A magnificent new collection from award-winning author Ann Beattie—featuring recent O. Henry, Pushcart, and Best American Short Story selections. Surprising and revealing, set along the East Coast from Maine to Key West, Ann Beattie’s astutely observed new collection explores unconventional friendships, frustrated loves, mortality, and aging. One theme of The Accomplished Guest is people paying visits or receiving visitors, traveling to see old friends, the joys and tolls of hosting company (and of being hosted). The occasion might be a wedding, a birthday, a reunion, an annual Christmas party, or another opportunity to gather and attempt to bond with biological relatives or chosen families. In some stories, as in life, what begins as a benign social event becomes a situation played for high stakes. The stories in The Accomplished Guest are marked by an undercurrent of loss and an unexpected element of violence, with Beattie’s signature mordant humor woven throughout. Some characters provide welcome diversions, others are uninvited interruptions, all are indelibly drawn by the endlessly amusing and accomplished Ann Beattie. Beattie’s debut collection Distortions was published forty years ago, but her writing is as fresh, funny, and relevant as ever. She is “a national treasure, the author of short stories that will endure and continue to inspire” (Jay McInerney, The New York Times Book Review).**Review“She punctures her characters’ pretensions and jadedness with an economy and effortless dialogue that writers have been trying to emulate for three decades, though few, if any, have matched her seamless combination of biting wit and mordant humor, precise irony and consummate cool.” –The New York Times Book Review “One of America’s finest authors—and arguably best living short-story writer.” –Heidi Julavits, Interview “In a Beattie story, perspective is preeminent, and it’s never one you expect. The unwieldiness of human nature, the strangeness of time and circumstance, inevitably shine through." --Megan O'Grady, Vogue “Ann Beattie slips into a short story as flawlessly as Audrey Hepburn wore a Givenchy gown.” --Hamilton Cain, O, The Oprah Magazine “She is brilliant at furnishing the precise level of niggling complexity that is tragicomically real.” –Joan Frank, The San Francisco Chronicle "The John Cheever of her generation, Beattie has long chronicled the emotional foibles of [the] upper-middle-class... with sharply chiseled wit; in these 13 new stories, travel or a visit of some sort is the common thread, mortality the common theme." (Kirkus Reviews) "Beattie’s stories capture the perplexity of people, lost in a world of terrorists and Kindles, as they make their way down what Beattie calls ‘the river of life’s confusion.’” (Publishers Weekly) "These gorgeously complicated, psychologically astute tales are catalyzed by holiday gatherings, weddings, birthday celebrations, and reunions, joyous occasions wildly derailed by divorce, sibling rivalry, generational clashes, financial disasters, violence, and medical emergencies. The directions in which these encounters veer are beyond unexpected, thanks to Beattie’s puckish imagination… Beattie’s profoundly intriguing and unsettling stories abound in delectably witty and furious inner monologues, barbed dialogue, ludicrous predicaments, many faceted heartaches, and abrupt upswellings of affection, even love... always on point, funny, and poignant." (Donna Seaman Booklist, STARRED review) About the Author
Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections, in John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century, and in Jennifer Egan’s The Best American Short Stories 2014. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She was the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine and Key West, Florida. Views: 50
Truly ... a landmark work. This impeccably researched and very readable book should appeal to a wide audience. MEDIEVAL REVIEW Stories of spirits returning from the afterlife are as old as storytelling: accounts of ghosts and revenants which have crossed the mysterious border between the living and the dead are a dominant theme in many cultures, and in medieval Europe ghosts, nightstalkers, wild hunts and unearthly visitors from parallel worlds have figured in stories already in circulation before the coming of Christianity. Medieval Ghost Stories is a collection of ghostly occurrences from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries; they have been found in monastic chronicles and preaching manuals, in sagas and heroic poetry, and in medieval romances. In a religious age, the tales bore a peculiar freight of spooks and spirituality which can still make hair stand on end; unfailingly, these stories give a fascinating and moving glimpse into the medieval mind. Look only at... Views: 50
The adventures of a girl and her gargoyle continue in the second installment of this “thrilling, funny and eerie” fantasy series. —Romantic Times on AlchemysticNo Stone Unturned...Alexandra Belarus was an artist stuck working in her New York family’s business…until she discovered her true legacy—a deep and ancient magic. Lexi became the last practicing Spellmason, with the power to breathe life into stone. And as her powers awoke, so did her family’s most faithful protector: a gargoyle named Stanis. But when a centuries-old evil threatened her family and her city, Stanis sacrificed himself to save everything Lexi held dear.With Stanis gone, Lexi’s efforts to master Spellmasonry—even with the help of her dedicated friends—are faltering. Hidden forces both watch her and threaten her, and she finds herself suddenly under the mysterious wing of a secret religious society determined to keep magic hidden from the world.But the question of Stanis’s fate haunts her—and as the storm around her grows, so does the fear that she won’t be able to save him in her turn. Views: 50
