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books tagged “contemporary”
books tagged “contemporary”
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Art & Liesby Jeanette WintersonISBN 0679762701 (0-679-76270-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Art & Lies'Book summary:One of the most audacious and provocative writers on either side of the Atlantic now gives readers a dazzling, arousing, and wise improvisation on art, Eros, language, and identity. "A series of intense, artful musings that are exhilarating and visionary. . . . Unsettling yet strangely satisfying."--Newsday.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via] -
Birdyby William WhartonISBN 0679734120 (0-679-73412-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Birdy'Book summary:Hailed upon its publication as "a classic for readers not yet born" (Philadelphia Inquirer), Birdy is an inventive, hypnotic novel about friendship and family, dreaming and surviving, love and war, madness and beauty, and, above all, "birdness." It tells the story of Al, a bold, hot-tempered boy whose goals in life are to life weights and pick up girls, and his strange friend Birdy, the skinny, tongue-tied perhaps genius who only wants to raise canaries and to fly. While fighting in World War II, they find their dreams become all too realand their lives are changed forever.
In Birdy, William Wharton crafts an unforgettable tale that suggests another notion of sanity in a world that is manifestly insane. [via]More editions of Birdy:
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The Book Of Danielby David Berlinski, E.L. DoctorowISBN 0679643370 (0-679-64337-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book Of Daniel'Book summary:The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.
His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.
Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new lifemarriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him.
In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different.
It is a confession of his most intimate relationshipswith his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him.
It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House.
It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniels interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks.
It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the caselawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself.
It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this countryits sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.
It is The Book of Daniel. [via]More editions of The Book Of Daniel:
The Book of Danielby E. L. DoctorowISBN 0679736573 (0-679-73657-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Carrieby Stephen KingISBN 0671039725 (0-671-03972-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Carrie'Book summary:Why read Carrie? Stephen King himself has said that he finds his early work "raw," and Brian De Palma's movie was so successful that we feel as if we have read the novel even if we never have. The simple answer is that this is a very scary story, one that works as well, if not better, on the page as it does on the screen. Carrie White, bullied by cruel teenagers at school and her religious nut of a mother at home, gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers, powers that will eventually be turned on her tormentors. King has a way of getting under the skin of his readers by creating an utterly believable world that throbs with menace before finally exploding. He builds the tension in this early work by piecing together extracts from newspaper reports, journals, and scientific papers, as well as more traditional first- and third-person narrative in order to reveal what lurks beneath the surface of Chamberlain, Maine.
News item from the Westover (ME) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966: "Rain of Stones Reported: It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th."
Although the supernatural pyrotechnics are handled with King's customary aplomb, it is the carefully drawn portrait of the little horrors of small towns, high schools, and adolescent sexuality that give this novel its power and assures its place in the King canon. --Simon Leake [via] 
Commitmentsby Roddy DoyleISBN 0679721746 (0-679-72174-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Coyote Blueby Christopher MooreISBN 0671881884 (0-671-88188-4)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Cruddyby Lynda BarryISBN 068483846X (0-684-83846-X)
Softcover, Scribner
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Deep Watersby Jayne Ann KrentzISBN 0671524208 (0-671-52420-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Deep Waters'Book summary:With more bestsellers in the last two years under her various pseudonyms than Michael Crichton and John Grisham combined, there's no denying that Jayne Ann Krentz is one of the reigning queens of romance. In Deep Waters, Krentz demonstrates the quick wit, keen plotting, and expert characterization that took her to the top of her field. Set in the Pacific Northwest, Deep Waters is the story of two powerful corporate players who encounter secrets, lies, and hidden treasure in a quaint coastal town, far from the city lights of Seattle. Charity Truitt can't escape the ever-escalating panic attacks that have plagued her over the last four months. Desperate to escape a loveless engagement and an impending nervous breakdown, Charity flees to Whispering Waters Cove, a tiny seaside community. There Charity meets Elias Winters, a major player in the Pacific Rim trade, a man with a past too painful to forget. When the sleepy town is rocked by a killer on the loose, the two unite to catch the murderer. It's the undeniable connection between the two that runs deep in this passionate tale of intrigue. [via]
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Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agencyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0671746723 (0-671-74672-3)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'Book summary:What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a Chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), and pizza have in common? Apparently not much; until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery, and eating a lot of pizza -- not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge). To find out more, read this book (better still, buy it, then read it) -- or contact Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. 'A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic.' The author [via]
