| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
![[???]: 12 Steps and 12 Traditions [???]: 12 Steps and 12 Traditions](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0916856291.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
More editions of 12 Steps and 12 Traditions:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Adult Children of Alcoholics'
A book about understand, breaking and miving beyond the cycle of alcoholism in families. Profoundly touching and positive. [via]
More editions of Adult Children of Alcoholics:
› Find signed collectible books: 'After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology'
This collection addresses the theme of representation in anthropology. Its fourteen articles explore some of the directions in which contemporary anthropology is moving, following the questions raised by the "writing culture" debates of the 1980s.
It includes discussion of issues such as:
* the concept of caste in Indian society
* scottish ethnography
* how dreams are culturally conceptualised
* representations of the family
* culture as conservation
* gardens, theme parks and the anthropologist in Japan
* representation in rural Japan
* people's place in the landscape of Northern Australia
* representing identity of the New Zealand Maori. [via]
More editions of After Writing Culture: Epistemology and Praxis in Contemporary Anthropology:
It's more than a book. It's a way of life.
Alcoholics Anonymous-The Big Book--has served as a lifeline to millions worldwide. First published in 1939, Alcoholics Anonymous sets forth cornerstone concepts of recovery from alcoholism and tells the stories of men and women who have overcome the disease. With publication of the second edition in 1955, the third edition in 1976, and now the fourth edition in 2001, the essential recovery text has remained unchanged while personal stories have been added to reflect the growing and diverse fellowship. The long-awaited fourth edition features 24 new personal stories of recovery.
Key features and benefits
·the most widely used resource for millions of individuals in recovery
·contains full, original text describing the A.A. program
·updated with 24 new personal stories
More editions of Alcoholics Anonymous:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism/B-1'
More editions of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism/B-1:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism'
More editions of Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism:
![[???]: Alcoholics Anonymous: Mini Edition [???]: Alcoholics Anonymous: Mini Edition](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1892959011.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
More editions of Alcoholics Anonymous: Mini Edition:
Hard cover reproduction of the first printing of the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous.
An affordable reproduction of the original Big Bookî.
Includes a reproduction of the original dustjacket.
Compared to the original this reproduction has the same content and appearance but is not as thick.
"Reproduction published by The Anonymous Press" has been added to the book cover, dustjacket and title page.
î"Big Book" has been registered as a trademark by AA World Service Inc. [via]
More editions of Alcoholics Anonymous: Reproduction of the First Printing of the First Edition:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Angela's Ashes'
"When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag or whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying shcoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years. Above all we were wet!" So begins Frank McCourt's stunning memoir of his childhood in Ireland and America, a recollection of unvarnished truth and no self pity, of grinding poverty and indomitable spirit that will live in the memory long after the tape has ended. Now a major film directed by Alan Parker and starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson. [via]
More editions of Angela's Ashes:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir'
"Devastating....Ranks with Frank Conroy's Stop-Time."--Michael Cunningham
"Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. But if I let him inside the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up." Nick Flynn met his father for the third time when he was twenty-seven years old, working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery. Nick, his own life precariously unsettled, was living alternately in a ramshackle boat and in a warehouse that was once a strip joint. In bold, dazzling prose, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (a phrase Flynn senior uses to describe his life on the streets) tells the story of two lives and the trajectory that led Nick and his father into that homeless shelter, onto those streets, and finally to each other. [via]More editions of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Bajo El Volcan'
More editions of Bajo El Volcan:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Carrie'
More editions of Carrie:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood: A Novel'
Wells is a Louisiana-born Seattle actress and playwright; her loopy saga of a 40-year-old player in Seattle's hot theater scene who must come to terms with her mama's past in steamy Thornton City, Louisiana, reads like a lengthy episode of Designing Women written under the influence of mint juleps and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!. The Ya-Yas are the wild circle of girls who swirl around the narrator Siddalee's mama, Vivi, whose vivid voice is "part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah." The Ya-Yas broke the no-booze rule at the cotillion, skinny-dipped their way to jail in the town water tower, disrupted the Shirley Temple look-alike contest, and bonded for life because, as one says, "It's so much fun being a bad girl!"
