the rhythm of a Sufi prayer; the novel offers an insight into the deepest fears of the people of Afghanistan.”—_Los Angeles Times_“That sense of losing one’s identity, of being subsumed by a greater, if illogical, power, is a key theme in Atiq Rahimi’s taut, layered novel..._A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear_ is the intimate narrative...of an entire desperate, anguished country.” —_Washington Post_ “An intensely intimate portrait of a man (and by extension his country) questioning reality and the limits of the possible...full of elegant evocations..._A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear resonates deeply because, no doubt, Rahimi has written a true and sad account, but the story could easily be that of any other Afghan, of any other denizen of this modern, anarchic state. In the end, we are left to wonder whether Rahimi has presented us with a story, a dream, or a nightmare, though it is likely all three.”—Words Without Borders_ “An original and utterly personal account of the pressures a totalitarian society exerts on the individual in 1979 Afghanistan, before the Soviet invasion... A flawless translation does justice to Rahimi’s taut, highly calibrated prose.” —_Publishers Weekly_“In prose that is spare and incisive, poetic and searing, prizewinning Afghani author Rahimi, who fled his native land in 1984, captures the distress of his people.”—_Booklist_, starred review “Rahimi is an author known for his unflinching examination of his home country as much as the experimental styles in which he writes... _A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear takes risks in its structure...But Rahimi’s carefully-controlled new novel exploits these uncertainties, joining the past to the present and legend with fact, creating an appropriately surreal narrative, one that rings through with truth.” —ForeWord Magazine_ “A taut and brilliant burst of anguished prose....both a wonderful and a dreadful little book.” —_The Guardian_ “A beautiful piece of writing.” —Ruth Pavey, The Independent “Short but powerful...The beauty of the language lends this work a haunting clarity.” —_The Herald_ “The novella is verbal photography...[it] seems the real thing...seamlessly translated.” —Russell Celyn Jones, The London Times Views: 49
Ford Madox Ford’s novel about the doomed Katharine Howard, fifth queen of Henry VIII, is a neglected masterpiece. Kat Howard—intelligent, beautiful, naively outspoken, and passionately idealistic—catches the eye of Henry VIII and improbably becomes his fifth wife. A teenager who has grown up far from court, she is wholly unused to the corruption and intrigue that now surround her. It is a time of great upheaval, as unscrupulous courtiers manuever for power while religious fanatics—both Protestant and Catholic—fight bitterly for their competing beliefs. Soon Katharine is drawn into a perilous showdown with Thomas Cromwell, the much-feared Lord Privy Seal, as her growing influence over the King begins to threaten too many powerful interests. Originally published in three parts (The Fifth Queen, Privy Seal, and The Fifth Queen Crowned), Ford’s novel serves up both a breathtakingly visual evocation of the Tudor world and a timeless portrayal of the insidious operations of power and fear in any era.From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 49