Ric has survived a rival’s attempt to poison him, but the hospital AIs pegged him as a suspect character with no job history and a suspicious amount of cash on his person, and they kept the treatments coming until he was broke. Now he needs a new source of funds, and the hospital which stole his money is chock-full of a new neurohormone that’s worth a fortune. All Ric needs is to manipulate a street gang into committing the crime for him, and then he’ll betray everyone and live happily ever after. But maybe he hasn’t counted on a new technology aimed at turning him into the star of a very nasty reality show . . . From Walter Jon Williams, the master of hard-boiled speculative fiction. Views: 50
In Footsteps of the Hawk Burke himself is in danger of becoming a victim. Two rogue cops are stalking him. The coolly seductive Belinda Roberts wants him to free a man charged with a grisly string of rape-murders. The brutal and half-crazy Detective Jorge Morales may be trying to frame Burke for the same crimes. What ensues is a novel of high-wire suspense and nightmarish authenticity informed by an insider's knowledge of the city where everything—from flesh to other people's cellular phone numbers—is up for sale. Views: 50
Fred Brounian and his twin brother, George, were once co-CEOs of a burgeoning New York City software company devoted to the creation of utopian virtual worlds. Now, in the summer of 2006, as two wars rage and the fifth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, George has fallen into a coma, control of the company has been wrenched away by a military contracting conglomerate, and Fred has moved back in with his parents. Broke and alone, he’s led by an attractive woman, Mira, into a neurological study promising to give him "peak" experiences and a newfound spiritual outlook on life. As the study progresses, lines between the subject and the experimenter blur, and reality becomes increasingly porous. Meanwhile, Fred finds himself caught up in what seems at first a cruel prank: a series of bizarre emails and texts that purport to be from his comatose brother.Moving between the research hospitals of Manhattan, the streets of a meticulously planned Florida city, the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and the uncanny, immersive worlds of urban disaster simulation; threading through military listserv geek-speak, Hindu cosmology, the maxims of outmoded self-help books and the latest neuroscientific breakthroughs, Luminarium is a brilliant examination of the way we live now, a novel that’s as much about the role technology and spirituality play in shaping our reality as it is about the undying bond between brothers, and the redemptive possibilities of love."Luminarium is dizzyingly smart and provocative, exploring as it does the state of the present, of technology, of what is real and what is ephemeral. But the thing that separates Luminarium from other books that discuss avatars, virtual reality and the like is that Alex Shakar is committed throughout with trying, relentlessly, to flat-out explain the meaning of life. This book is funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating that you'll want to read it twice." — Dave Eggers "This fascinating, hilarious novel, though set in the past, is the story of the future: technology has outlapped us, reality is blinking on and off like a bad wireless connection, the ones we love are nearby in one sense, but far away in another. Yet at the book’s galloping heart, it’s the story of what one man is willing to go through to find—in our crowded, second-rate space—something like faith. This novel is sharp, original, and full of energy—obviously the work of a brilliant mind.” — Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the WarAmazon.com ReviewA Letter from Author Alex Shakar People have been asking me if my new novel, Luminarium, is a 9/11 novel, a post-9/11 novel, or perhaps a post-post-9/11 novel. The story begins in New York in the summer of 2006, closing in on the fifth anniversary, which for me marks the beginning of the end of the post-9/11 period. The hero, Fred Brounian, is on the verge of losing everything. After 9/11, financial backing for his virtual world software company dried up, propelling him into a bad business agreement with a military contracting conglomerate. Now, his company has been swindled away from him. His fiancé has left him. He’s lost his swank high-rise apartment and has had to move in with his parents. His twin brother—his best friend and business partner—lies dying in a cancer-induced coma. And he’s being harassed by prank emails claiming to be from said comatose twin. These events, and loneliness and desperation, propel him into a neuroscientific study in which “peak” spiritual experiences are induced artificially by means of an electromagnetic helmet. During the writing of Luminarium, I felt I was following the story’s needs and joys rather than imposing any will of my own; in retrospect, however, I can see that Fred’s story was in certain ways my own. While I wasn’t by any stretch a 9/11 “victim,” I too had been impacted by