Siddalee must repair her busted relationship with Vivi by reading a half-century's worth of letters and clippings contained in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood's packet of "Divine Secrets." It's a contrived premise, but the secrets are really fun to learn. [via]
More editions of Divine Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood: A Novel:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Drinking: A Love Story'
The roots of alcoholism in the life of a brilliant daughter of an upper-class family are explored in this stylistic, literary memoir of drinking by a Massachusetts journalist. Caroline Knapp describes how the distorted world of her well-to-do parents pushed her toward anexoria and then alcoholism. Fittingly, it was literature that saved her: She found inspiration in Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life and sobered up. Her tale is spiced with the characters she's known along the way. [via]
More editions of Drinking: A Love Story:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Drinking Life: A Memoir'
20 years after his last drink Pete Hamill looks back on his early life. As a child during the depression and World War II he learnt that drinking was to be an essential part of being a man, it was only later he discovered its ability to destroy lives. [via]
More editions of A Drinking Life: A Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Dry: A Memoir'
Fans of Augusten Burroughs's darkly funny memoir Running with Scissors were left wondering at the end of that book what would become of young Augusten after his squalid and fascinating childhood ended. In Dry, we find that although adult Augusten is doing well professionally, earning a handsome living as an ad writer for a top New York agency, Burroughs's personal life is a disaster. His apartment is a sea of empty Dewar's bottles, he stays out all night boozing, and he dabs cologne on his tongue in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the stench of alcohol on his breath at work. When his employer insists he seek help, Burroughs ships out to Minnesota for detoxification, counseling, and amusingly told anecdotes about the use of stuffed animals in group therapy. But after a month of such treatment, he's back in Manhattan and tenuously sober. And while its one thing to lay off the sauce in rehab, Burroughs learns that it's quite another to resume your former life while avoiding the alcohol that your former life was based around. This quest to remain sober is made dramatically more difficult, and the tale more harrowing, when Burroughs begins an ill-advised romance with a crack addict. Certainly the "recovered alcoholic fighting to stay sober" tale is not new territory for a memoirist. But Burroughs's account transcends clichés: it doesn't adhere to the traditional "temptation narrowly resisted" storyline and it features, in Burroughs himself, a central character that is sympathetic even when he's neither likable nor admirable. But what ultimately makes this memoir such a terrific read is a brilliant and candid sense of humor that manages to stay dry even when recalling events where the author was anything but. --John Moe [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night'
More editions of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Glass Castle: A Memoir'
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever.
Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.
For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story. A regular contributor to MSNBC.com, she lives in New York and Long Island and is married to the writer John Taylor. [via]
More editions of The Glass Castle: A Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Cenizas De Angela: Una Memoria/Angela's Ashes a Memoir'
More editions of Las Cenizas De Angela: Una Memoria/Angela's Ashes a Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Long Day's Journey into Night'
This work is interesting enough for its history. Completed in 1940, Long Day's Journey Into Night is an autobiographical play Eugene O'Neill wrote that--because of the highly personal writing about his family--was not to be released until 25 years after his death, which occurred in 1953. But since O'Neill's immediate family had died in the early 1920s, his wife allowed publication of the play in 1956. Besides the history alone, the play is fascinating in its own right. It tells of the "Tyrones"--a fictional name for what is clearly the O'Neills. Theirs is not a happy tale: The youngest son (Edmond) is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis; he despises his father for sending him; his mother is wrecked by narcotics; and his older brother by drink. In real-life these factors conspired to turn O'Neill into who he was--a tormented individual and a brilliant playwright. [via]
More editions of Long Day's Journey into Night:

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lost Weekend'
More editions of The Lost Weekend:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Magical Thinking: True Stories'
From the number-one bestselling author of Running with Scissors and Dry comes Augusten Burroughs's most eagerly anticipated collection yet: true stories that give voice to the thoughts that we all have but dare not mention.It begins with a Tang Instant-Breakfast Drink television commercial:"Yes, you, Augusten. You were great. We want you." I can now trace my manic adult tendencies to this moment. It was the first time I felt deeply thrilled about something just a fraction of an instant after being completely crushed. I believe those three words "We want you" were enough to cause my brain to rewire itself, and from then on, I would require more than other people....- from Magical Thinking's "Commercial Break"A contest of wills with a deranged cleaning lady. The execution of a rodent carried out with military precision and utter horror. Telemarketing revenge. A different kind of "roof work." Dating an undertaker who shows up in a minivan. This is the fabric of Augusten Burroughs's life: a collection of true stories that are universal in their appeal yet unabashedly intimate, stories that shine a flashlight into both dark and hilarious places. With Magical Thinking, Augusten Burroughs goes where other memoirists fear to tread. [via]
More editions of Magical Thinking: True Stories:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Million Little Pieces'
News from Doubleday & Anchor Books
The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesnt matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.