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Eleanor Rigbyby Douglas CouplandISBN 0679313370 (0-679-31337-0)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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Family Manby Jayne Ann KrentzISBN 0671008137 (0-671-00813-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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A Friend of the Earthby T. C. BoyleISBN 0670891770 (0-670-89177-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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The Gameby A. S. ByattISBN 0679742565 (0-679-74256-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Game'Book summary:The Game is a lush and disturbing novel portraying a sibling rivalry which compels the reader to reconsider the uses and misuses of imagination. when they were little girls, Cassandra and Julia played a game in which they entered an alternate world modeled on the landscapes of Arthurian romance. Now the sisters are grown, and hostile strangers--until a figure from their past, a man they once both loved and suffered over, reenters their lives. [via]
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Grand Passionby Jayne Ann KrentzISBN 0671019619 (0-671-01961-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Grand Passion'Book summary:Cleopatra Robbins is certain that something is wrong when her Mr. Right turns out to be Max Fortune, the force behind the giant Curzon Hotel Chain and a guest at the Robbins' Next Inn. 175,000 first printing. [via]
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- Grand Passion: ISBN 0671024329 (0-671-02432-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster, Incorporated - Grand Passion: ISBN 0671778722 (0-671-77872-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books - Grand Passion: ISBN 0671778706 (0-671-77870-6)
Hardcover, Pocket Books - Grand Passion: ISBN 0671019619 (0-671-01961-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
- Grand Passion: ISBN 0671024329 (0-671-02432-9)
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The Grapes of Wrathby John Steinbeck, Brad LeithauserISBN 0679420401 (0-679-42040-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Grapes of Wrath'Book summary:When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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Harvesting the Heartby Jodi PicoultISBN 0670850993 (0-670-85099-3)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunterby Carson McCullersISBN 0679424741 (0-679-42474-1)
Hardcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'Book summary:When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter:
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Heart of Darknessby Joseph ConradISBN 0679428011 (0-679-42801-1)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Heart of Darkness grew out of a journey Joseph Conrad took up the Congo River; the verisimilitude that the great novelist thereby brought to his most famous tale everywhere enhances its dense and shattering power.
Apparently a sailors yarn, it is in fact a grim parody of the adventure story, in which the narrator, Marlow, travels deep into the heart of the Congo where he encounters the crazed idealist Kurtz and discovers that the relative values of the civilized and the primitive are not what they seem. Heart of Darkness is a model of economic storytelling, an indictment of the inner and outer turmoil caused by the European imperial misadventure, and a piercing account of the fragility of the human soul. [via] 
Heartbreakerby Julie GarwoodISBN 0671034006 (0-671-03400-6)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0671746065 (0-671-74606-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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I Don't Know How She Does Itby Allison PearsonISBN 0701173734 (0-7011-7373-4)
Softcover, Chatto & Windus
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Don't Know How She Does It'Book summary:Allison Pearson's debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, is a rare and beautiful hybrid: a devastatingly funny novel that's also a compelling fictional world. You want to climb inside this book and inhabit it. However, you might find it pretty messy once you're in there. Narrator Kate Reddy is the manager of a hedge fund and mother of two small children. The book opens with an emblematic scene as Kate "distresses" a store-bought mince pie to make it appear homemade. Her days are measured in increments of minutes and even seconds; her fund stays organized but her house and family are falling apart. The book is a pearly string of great lines. Here's Kate on lack of sleep: "They're right to call it a broken night.... You crawl back to bed and you lie there trying to do the jigsaw of sleep with half the pieces missing." On baby boys: "A mother of a one-year-old son is a movie star in a world without critics." On subtle office dynamics:
The women in the offices of EMF [Kate's firm] don't tend to display pictures of their kids. The higher they go up the ladder, the fewer the photographs. If a man has pictures of kids on his desk, it enhances his humanity; if a woman has them it decreases hers. Why? Because he's not supposed to be home with the children; she is.
There's inherent drama here: Kate is wildly appealing, and we want things to work out for her. In the end, the book isn't a just collection of clever lines on the theme of working motherhood; it's a real, rich novel about a character we come to cherish. --Claire Dederer [via]More editions of I Don't Know How She Does It:
In the Skin of a Lionby Michael OndaatjeISBN 0679772669 (0-679-77266-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Into the Storm : A Novelby Suzanne BrockmannISBN 0739326937 (0-7393-2693-7)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Into the Storm : A Novel'Book summary:Bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann blends high adventure, harrowing drama, and heart-racing passion into thrilling novels of suspense. Whether tackling danger or wrestling with desire, her elite heroes and heroines never fail to give their all, in stories that soar above and beyond expectations. Now, in her electrifying new novel, Brockmann takes us INTO THE STORM.