the event in certain ways. I think my experience, to a greater or lesser extent, accorded with that of a great many others, not only in New York but around the world, everywhere that anyone was feeling the repercussions of the changed world. I observed, at times with shell-shocked detachment, at other times with disgust, how everyone was scrambling to reposition themselves, to get out in front of the new order, to adapt, simply said, to cash in, with American flags or military entertainment software or 9/11 novels or whatever. I saw this in everyone from artists to pundits to businesspeople, this blind march to a tune beyond anyone’s control. I saw it in myself. Inevitably, my disgust became Fred’s own. My questions became: How do we deal with a changed world, with a universe that one day seemed with us and the next seems to turn against us and oppose us at every turn? And to what extent are our beliefs—our inner narratives of victimhood, of divine contracts, of ideological rightness—themselves to blame for the sicknesses of the world? To what extent are our very selves our own? The search for the answers to such questions ultimately becomes a spiritual one. For Fred, an experimental god helmet is the all-purpose tool for taking apart his experiences and building his existence anew. For me, there have been a few such tools, but the main one of the last few years has been Luminarium itself. ReviewWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.“Heady and engrossing ... Shakar is such an engaging writer, bringing rich complications to the narrative.... At times, Luminarium reads like a Christopher Nolan or Wachowski brothers movie as scripted by Don DeLillo.”—The New York Times Book Review“A brilliant book dogged in its pursuit of disassembling human experience in hopes of finding the essence, or at least an astoundingly prismatic view.”—Los Angeles Times"A strikingly metaphysical novel that never dematerializes into misty cliches, a book to challenge the mystic and the doubter alike."—Ron Charles, Washington Post“Something like an adult version of ‘Sophie’s World’ for readers clicking between ‘Mortal Kombat’ and Immanuel Kant, Shakar’s metaphysical novel explores different facets of belief and the manipulation of consciousness.” —Washington Post, "Notable Fiction of 2011"“As Shakar suggests in the book, maybe the whole universe is one big computer game and we are all bit players plotting a course through the multiple parallel realities this adventure-seeking void generates. It's a fascinating idea on which to hinge this worthy novel.”—Seattle Times“Luminarium is dizzyingly smart and provocative, exploring as it does the state of the present, of technology, of what is real and what is ephemeral. But the thing that separates Luminarium from other books that discuss avatars, virtual reality and the like is that Alex Shakar is committed throughout with trying, relentlessly, to flat-out explain the meaning of life. This book is funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating that you’ll want to read it twice.”—Dave Eggers“This fascinating, hilarious novel, though set in the past, is the story of the future: technology has outlapped us, reality is blinking on and off like a bad wireless connection, the ones we love are nearby in one sense, but far away in another. Yet at the book’s galloping heart, it’s the story of what one man is willing to go through to find—in our crowded, second-rate space—something like faith. This novel is sharp, original, and full of energy—obviously the work of a brilliant mind.”—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution“Illusion is the substance of Luminarium, and worlds coming apart, though quietly, like the way Fred Brounian's comatose twin brother starts sending him emails from the Hindu hell of flawed angels. For all the collapsing bardos, there is a kindness that infuses this deeply engaging book.”—Zachary Mason, author of The Lost Books of the Odyssey“I got the sensation that the book was expanding, encapsulating so much of what so many novels have tried to do in the past few years, both consuming and furthering the zeitgeist…a beautifully written big-questions novel.”—Time Out Chicago (Five star review)“Shakar is a flesh-and-blood, intensely intelligent writer.”—Chicago Reader“Encompassing, caring, provocative, and funny, Shakar's novel astutely dramatizes moral and spiritual dilemmas catalyzed by the frenetic post-9/11 cyber age, while love, as it always has, blossoms among the ruins.”—Chicago Tribune“Luminarium is a crashing and rainy light-show that makes us vulnerable and scared, but also invigorated and, dare I say, hopeful.”—BOMBlog“[A] wonderfully corrosive satire.”—Vogue.com“[A] penetrating look at the uneasy intersection of technology and spirituality…Shakar’s blend of the business of cyberspace and the science of enlightenment distinguishes the novel as original and intrepid…Shakar’s prose is sharp and hilarious, engendering the reader’s faith in the novel’s philosophical ambitions. Part Philip K. Dick, part Jonathan Franzen, this radiant work leads you from the unreal to the real so convincingly that you begin to let go of the distinction.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewEditor's Choice Award 2011 —Booklist“In his long-awaited second novel after the razor-sharp The Savage Girl (2001), Shakar takes measure of our post-9/11 existential confusion in a technology-avid but sciencephobic, ‘ever-complexifying world.’ A radiantly imaginative social critic, Shakar is also a knowledgeable and intrepid explorer of metaphysical and neurological mysteries. With beguiling characters trapped in ludicrous and revelatory predicaments, this is a cosmic, incisively funny kaleidoscopic tale of loss, chaos, and yearning.”—Booklist, Starred Review"Luminarium is ... one of the most exciting and bracing books I've read this year, because it has the guts to ask questions—and even venture some answers—regarding issues most contemporary American fiction won't touch."—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel“Virtual and 'real' reality intertwine in unpredictable ways in this ingenious novel; to his credit, Shakar’s approach is more philosophical than sci-fi ... Shakar succeeds in a delicate balancing act here, securing the novel simultaneously (and paradoxically) in real, virtual and supernatural worlds.”—Kirkus Reviews“Luminarium is a sprawling, brilliant look at the globally interconnected world we live in, and the protagonist, Fred Brounian, is a wonderful guide to it — a lovable Eeyore of a guy just trying to find a few answers (or at least figure out the right questions). I loved this one—maybe last year’s most ambitious novel, and certainly one of the strangest.” -Flavorwire“If contemporary fiction has been striking you as a little too ‘lite,’ take a look at Luminarium.”—Washington Post (Included in “My Favorite Novels of 2011” on Style Blog"The Year in Books" selection. —Austin ChroniclePraise for Alex Shakar and The Savage Girl: “An exceptionally smart and likeable first novel that tries valiantly to ransom beauty from its commercial captors.”—Jonathan Franzen“It’s exciting to meet a new novelist who’s not afraid of heights.”—The New York Times Book Review, a Notable Book of 2001 “The most sensitive, observant, and shrewdest writers are preternaturally attuned to the undercurrents that twist and warp society, and Shakar, a seer with extraordinary literary skills and a piquant sense of humor, will join the ranks of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Tom Wolfe.”—Chicago Tribune Views: 50
Burke, the relentless urban mercenary, returns in this riveting new thriller by bestselling author Andrew Vachss. Two decades ago, Burke "recovered" a teenage runaway from a pimp. Now she's on the run, again. After seeing the man who hired him to find her gunned down by a professional hunter-killer team, Burke realizes he could be next. The master urban survivalist knows he has to finish the job to learn the truth, only now he's looking for a predator, not a victim. The search will force Burke to walk down the one dark alley that has always terrified him -- his past. From the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly Hard-boiled crime fans will enjoy the latest entry in Vachss's long-running Burke series ( Down Here , etc.). The renegade New York City PI, who operates by an idiosyncratic private moral code, has been lying low since being shot in the face. But a longtime fixer, Charlie, soon sees past Burke's attempt to pose as his own brother and arranges a meeting with a prospective client, who wants to find a missing woman. What should have been a routine setup turns deadly when professional hit men gun down the client as he's attempting to retrieve Burke's retainer from his car. Burke, afraid that the gunmen may come after him and the data-filled CD the dead man gave him, uses his own network of allies and contacts to learn more about the missing woman, Beryl Preston, whom he happens to have saved from a pimp 20 years earlier. Despite a familiar plot, the sharp-edged prose and cutting insights into New York's underbelly elevate this above many similar crime novels. Views: 50
One Man With A Dragon’s Soul.A self-proclaimed bachelor for life, modern-day Luke Tavish has no idea he’s more than a mere man. One thing’s for certain, though… he’s not looking for love. He doesn't want a relationship, but he needs the fair maiden from the past... in more ways than he knows.One Woman With The Key To Unlock His Powers.Amileigh McCollum isn’t your typical Medieval Lady. She's always known there's something special about her. She just isn't sure what. The day she rides beyond her father's gates alongside a man who isn't her husband, she’ll learn that destiny is about to find her.Six Hundred Years Separate Them.Forward to go back, time spirals out of control in an attempt to bring together a couple that is six hundred years apart. When Luke finds himself back in Ami’s world, he has to come to terms with his newfound identity and prepare for a battle he didn’t know he would have to fight, all while falling head-over-heels in love.When The Future Calls Him Back, Will He Ask Her To Go? Would She Say Yes If He Did?Fate’s Carefully Woven Web Is About To Be Tested By Human Will, A Kiss, And The Flip of A Coin. Views: 50
Hugh Howey was a boat captain living aboard a seventy-four-foot yacht in the shadow of the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001.Imprisoned and put on display in a glass-domed zoo on the planet Tralfamadore, adult film actress Montana Wildhack is left alone with her thoughts and her occasional lover Billy Pilgrim.Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five, Howey uses this short story to weave his own personal Dresden experience with Wildhack’s private hell. In Peace in Amber, he examines the struggle to determine what to control, when to surrender, and how to discern those things we cannot change.
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