It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.
We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces.
I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.
One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.
The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons
More editions of A Million Little Pieces:
› Find signed collectible books: 'My Friend Leonard'
In the bold and heartbreaking My Friend Leonard, James Frey picks up the story of his extraordinary life pretty much where things left off in his breakout bestseller and Amazon.com Best Book of 2003, A Million Little Pieces, the fierce, in-your-face memoir about Frey's kamikaze run of self-destruction and his days in rehab. Fresh from a stint in jail from pre-rehab-related charges ("On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray."), clean-living Frey returns to Chicago and gets sucker-punched with a cruel blow that will leave readers ducking for cover in anticipation of the blinding bender that's sure to come. But then the titular Leonard, the larger-than-life Vegas mobster ("West Coast Director of a large Italian finance firm") whom James befriended in rehab, steps into the story and serves equal parts unlikely life coach, guardian angel, and father figure for the grief-stricken author, adopting him as his "son" and schooling him in the fine art of "living boldly":
Be not bold, be f-cking BOLD. Every time you meet someone, make a f-cking impression. Make them think you're the hottest shit in the world. Make them think they're gonna lose their job if they don't give you one. Look 'em in the eye, and never look away. Be confident and calm, be f-cking bold.
Hurricane Leonard storms into James's life, showering his young charge with multi-course feasts at steakhouses and Italian restaurants, courtside seats at Bulls' games, Cuban cigars, and an elaborate Super Bowl party in Los Angeles, all the while doling out wisdom on life and love and motivating James to stick to his burgeoning writing career. James even has a brief stint as an employee of Leonard's, though occupational hazards--like having a nine millimeter shoved in his face--prove too much for the novice bag man (though he does make enough to invest his earnings in a Picasso drawing). When Leonard drops out of sight for an extended period, his absence leaves readers aching to hear the familiar refrain of "My Son!" just one more time.
Frey sticks to the taut, staccato style that shot through A Million Little Pieces with such raw electricity. Surprisingly, the tone feels equally at home with this book's focus on friendship and extreme loyalty, and works to intensify the always-looming, adrenaline-rush threat of violence and the lure of the Fury that courses like a riptide throughout the book. Ultimately, it's a sense of hope, and humor even, that prevails and makes My Friend Leonard a stand-alone success. Despite his shady pedigree, you'll long to have a friend like Leonard just a phone call away. --Brad Thomas Parsons
James Frey's List of Books You Should Read
![]() Paris Spleen | ![]() Tropic of Cancer | ![]() The Great Santini |

Amazon.com's Significant Seven
James Frey graciously agreed to answer the questions we like to ask every author: the Amazon.com Significant Seven.
Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
A: Tao te Ching by Lao Tsu. Completely changed how I think, behave, live my life. Nothing else comes close.
Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?
A: The book would be the Tao te Ching, the CD would be some compilation of love songs from the 70s and 80s, and the DVD would be highlights from the history of the Cleveland Browns.
Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
A: No way I can answer that.
Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
A: I've been working at the same desk since I started writing. It's old and beaten-up and black. The rest of my workroom is empty, except for some crazy sh-- on the wall in front of me: pictures of people I admire, reproductions of artwork I dig, sayings that motivate me, things like--bare your soul, be bold, page a day motherfu--er page a day. I listen to music while I work, have a pile of nicotine gum and a couple cans of diet coke. My dogs are usually a couple feet away from me. I've always worked this way, probably always will.
Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
A: "Loved, lost, laughed, left."
Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
A: Winston Churchill
Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
A: Immortality.
› Find signed collectible books: 'Paradise'
From one of Britains most acclaimed novelists, a comic but terrifying love story about two alcoholics alternately battling and embracing their addiction, and each other.
Everything in Hannah Luckrafts life is tinted amber: her dreary job selling cardboard boxes; her strained relations with a beloved younger brother, who is about to give up on her; and especially her incipient relationship with Robert, a man who understands what it is to drink. They become constant companions, and she drinks up his tender affection with the same soul-ravaged thirst she brings to her search for paradisethe paradise of self-annihilation, a reprieve from the howling loneliness and difficulty of waking life. Together and then alone, she and Robert spiral through the beauty and depravity of a love affair with alcohol and with each other. From Scotland to Montreal, and onward, Hannah travels beyond her limits, beyond herself, in search of the ultimate altered state, the place where she can be happy: her paradise.
No one writes with greater intelligence about the human predicament, about the comic dilemmas of consciousness and the mind divided against itself, and no young writer brings a greater gift of language to our concurrent pursuits of debasement and ascension. Paradise is a novel of dark extremes, rich in emotionKennedys most gripping and immediate work of fiction yet. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Running With Scissors'
There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe [via]
More editions of Running With Scissors: A Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sea of Tranquility'
The highly praised author of The Salt Point and Boys of Life offers his most ambitious novel yet--a work that evokes comparisons with that of Anne Tyler and Richard Russo, as it "tracks the disintegration of a picture-perfect American family across two momentous decades of time and immense distances of space, literal and emotional" (Boston Globe). [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood'
From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual." With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas's unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye gets to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls' getting drunk. She persuades us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics-yet-but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned binging. Like the contemporary masterpieces The Liars' Club, Autobiography of a Face, and Jarhead, Smashed is destined to become a classic. A crucial book for any woman who has succumbed to oblivion through booze, or for anyone ready to face the more subtle repercussions of their own chronic over-drinking or of someone they love, Smashed is an eye-opening, wise, and utterly gripping achievement. [via]
More editions of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'
Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive. Betty Smith's poignant, honest novel created a big stir when it was first published over 50 years ago. Her frank writing about life's squalor was alarming to some of the more genteel society, but the book's humor and pathos ensured its place in the realm of classics--and in the hearts of readers, young and old. (Ages 10 and older) --Emilie Coulter [via]
More editions of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn:
![[???]: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions [???]: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0916856771.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
More editions of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Volcano'
Regardless of what his apologists say, Under the Volcano is Malcolm Lowry's only wholly successful book. Fortunately, it is a masterpiece. Reading it is like willingly submitting yourself to a bout of delirium tremens, with all of the disorientation, terror, and pity that that implies. Under the Volcano isn't an easy book to get through; it is extravagantly lurid and deeply allusive, and its protagonist, Consul Geoffrey Firmin, is a hopeless wreck of a human being. Nonetheless, Lowry's seemingly self-indulgent horrors are justified by the immense power of his fiction.
Under the Volcano takes place in Quahnahac, Mexico, on the Day of the Dead in November 1939, in the shadow of European war. Firmin is in the process of violently drinking himself to death, alternately cowering in the comfort of his few, half-estranged friends and lashing out at them. His ex-wife, Yvonne, has returned from her flight to the United States to attempt to bring Firmin back into line. His younger brother, Hugh, wishes to slip over to Spain to join the last feeble resistance against Franco's fascist government. Firmin's long, doomed day is a progress through metaphysical dread and faint hopes of redemption--hopes that are always dashed by politics, mescal, and the failure of love.