In a remote, frozen corner of New Hampshire, a Navy SEAL team and the elite security experts of Troubleshooters, Incorporated are going head-to-head as fierce but friendly rivals in a raid-and-rescue training exercise. Despite the frigid winter temperatures, tension smolders between veteran SEAL Petty Officer Mark Jenk Jenkins and former cop turned Troubleshooter Lindsey Fontaine after an impulsive night goes awry. And then, suddenly, Tracy Shapiro, the Troubleshooters new receptionist, vanishes while playing the role of hostage during a mock rescue operation.
Teaming up with the FBI to launch a manhunt in the treacherous wilderness, Jenk and Lindsey must put aside their feelings as a record snowstorm approaches, dramatically reducing any hope of finding Tracy alive. The trail is colder than the biting New England climate until a lucky break leads to a horrifying discoverya brutally murdered young woman wearing the jacket Tracy wore when she disappeared. Suddenly there is a chilling certainty that Tracy has fallen prey to a serial killerone who knows the backwoods terrain and who doesnt play by the rules of engagement.
In a race against time, a raging blizzard, and a cunning opponent, Jenk and Lindsey are put to the ultimate test. Rising everything, they must finally come together in a desperate attempt to save Tracyand each other. [via]More editions of Into the Storm : A Novel:
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John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrathby John SteinbeckISBN 0671006924 (0-671-00692-4)
Softcover, Monarch Notes
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Keeping Faithby Jodi PicoultISBN 0688177743 (0-688-17774-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Keeping Faith'Book summary:For the second time in her marriage, Mariah White catches her husband with another woman, and Faith, their seven-year-old daughter, witnesses every painful minute. In the aftermath of a sudden divorce, Mariah struggles with depression and Faith seeks solace in a new friend -- a friend who may or may not be imaginary.
Faith talks to her "Guard" constantly and begins to recite passages from the Bible -- a book she's never read. Fearful for her daughter's sanity, Mariah sends her to several psychiatrists. Yet when Faith develops stigmata and begins to perform miraculous healings, Mariah wonders if her daughter -- a girl with no religious background -- might indeed be seeing God. As word spreads and controversy heightens, Mariah and Faith are besieged by believers and disbelievers alike; they are caught in a media circus that threatens what little stability they have left.
What are you willing to believe? Is Faith a prophet or a troubled little girl? Is Mariah a good mother facing an impossible crisis...or a charlatan using her daughter to reclaim the attention her unfaithful husband withheld? As the story builds to a climactic battle for custody, Mariah must discover that spirit is not necessarily something that comes from religion but from inside oneself.
Fascinating, thoughtful, and suspenseful, Keeping Faith explores a family plagued by the media, the medical profession, and organized religion in a world where everyone has an opinion but no one knows the truth. At her controversial and compelling best, Jodi Picoult masterfully explores the moment when boundaries break down, when illusions become reality, and when the only step left to take is a leap of faith. [via]
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Kill and Tellby Linda HowardISBN 0671568833 (0-671-56883-3)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kill and Tell'Book summary:Linda Howard's romantic suspense Kill and Tell supplies readers with plenty of thrills and chills. As a nurse, Karen Whitlaw has seen more than the average person, but even she isn't prepared to identify the body of the father she hasn't seen since she was 13. The local detective on the case, Marc Chastain, informs Karen that her father, who was homeless, has been murdered. Still grief stricken over the recent death of her mother, Karen isn't prepared to examine her feelings about her father and his absence from her life. She is willing to accept that he was the victim of street crime until her home is burglarized and she becomes the target for some frightening "accidents." Whoever killed her father is after her, and the only hope she has for discovering why must lie in the notebook that Karen's father mailed to her mother shortly before his death. [via]
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The Kitchen God's Wifeby Amy TanISBN 0679748083 (0-679-74808-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kitchen God's Wife'Book summary:With the same narrative skills and evocative powers that made her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, a national bestseller, Tan now tells the story of Winnie Louie, an aging Chinese woman unfolding a life's worth of secrets to her suspicious, Americanized daughter. [via]
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Lady Oracleby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0671223399 (0-671-22339-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Oracle'Book summary:Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber. She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy. In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time. [via]
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Last Chance Saloonby Marian KeyesISBN 0688180728 (0-688-18072-8)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Chance Saloon'Book summary:No writer can tell a hilarious and moving story about the great truths of love, life, and friendship quite like Marian Keyes. Each of her internationally bestselling novels introduced a heroine so real, she felt like a long-lost friend. Now Keyes delivers her best novel yet....Lost ChanceSaloonTara, Katherine, and Fintan have been friends since the days when leg warmers were cool. All through their twenties they shared their joys, heartbreaks, and endless giddy nights out. But now they've graduated to their slightly more serious thirties -- and only Fintan has what can honestly be called a "love life."Tara struggles daily with her eternal diet -- and lies to herself about Thomas, her lowlife boyfriend. He keeps his change in a little-old-lady's purse and wouldn't pay a compliment if there was a cash award attached to it. But when you're in your early thirties and comfortably seated in the "last chance saloon," sometimes a dubious man seems safer than no man at all.Katherine, on the other hand, feels that the safest relationship is the one she has with her TV remote control. She wants no surprises and keeps her life as ordered as her drawer full of matching bra-and-panty sets, even when the guys at work start calling her the Ice Queen.But it's always when you are least ready for change that life insists on one. Fate is about to throw a curve ball that will lead Fintan to extract a very serious promise from his two best friends. And when catastrophe inevitably follows crisis, everyone's fife is sure to change in unexpected ways ... and not necessarily for the worse. [via]
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Last Orders: Library Editionby Graham SwiftISBN 0679766626 (0-679-76662-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Orders: Library Edition'Book summary:From the author of Waterland and Ever After, Last Orders is a quiet but dazzling novel about a group of men, friends since the Second World War, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack, and their favorite pub. When one of them dies, the survivors drive his ashes from London to a seaside town where they will be scattered, compelling them to take stock in who they are today, who they were before, and the shifting relationships in between. Both funny and moving, this won the Booker Prize in 1996. [via]
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Life Before Manby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0671251155 (0-671-25115-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Before Man'Book summary:Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax. [via]
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The Little Black Book Of Storiesby A. S. ByattISBN 0701173246 (0-7011-7324-6)
Hardcover, Chatto & Windus
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The Magusby John FowlesISBN 0679602836 (0-679-60283-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Magus'Book summary:The Magus was originally published in 1965 and reissued in a revised version twelve years later. The story of Nicholas Urfe and his friendship with a demonic millionaire which leads to an elaborate series of staged hallucinations, riddles, and psychological traps, The Magus endures as the most enigmatic and magical novel in the Fowles canon, a work rich in symbols, conundrums, and labyrinthine twists of events. This Modern Library edition includes a new introduction by the author. [via]
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Mao IIby Don DelilloISBN 0670839043 (0-670-83904-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mao II'Book summary:Don DeLillo's follow-up to Libra, his brilliant fictionalization of the Kennedy assassination, Mao II is a series of elusive set-pieces built around the themes of mass psychology, individualism vs. the mob, the power of imagery and the search for meaning in a blasted, post-modern world. Bill Gray, the world's most famous reclusive novelist, has been working for many years on a stalled masterpiece when he gets the chance to aid a hostage trapped in a basement in war-torn Beirut. Gray sets out on a doomed, quixotic journey, and his disappearance disrupts the cloistered lives of his obsessed assistant and the assistant's companion, a former Moonie who has also become Bill's lover. This haunting, masterful novel won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1992. [via]
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Maus: A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds History and Here My Troubles Beganby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0679748407 (0-679-74840-7)
Softcover, Pantheon Books
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Maus I: A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds Historyby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0679739742 (0-679-73974-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Memories of My Melancholy Whoresby Edith Grossman, Gabriel García MárquezISBN 0739325604 (0-7393-2560-4)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores'Book summary:"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." So begins Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and it becomes even more unlikely as the novel unfolds. This slim volume contains the story of the sad life of an unnamed, only slightly talented Colombian journalist and teacher, never married, never in love, living in the crumbling family manse. He calls Rosa Cabarcas, madame of the city's most successful brothel, to seek her assistance. Rosa tells him his wish is impossible--and then calls right back to say that she has found the perfect girl.
The protagonist says of himself: "I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay ... by the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once ... My public life, on the other hand, was lacking in interest: both parents dead, a bachelor without a future, a mediocre journalist ... and a favorite of caricaturists because of my exemplary ugliness."
The girl is 14 and works all day in a factory attaching buttons in order to provide for her family. Rosa gives her a combination of bromide and valerian to drink to calm her nerves, and when the prospective lover arrives, she is sound asleep. Now the story really begins. The nonagenarian is not a sex-starved adventurer; he is a tender voyeur. Throughout his 90th year, he continues to meet the girl and watch her sleep. He says, "This was something new for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark, so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were ... That night I discovered the improbably pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty."
Márquez's style never falters throughout this recounting of his life and his exploration of love, found at an unexpected time and place. The erstwhile lover is still capable of being surprised--and fulfilled. After an absence of ten years, it is a treat to have another parable from the master. --Valerie Ryan [via]
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Midwivesby Chris BohjalianISBN 0679771468 (0-679-77146-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midwives'Book summary:On a violent, stormy winter night, a home birth goes disastrously wrong. The phone lines are down, the roads slick with ice. The midwife, unable to get her patient to a hospital, works frantically to save both mother and child while her inexperienced assistant and the woman's terrified husband look on. The mother dies but the baby is saved thanks to an emergency C-section. And then the nightmare begins: the assistant suggests that maybe the woman wasn't really dead when the midwife operated:
Did she perform at least eight or nine cycles as my mother said, or four or five as Asa recalled? That is the sort of detail that was disputable. But at some point within minutes of what my mother believed had been a stroke, after my mother concluded the cardiopulmonary resuscitation had failed to generate a pulse or a breath, she screamed for Asa and Anne to find her the sharpest knife in the house.
In Midwives, Chris Bohjalian chronicles the events leading up to the trial of Sibyl Danforth, a respected midwife in the small Vermont town of Reddington, on charges of manslaughter. It quickly becomes evident, however, that Sibyl is not the only one on trial--the prosecuting attorney and the state's medical community are all anxious to use this tragedy as ammunition against midwifery in general; this particular midwife, after all, an ex-hippie who still evokes the best of the flower-power generation, is something of an anachronism in 1981. Through it all, Sibyl, her husband, Rand, and their teenage daughter, Connie, attempt to keep their family intact, but the stress of the trial--and Sibyl's growing closeness to her lawyer--puts pressure on both marriage and family. Bohjalian takes readers through the intricacies of childbirth and the law, and by the end of Sibyl Danforth's trial, it's difficult to decide which was more harrowing--the tragic delivery or its legal aftermath.Narrated by a now adult Connie, Midwives moves back and forth in time, fitting vital pieces of information about what happened that night like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into its complicated plot. As Connie looks back on her mother's trial, she is still trying to understand what happened--not on the night of the disaster--but in the months and years that followed. --Margaret Prior [via]
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Moor's Last Sighby Salman RushdieISBN 0679744665 (0-679-74466-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moor's Last Sigh'Book summary:Time Magazine's Best Book of the YearBooker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerized offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. "Fierce, phantasmagorical...a huge, sprawling, exuberant novel."--New York Times [via]
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Mr. Vertigoby Paul AusterISBN 0670852090 (0-670-85209-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr. Vertigo'Book summary:An octogenarian narrator recounts his extraordinary childhood during the second quarter of the century--the era of Prohibition, Babe Ruth, and Lindbergh--when Master Yehudi rescued him from the streets and taught him to fly and walk on water. 35,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo. [via]
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The Music of Chanceby Paul AusterISBN 0670835358 (0-670-83535-8)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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Mystic Riverby Dennis LehaneISBN 0688163165 (0-688-16316-5)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Naked Pictures of Famous Peopleby Jon StewartISBN 0688171621 (0-688-17162-1)
Softcover, Rob Weisbach Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Naked Pictures of Famous People'Book summary:Sometimes it seems like every standup comedian worth his or her salt just has to do the book thing, and you might feel that yet another warmed-over stage routine is the last thing you need taking up valuable bookshelf space. Jon Stewart's book will come as an extremely pleasant surprise. He eschews the standard standup patter and instead gives us 18 short comic essays in a variety of styles that recall the prose work of Woody Allen, only with a few more references to genitals. Stewart proves himself a remarkably nimble humorist with a sharp eye for parody, whether he's writing "A Very Hanson Christmas" or "Adolf Hitler: The Larry King Interview."
HITLER: ...Larry, look, I was a bad guy. No question. I hate that Hitler. The yelling, the finger pointing, I don't know ... I was a very angry guy.
KING: And this ... new Hitler?
HITLER: I get up at seven, have half a melon, do the jumble in the morning paper and then let the day take me where it will.... Me!! The inventor of the Blitzkrieg... When you stop having to control everything it's very freeing.
Stewart is not afraid to flirt with bad taste, in fact, some of the pieces in this collection do for "flirting with bad taste" what Bill Clinton did for "not having sexual relations." But it's wonderful to see an edgy comedian taking on the traditionally cozy genre of the humorous essay, creating work that combines the wit of Robert Benchley with the energy and attitude of the best modern standup. Naked Pictures of Famous People proves that Jon Stewart is as comfortable, and accomplished, in front of a word processor as he is in front of an audience. --Simon Leake [via]
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Notes from a Small Islandby Bill BrysonISBN 0688147259 (0-688-14725-9)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Notes from a Small Island'Book summary:Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate: "I had recently read that 3.7 million Americans according to a Gallup poll, believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me." That comic tone enlivens this account of Bryson's farewell walking tour of the countryside of "the green and kindly island that had for two decades been my home." [via]
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Of Love and Other Demonsby Gabriel García MárquezISBN 0679762841 (0-679-76284-1)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Of Love and Other Demons'Book summary:From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera comes an extraordinary reading experience, the story of a doomed love affair between a twelve-year-old girl and a bookish priest, three times her age, who's been sent to oversee her exorcism. [via]
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A Pale View of Hillsby Kazuo IshiguroISBN 067972267X (0-679-72267-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Pale View of Hills'Book summary:The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II. [via]
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The Passion of Artemisiaby Susan VreelandISBN 0670894494 (0-670-89449-4)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Perfect Partnersby Jayne Ann KrentzISBN 0671728555 (0-671-72855-5)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Perfect Partners'Book summary:Midwestern librarian Letitia Thornquist didn't have the right stuff to run Thornquist Gear, Inc. That was the bottom-line opinion of Joel Blackstone, the seasoned CEO who had built the small Seattle sporting goods store into an industry giant. But Letty's rich Uncle Charlie willed her the company, and now she was bubbling with enthusiasm to have Joel, a perfect mentor, show her the ropes.
Teaching her the business was all Joel grudgingly planned to do...until the sensuous curves under Letty's navy suit and the unabashed desire in her wide, innocent eyes left him longing for a personal kind of merger. Soon his sizzling kisses convinced her that she wasn't in Kansas anymore. But no matter how skilled Joel was in the art of love, Letty knew she was at risk in his arms. Behind his tough facade she sensed a world of hurt that cried out for her warmth and understanding. She realized the "L" word might never be spoken if trust didn't make them perfect partners 9 to 5...and in the loving after-hours of midnight to dawn.
In a witty, classical duel of romance and ambition, Jayne Ann Krentz deftly portrays two fiery opposites caught by an irresistible attraction...in a deliciously spicy tale of life at the top and love in the depths of the heart. [via]
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Rachel's Holidayby Marian KeyesISBN 068818071X (0-688-18071-X)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Rachel's Holiday'Book summary:The fast lane is too slow for twenty-seven-year-old Rachel Walsh, who has a fondness for recreational drugs and good-looking men. And New York City is the perfect place for a young Irish female to overdo.. everything! But then the merry-go-round stops short. In quick succession, Rachel loses her job, her best friend, and the boyfriend she adores...and wakes up in a hospital emergency room, have overindulged.
Perhaps Rachel does have a bit of a problem, but clearly everyone is overreacting! The Walsh family clan, however, is concerned enough to take their wayward duckling by the wing and hustle Rachel and her broken heart back to Dublin and straight to Ireland's answer to the Betty Ford Clinic. Oh well, figures Rachel, she could certainly use a holiday.
But instead of spa treatments and sexy rock stars going tepid turkey, she finds herself totally surrounded by middle-aged men in brown acrylic sweaters. Bored to distraction, her self-esteem at a perilously low ebb, Rachel knows that another million hours of group therapy will certainly drive her seriously mad. And then she meets Chris.
Beautiful Chris Considerate Chris. Chris, the man with a mysterious past who might be Rachel's salvation, or the worst trouble she has ever known. And suddenly there is hope in a hitherto hopeless existence, as Rachel resolves to ride this wild dream to new love-or to wherever else her wayward heart may choose to lead her.
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Shameby Salman RushdieISBN 0679722041 (0-679-72204-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Sportswriterby Richard FordISBN 0679762108 (0-679-76210-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Stars and Barsby William BoydISBN 0688025994 (0-688-02599-4)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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Sweet Fortuneby Jayne Ann KrentzISBN 067101966X (0-671-01966-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sweet Fortune'Book summary:Even a heaven-sent love can be hot as hell... Sweet Fortune
Everyone thought Jessie Benedict's impending marriage to Sam Hatchard was a great arrangement -- everyone, that is, but Jessie herself. Was she the only one who could see that Hatchard, her powerful father's protégé, had a scheming ulterior motive in marrying her? He was more than just a chip off the old workaholic's block -- he was positively lusting after Jessie's inheritance to build his own business empire!
Free-spirited Jessie has plans for her own career as a detective -- starting with the rescue of a teenage girl from a dangerous cult. But when a break-in and an intimidating act of vandalism strike close to home, her investigation pairs her with the compellingly masculine entrepreneur. Hatch does make her heart beat deliciously fast, but she's not taking orders from any man. Imagine her surprise when he turns out to be not only a friend and ally, but a strong, tender lover who, in the end, knows how to seal a deal -- with her resounding "I do!" [via]
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The Tailor of Panamaby John Le CarreISBN 0679774130 (0-679-77413-0)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tailor of Panama'Book summary:John le Carré, the greatest spy novelist of the Cold War era, continues his post-Cold War quest to define the genre he helped perfect. The classic spy novel was essentially a story of good (England, the United States) vs. evil (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union), in which good more or less prevailed. The Tailor of Panama is something else entirely: a spy novel with no spies in which the bad guys reap most of the rewards. It is also a viciously funny satire. The novel is set in Panama, where a plot is in place to make void the Panama Treaty, which would return control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians in 1999. At the center of events is Harry Pendel, the tailor of the title. Coerced into working for British Intelligence, he concocts out of whole cloth a left-wing movement with the goal of luring the American military to do the dirty work--invade Panama à la 1989 and nullify the treaty. From the characters to the setting, le Carré has succeeded in setting new parameters for an old genre. [via]
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Things Fall Apartby Chinua AchebeISBN 0679446230 (0-679-44623-0)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'Book summary:One of Chinua Achebe's many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming ne'er-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his father's weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy:
Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.
And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Tis: A Memoirby Frank McCourtISBN 0684864495 (0-684-86449-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: ''Tis: A Memoir'Book summary:'Tis a blessing that the author narrates his own work. McCourt follows up his Audie Award-winning performance in Angela's Ashes with another brilliant reading as he chronicles his return to post-World War II New York. Like all good storytellers, McCourt has good stories to tell; 'Tis pulses with grim adversity and quiet triumphs--character-shaping moments that gain the listener's empathy. What makes McCourt a great storyteller is his ability to give these moments just the right amount of humor and perspective. His lyrical tones are wise but not weary; he's survived life's challenges to tell his tale. And while it may be trite to credit McCourt's verbal skills to his Irish heritage, these war stories were undoubtedly polished amongst friends in the pubs. 'Tis is Grammy material, and a perfect example of how an author's voice can enhance the written word. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Rob McDonald [via]
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- Tis: A Memoir: ISBN 0684865742 (0-684-86574-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster - Tis: A Memoir: ISBN 0684848783 (0-684-84878-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Tis: A Memoir: ISBN 0743200985 (0-7432-0098-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster - 'Tis: A Memoir: ISBN 0684864495 (0-684-86449-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- Tis: A Memoir: ISBN 0684865742 (0-684-86574-2)
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Titheby Holly BlackISBN 0689867042 (0-689-86704-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tithe'Book summary:Sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch is not human, but she doesn't know it. Sure, she knows she's interacted with faeries since she was little--but she never imagined she was one of them, her blond Asian human appearance only a magically crafted cover-up for her true, green-skinned pixie self. First-time author Holly Black explores Kaye's self-discovery and dual worlds in her riveting, suspenseful novel Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale. The book has its faults: it slips into shock-value mode; the descriptions are often overwritten (sunset on the water looks like the sun slit his wrists in a bathtub); the language is overly, unnecessarily explicit; and the writing often unpolished. Still, the story's pull is undeniable, and readers under its spell will be hard-pressed to put the book down.
The novel begins in a bar in Philly, where Kaye's alcoholic rock-singer mother's boyfriend tries to kill her. For their own safety, mother and daughter quickly move back to grandma's on the New Jersey shore where Kaye grew up. This ugly turn of events was all rigged by the Faerie world, as it turns out, a world Black describes in deliciously vivid, if rather overblown, detail. Kaye, a drinking, smoking, foul-mouthed high school dropout in the land of mortals, soon finds herself embroiled--as a human sacrifice, no less--in a battle between Faerieland's Seelie and more malevolent Unseelie courts. The beautiful, mysterious knight Roiben, torn between worlds himself, falls in love with Kaye--the brave, clever changeling--against his better judgment. Throughout the electrifying journey to the horrific underworld of this modern faerie fantasy, teen readers will relate to a hard-luck tough girl who feels alienated, discovers her best qualities in the worst of circumstances, and finally finds a place between worlds where she can feel at home. (Ages 13 and older) --Karin Snelson [via]
Twelve Sharpby Janet EvanovichISBN 0739326430 (0-7393-2643-0)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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Ulyssesby James JoyceISBN 0679722769 (0-679-72276-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
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An Unsuitable Job for a Womanby P. D. JamesISBN 068413280X (0-684-13280-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Unsuitable Job for a Woman'Book summary:Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.
"An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" introduces P. D. James's courageous but vulnerable young detective, Cordelia Gray, in a "top-rated puzzle of peril that holds you all the way" ("The New York Times"). [via]
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Valiant: A Modern Tale Of Faerieby Holly BlackISBN 0689868235 (0-689-86823-5)
Softcover, Simon Pulse
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Valiant: A Modern Tale Of Faerie'Book summary:When seventeen-year-old Valerie Russell runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system. But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. Impulsive Lolli talks of monsters in the subway tunnels they call home and shoots up a shimmery amber-colored powder that makes the shadows around her dance. Severe Luis claims he can make deals with creatures that no one else can see. And then there's Luis's brother, timid and sensitive Dave, who makes the mistake of letting Val tag along as he makes a delivery to a woman who turns out to have goat hooves instead of feet. When a bewildered Val allows Lolli to talk her into tracking down the hidden lair of the creature for whom Luis and Dave have been dealing, Val finds herself bound into service by a troll named Ravus. He is as hideous as he is honorable. And as Val grows to know him, she finds herself torn between her affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming. Bestselling author Holly Black follows her breakout debut, Tithe, with a rich, harrowing, and compulsively readable parable of betrayal, abuse, friendship, and love. [via]
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Voxby Nicholson BakerISBN 0679742115 (0-679-74211-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vox'Book summary:Baker has written a novel that remaps the territory of sex--solitary and telephonic, lyrical and profane, comfortable and dangerous. Written in the form of a phone conversation between two strangers, Vox is an erotic classic that places the author in the first rank of America's major writers. Reading tour. [via]
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Watership Downby Richard George AdamsISBN 068483605X (0-684-83605-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Watership Down'Book summary:Watership Down has been a staple of high-school English classes for years. Despite the fact that it's often a hard sell at first (what teenager wouldn't cringe at the thought of 400-plus pages of talking rabbits?), Richard Adams's bunny-centric epic rarely fails to win the love and respect of anyone who reads it, regardless of age. Like most great novels, Watership Down is a rich story that can be read (and reread) on many different levels. The book is often praised as an allegory, with its analogs between human and rabbit culture (a fact sometimes used to goad skeptical teens, who resent the challenge that they won't "get" it, into reading it), but it's equally praiseworthy as just a corking good adventure.
The story follows a warren of Berkshire rabbits fleeing the destruction of their home by a land developer. As they search for a safe haven, skirting danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band and its compelling culture and mythos. Adams has crafted a touching, involving world in the dirt and scrub of the English countryside, complete with its own folk history and language (the book comes with a "lapine" glossary, a guide to rabbitese). As much about freedom, ethics, and human nature as it is about a bunch of bunnies looking for a warm hidey-hole and some mates, Watership Down will continue to make the transition from classroom desk to bedside table for many generations to come. --Paul Hughes [via]
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Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?by Lorrie MooreISBN 0679434828 (0-679-43482-8)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?'Book summary:Berie Carr, an American visiting Paris with her husband, reminisces about the events of the summer of 1972, when, as a fifteen year old, she and her beautiful best friend, Sils, worked in an upstate New York amusement park. 17,500 first printing. [via]
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Winter's Taleby Mark Helprin, Jane RosenmanISBN 0671727079 (0-671-72707-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Winter's Tale'Book summary:Surreal, dazzling, fantastic in every sense of the word, this "great gift in an hour of great need" (The New York Times Book Review) depicts a time of love and laughter with master thief Peter Lake and his flying horse. Helprin is the author of A Soldier of the Great War. [via]
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The Woman Warriorby Maxine Hong KingstonISBN 0679721886 (0-679-72188-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woman Warrior'Book summary:The Woman Warrior is a pungent, bitter, but beautifully written memoir of growing up Chinese American in Stockton, California. Maxine Hong Kingston (China Men) distills the dire lessons of her mother's mesmerizing "talk-story" tales of a China where girls are worthless, tradition is exalted and only a strong, wily woman can scratch her way upward. The author's America is a landscape of confounding white "ghosts"--the policeman ghost, the social worker ghost--with equally rigid, but very different rules. Like the woman warrior of the title, Kingston carries the crimes against her family carved into her back by her parents in testimony to and defiance of the pain. [via]
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The Woman Who Walked Into Doorsby Roddy DoyleISBN 0670867756 (0-670-86775-6)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Woman Who Walked Into Doors'Book summary: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]
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The Women's Roomby Marilyn FrenchISBN 067140010X (0-671-40010-X)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Women's Room'More editions of The Women's Room:
Spanish
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Lo Es: Una Memoriaby Frank McCourt, Alejandro ParejaISBN 0743204239 (0-7432-0423-9)
Softcover, Fireside
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lo Es: Una Memoria'Book summary:The Spanish edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller, TIS is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes, and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, then by New York University-- which admitted him on a trial basis, though he had no high school diploma-- Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight, and still has today. And TIS is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and often hilarious as ANGELA'S ASHES. Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. TIS blesses readers with another chapter of McCourt's story, but as it closes, they will want still more. [via]
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