This is one of the handful of fictions that gave the 20th century the Infernos it so urgently deserved. Lowry's attention to the Second World War is oblique, almost evasive, but Under the Volcano somehow remains one of the best literary attempts to grapple with modernity's most terrible moment. Indispensable. --Jack Illingworth [via]
More editions of Under the Volcano:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woman Who Walked Into Doors'
Roddy Doyle follows Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, winner of the Booker Prize, and The Commitments with another remarkable book that readers will find funny, sexy, and sad. He takes an unflinching look at the life of Paula Spencer as she struggles to regain her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and a worsening drinking problem. Capturing both her vulnerability and her strength, Doyle gives Paula a voice that is real and unforgettable. [via]
More editions of The Woman Who Walked Into Doors:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Cenizas de Angela /Angela's Ashes'
More editions of Cenizas de Angela /Angela's Ashes:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Cenizas De Angela: Una Memoria/Angela's Ashes a Memoir'
En cada pagina abunda el incomparable sentido del humor y la compasion de Frank McCourt. Con todas las cualidades de una obra clasica, "Las cenizas de Angela" esta ahora disponible en edicion rustica en espanol. Esta autobiografia ganadora del Premio Pulitzer y de gran exito de ventas internatcional trasciende las fronteras culturales y linguisticas con su narracion sobre la infancia, la pobreza y las relaciones familiares. [via]
More editions of Las Cenizas De Angela: Una Memoria/Angela's Ashes a Memoir:
› Find signed collectible books: 'En Mil Pedazos/a Million Pieces'
Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects goodness, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery. A Million Little Pieces is the fight between one young mans will and the ever-tempting chemical trip to oblivion, the fight to survive on his own terms, for reasons close to his own heart.
Description in Spanish: Imagina que te despiertas en un avión. No tienes ni idea de dónde has estado ni de adónde vas. No recuerdas nada de las dos últimas semanas. Imagina que te faltan cuatro dientes, que tienes la nariz rota y una herida en la mejilla. Imagina que vas sin cartera, sin dinero, y no tienes trabajo. Imagina que te está buscando la policía. Imagina que eres alcohólico desde hace diez años y adicto al crack desde hace tres. ¿Qué harías?
A los veintitrés años, James Frey ingresó en un centro de desintoxicación. Destruido física y mentalmente de forma casi irremediable, debía enfrentarse a una difícil decisión: aceptar que no llegaría a cumplir los veinticuatro, o cambiar drásticamente el curso de su vida. Rodeado de pacientes en la misma situación entre los que había un juez, un pandillero, un boxeador que había sido campeón mundial y una frágil ex prostituta, Frey luchó contra el dogma de «Cómo recuperarse» para conseguir encontrar su propio camino, y decidir qué futuro, si le esperaba alguno, era el que quería alcanzar.
Aclamado por la crítica como todo un fenómeno literario y best seller desde los primeros días de su publicación, En mil pedazos es el testimonio inusualmente sincero de un hombre cuyo furioso impulso de autodestrucción sólo es comparable a su inagotable deseo de sobrevivir. [via]
More editions of En Mil Pedazos/a Million Pieces:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Retorno a Brideshead'
El retorno de Charles Ryder a Brideshead la elegante mansión de lord Marchmain, convertida ahora en cuartel devuelve a su memoria aquellos tiempos, anteriores a la guerra, en que paseaba embelesado por sus hermosos jardines y salones y se dejaba sucumbir al hechizo de sus singulares habitantes. En realidad, nunca pudo Charles librarse de su ambigua amistad con el inquieto Sebastian, ni de su obsesivo amor por la hermana de éste, lady Julia, ni de la oscura y contradictoria fatalidad que dejó marcada para siempre la atribulada vida de los Marchmain con su huella de drama y desvarío. / In this classic tale of British life between the World Wars, Waugh parts company with the satire of his earlier works to examine affairs of the heart. Charles Ryder finds himself stationed at Brideshead, the family seat of Lord and Lady Marchmain. Exhausted by the war, he takes refuge in recalling his time spent with the heirs to the estate before the war--years spent enthralled by the beautiful but dissolute Sebastian and later in a more conventional relationship with Sebastian's sister Julia. Ryder portrays a family divided by an uncertain investment in Roman Catholicism and by their confusion over where the elite fit in the modern world. Although Waugh was considered by many to be more successful as a comic than as a wistful commentator on human relationships and faith, this novel was made famous by a 1981 BBC TV dramatization. Irons's portrayal of Ryder catapulted Irons to stardom, and in this superb reading his subtle, complete characterizations highlight Waugh's ear for the aristocratic mores of the time. Fervent Anglophiles will be thrilled by this excellent rendition of a favorite; Irons's reading saves this dinosaur from being suffocated by its own weight. Cahners Business Information [via]
More editions of Retorno a Brideshead:
› Find signed collectible books: 'I Sublimi Segreti Delle Ya-Ya'
More editions of I Sublimi Segreti Delle Ya-Ya:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Les Divins Secrets Des Petits Ya-Ya'
"Une danseuse de claquettes maltraite ses enfants". Lorsque Vivi Walker, la soixantaine, découvre dans le prestigieux New York Times le portrait que dresse d'elle sa fille Siddy, metteur en scène de renom, elle la répudie sur le champ. Pour renouer le dialogue et assurer une meilleure compréhension réciproque, ses trois meilleures amies parviennent à la convaincre de confier à sa fille ses carnets secrets sur les Ya-Ya, du nom que les quatre femmes ont attribué dès leur enfance à leur petite tribu. A travers ces fragments du passé, tantôt légers, tantôt tragiques, Siddy est alors amenée à découvrir des aspects méconnus de la personnalité de sa mère, femme pétillante, énergique et exubérante, mais aussi femme blessée par la vie, et que seule l'attention indéfectible de ses amies a réussi à maintenir debout.
Ce livre a séduit des millions de lectrices. L'amitié féminine et les relations aigres-douces entre mères et filles en constituent les principaux thèmes, traités sur un mode jovial et divertissant. --Nathalie Gouiffès [via]
More editions of Les Divins Secrets Des Petits Ya-Ya:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya-Schwestern'
Die vier Mädchen hatten noch Bänder im Haar und Söckchen an, als sie miteinander in Louisiana davon träumten die letzten Überlebenden eines aussterbenden Stammes zu sein -- die Ya-Yas.
Zusammen nahmen sie am Shirley-Temple-Nachwuchs-Wettbewerb teil und brachten nicht nur die Jury mit ihrem ungewöhnlichen Benehmen in Verlegenheit, sie waren auch bei der Welturaufführung ihres späteren Lieblingsfilms Vom Winde verweht anwesend. Mitunter wurde ihr Club zu einem Quartett der Peinlichkeiten, doch die vier standen, was auch kommen mochte, felsenfest zusammen.
Gesammelt hat Vivi ihre Erlebnisse in einem Album, das sie Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya-Schwestern nannte. Und als sie es, viele Jahre später, ihrer Tochter Sidda zum Lesen gibt, ist ihr Mutter-Tochter-Verhältnis gerade zum Bersten gespannt, denn immerhin hat Sidda in der New York Times bei einem Interview zu ihrem neuen Theaterstück ihre Mutter als "eine Step tanzende, prügelnde Rabenmutter" bezeichnet. Sidda begibt sich auf die schmerzliche Suche nach der Wahrheit, und oft erzählen ihr die fehlenden Personen auf den Fotos mehr als die Bilder selbst.
Rebecca Wells, die selbst auf einer Plantage in Louisiana aufwuchs, schuf mit den Ya-Yas und ihren Kindern ungeheuer quirlige und phantasievolle Frauen, die die größten Sorgen mit einem lauten Lachen und einem Glas Whiskey in der Hand aus der Welt wischen. Und wenn sie sich dann doch nicht ganz beseitigen lassen, sind immer noch drei Ya-Yas da, die sofort als Feuerwehr zur Stelle sind. --Manuela Haselberger [via]
More editions of Die göttlichen Geheimnisse der Ya-Ya-Schwestern:
