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books tagged “contemporary”
books tagged “contemporary”
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The 158-Pound Marriageby John IrvingISBN 034536743X (0-345-36743-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The 158-Pound Marriage'Book summary:"Irving looks cunningly beyond the eye-catching gyrations of the mating dance to the morning-after implications."
--The Washington Post
The darker vision and sexual ambiguities of this erotic, ironic tale about a ménage a quatre in a New England university town foreshadow those of The World According to Garp; but this very trim and precise novel is a marked departure from the author's generally robust, boisterous style. Though Mr. Irving's cool eye spares none of his foursome, he writes with genuine compassion for the sexual tests and illusions they perpetrate on each other; but the sexual intrigue between them demonstrates how even the kind can be ungenerous, and even the well-intentioned, destructive.
"One of the most remarkable things about John Irving's first three novels, viewed from the vantage of The World According to Garp, is that they can be read as one extended fictional enterprise. . . . The 158-Pound Marriage is as lean and concentrated as a mine shaft."
--Terrence Des Pres [via]More editions of The 158-Pound Marriage:
9.99by Frederic BeigbederISBN 0330490079 (0-330-49007-9)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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The Admiral's Brideby Suzanne BrockmannISBN 0373079621 (0-373-07962-1)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Admiral's Bride'Book summary:HIS MISSION... ...was to pretend that Zoe Lange, beautiful young scientist--nearly half his age!--was his new bride. Former Navy SEAL Jake Robinson was sure that his romantic years were behind him, but for God and for country he would look into Zoe's beautiful dark eyes, kiss her senseless, hold her as if he would never let her go...and then, when the job was done, do just that. The only problem was, with each hour in Zoe's company, the stakes were becoming higher. The game more real. And the dangers within their "honeymoon" chamber more and more apparent.... TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS: They're who you call to get you out of a tight spot -- or into one! [via]
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The Amateur Marriage: A Novelby Anne TylerISBN 0345470613 (0-345-47061-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Amateur Marriage: A Novel'Book summary:Anne Tyler's The Amateur Marriage is not so much a novel as a really long argument. Michael is a good boy from a Polish neighborhood in Baltimore; Pauline is a harum-scarum, bright-cheeked girl who blows into Michael's family's grocery store at the outset of World War II. She appears with a bloodied brow, supported by a gaggle of girlfriends. Michael patches her up, and neither of them are ever the same. Well, not the same as they were before, but pretty much the same as everyone else. After the war, they live over the shop with Michael's mother till they've saved enough to move to the suburbs. There they remain with their three children, until the onset of the sixties, when their eldest daughter runs away to San Francisco. Their marriage survives for a while, finally crumbling in the seventies. If this all sounds a tad generic, Tyler's case isn't helped by the characteristics she's given the two spouses. Him: repressed, censorious, quiet. Her: voluble, emotional, romantic. Mars, meet Venus. What marks this couple, though, and what makes them come alive, is their bitter, unproductive, tooth-and-nail fighting. Tyler is exploring the way that ordinary-seeming, prosperous people can survive in emotional poverty for years on end. She gets just right the tricks Michael and Pauline play on themselves in order to stay together: "How many times," Pauline asks herself, "when she was weary of dealing with Michael, had she forced herself to recall the way he'd looked that first day? The slant of his fine cheekbones, the firming of his lips as he pressed the adhesive tape in place on her forehead." Only in antogonism do Michael and Pauline find a way to express themselves. --Claire Dederer [via]
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The Arm of the Starfishby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374303967 (0-374-30396-7)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arm of the Starfish'Book summary:[via]When Adam Eddington, a gifted marine biology student, makes the acquaintance of blond and beautiful Kali Cutter at Kennedy International Airport on his way to Portugal to spend the summer working for the renowned scientist Dr. OKeefe, he has no idea that this seemingly chance meeting will set into motion a chain of events he will be unable to stop. Caught between Kalis seductive wiles and the trusting adoration of Dr. OKeefes daughter, Poly, Adam finds himself enmeshed in a deadly power struggle between two groups of people, only one of which can have right on its side. As the danger escalates, Adam must make a decision that could affect the entire worldwhich side is he on?More editions of The Arm of the Starfish:
Armadilloby William BoydISBN 0375402233 (0-375-40223-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Back When We Were Grownupsby Anne TylerISBN 0345446860 (0-345-44686-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Back When We Were Grownups'Book summary:"A WONDERFUL NOVEL . . . Tyler's eye and ear for familial give and take is unerring, her humanity irresistible. You'll want to turn back to the first chapter the moment you finish the last."
-People (Page-Turner of the Week)
"STUNNING . . . 'Once upon a time,' the story begins, 'there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.' . . . With Rebecca Davitch, Tyler has created a character who is brave enough to look back on her life and to imagine herself making different kinds of choices. Brave enough to wonder what honesty looks like, whether there is ever really a single distillation of self that is unshakable and true. . . . Anne Tyler has a talent for spinning out characters . . . who go on living long after their stories end."
-The Baltimore Sun
"Her characters endear themselves to the reader with their candor and their wit and their simple decency. . . . The charm of an Anne Tyler novel lies in the clarity of her prose and the wisdom of her observations."
-The Washington Post Book World
"RESEMBLES JANE AUSTEN'S PERSUASION IN THAT IT'S A NOVEL ABOUT SECOND CHANCES . . . The tension that keeps the narrative alive is our desire for Rebecca to get the recognition and respect that we know she deserves from her family, and from herself. It's always good to have a character to root for."
-San Jose Mercury News
"Maybe there's something glorious to be said, after all, for companionship, common cause, and sanctuary. And what there is to say, Anne Tyler has been saying for decades, with gravity and grace."
-The New York Times Book Review
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Beautiful Dreamerby Paula Detmer RiggsISBN 0373071833 (0-373-07183-3)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Being Deadby Jim CraceISBN 0374110131 (0-374-11013-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Blithe Imagesby Nora RobertsISBN 0373218419 (0-373-21841-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blithe Images'Book summary:Beneath her sophisticated beauty, fashion model Hilary Baxter was still just a small-town girl from Kansas. How could she be expected to resist the devastating charm of her new employer, mesmerizing magazine mogul Bret Bardoff? Bret knew all the moves, all the right things to say to leave a woman defenseless. But as he discovered the alluring innocence behind Hilarys world-famous face, it was Bret who was left defenseless against the pull of his own heart. [via]
By Marriage Dividedby Lindsay ArmstrongISBN 0373122349 (0-373-12234-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Captivatedby Nora RobertsISBN 0373097689 (0-373-09768-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Mills & Boon, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Captivated'Book summary:A classic novel from the enchanting series The Donovan Legacy.
Only the phenomenal Nora Roberts could have created the remarkable Donovan clan. Fascinating and irresistible, the mysterious Donovan cousins share a secret that's been handed down through generations -- a secret that sets them apart from ordinary beings.
Captivated
His interest in her was purely professional . . . Or so he told himself. Nash Kirkland had sought out the alluring Morgana Dovovan to help him research his latest screenplay, though the hardheaded skeptic didn't believe for a minute she was what she professed to be. But, as Morgana revealed herself to him, Nash found himself falling under her bewitching spell. Nash had never trusted his feelings and always kept them in check. So how could he be sure the irresistible passion he felt for Morgana was real and not just some conjurer's trick?
The Donovan Legacy continues with Entranced, coming soon from Silhouette Books. [via]
Charming Billyby Alice McDermottISBN 0374120803 (0-374-12080-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Cole Cameron's Revengeby Sandra MartonISBN 0373122233 (0-373-12223-3)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Cordina's Crown Jewelby Nora RobertsISBN 0373244487 (0-373-24448-7)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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The Country Lifeby Rachel CuskISBN 0330349228 (0-330-34922-8)
Hardcover, Picador
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Cry No Moreby Linda HowardISBN 0345453425 (0-345-45342-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cry No More'Book summary:Count your blessings; they can be snatched away in an instant. It is a sentiment Milla Edge knows too well. With an astonishing blend of savvy, instinct, and passion, Milla displays an uncanny gift for finding lost children. When all seems helpless, desperate souls from across the country come to her for hope and results. Driven by an obsessive desire to fill the void in other peoples lives, Milla throws herself into every caseall the while trying to outrun the brutal emotions stemming from a horrific tragedy in her past.
Traveling to a small village in Mexico on a reliable tip, Milla begins to uncover the dire fate of countless children who have disappeared over the years in the labyrinth of a sinister baby-smuggling ring. The key to nailing down the organization may rest with an elusive one-eyed man. To find him, Milla joins forces with James Diaz, a suspicious stranger known as the Tracker who conceals his own sinister agenda.
As the search intensifies, the mission becomes more treacherous. For the ring is part of something far larger and more dangerous, reaching the highest echelons of power and influence. Caught between growing passion and imminent peril, Milla suddenly finds herself the huntedin the crosshairs
of an invisible, lethal assassin who aims to silence her permanently.
Intense emotion . . . potent suspense . . . pounding action. Linda Howard weaves these elements into page-turning fiction. Cry No More is a seductive thriller of heartbreak and obsession that moves with a vengeance. [via] 
Daniel and Ian: Daniel and Ianby Nora RobertsISBN 0373285132 (0-373-28513-2)
Softcover, Silhouette
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The Dive from Clausen's Pierby Ann PackerISBN 0375412824 (0-375-41282-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dive from Clausen's Pier'Book summary:" The Dive from Clausen's Pier is one of those small miracles that reinforce our faith in fiction. It does what the best novels so often do, making the largest things visible by its perfect rendering of life on the smaller scale. It is witty, tragic and touching, and beguiling from the first page." --Scott Turow A riveting novel about loyalty and self-knowledge, and the conflict between who we want to be to others and who we must be for ourselves. Carrie Bell has lived in Wisconsin all her life. She's had the same best friend, the same good relationship with her mother, the same boyfriend, Mike, now her fiancé, for as long as anyone can remember. It's with real surprise she finds that, at age twenty-three, her life has begun to feel suffocating. She longs for a change, an upheaval, for a chance to begin again. That chance is granted to her, terribly, when Mike is injured in an accident. Now Carrie has to question everything she thought she knew about herself and the meaning of home. She must ask: How much do we owe the people we love? Is it a sign of strength or of weakness to walk away from someone in need? The Dive from Clausen's Pier reminds us how precarious our lives are and how quickly they can be divided into before and after, whether by random accident or by the force of our own desires. It begins with a disaster that could happen, out of the blue, in anybody's life, and it forces us to ask how we would bear up in the face of tragedy and what we know, or think we know, about our deepest allegiances. Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex, The Dive from Clausen's Pier marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist. [via]
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Edge of Dangerby Cherry AdairISBN 0345485203 (0-345-48520-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Every Breath You Takeby Judith McNaughtISBN 0345479912 (0-345-47991-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Full Bloomby Jayne Ann Krentz, Copyright Paperback Collection (Library of Congress)ISBN 0373252919 (0-373-25291-9)
Hardcover, Harlequin Books
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Full Bloom/Compromising Positionsby Jayne Ann Krentz, Vicki Lewis ThompsonISBN 0373834683 (0-373-83468-3)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Gabriel's Angelby Nora RobertsISBN 0373285442 (0-373-28544-2)
Hardcover, Silhouette
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Galatea 2.2/a Novelby Richard PowersISBN 0374199485 (0-374-19948-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Gilgameshby Joan LondonISBN 0330362755 (0-330-36275-5)
Hardcover, Pan Macmillan
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The Good People of New Yorkby Thisbe NissenISBN 0375411453 (0-375-41145-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good People of New York'Book summary:A luminous first novel that brings a group of truly good people to life--in all their neurotic glory. When Roz Rosenzwieg, a brash and radiant New York Jew, meets Edwin Anderson at a party, she can hardly believe that she is attracted to the soft-spoken Nebraskan; she marries him a few months later, and soon gives birth to their daughter, Miranda. A golden lit trail of good fortune. But as Miranda grows, Roz's love for her becomes so fierce and focused that it skews everything else in their lives (including Roz's marriage). And yet their comedic chemistry is also a great attractor--drawing them a wonderful, eccentric, and constantly changing cast of characters who enter the Roz and Miranda-centered universe at their own risk, with both unhappy and hilarious results. Whether it's Miranda's best friend from summer camp, Darrin, or Alex, the hippie film student who rents a room in their brownstone, or Miranda's orthodontist (and Roz's new love interest). the unsinkable Steven Stone, or even Edwin's second wife, Kathy, someone usually spills the secrets that Miranda and Roz keep from each other, provocation and protection being equal elements in their slightly screwy bond. With spirited dialogue, off-beat humor, and a sharp and contemporary style, Thisbe Nissen delivers an irresistible and original debut novel. [via]
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0345391802 (0-345-39180-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'Book summary:Seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
Together, this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed, ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphods girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens hes bought over the years.
Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? For all the answers, stick your thumb to the stars! [via]More editions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
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Holesby Louis SacharISBN 0374332657 (0-374-33265-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Holes'Book summary:"If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy." Such is the reigning philosophy at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention facility where there is no lake, and there are no happy campers. In place of what used to be "the largest lake in Texas" is now a dry, flat, sunburned wasteland, pocked with countless identical holes dug by boys improving their character. Stanley Yelnats, of palindromic name and ill-fated pedigree, has landed at Camp Green Lake because it seemed a better option than jail. No matter that his conviction was all a case of mistaken identity, the Yelnats family has become accustomed to a long history of bad luck, thanks to their "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather!" Despite his innocence, Stanley is quickly enmeshed in the Camp Green Lake routine: rising before dawn to dig a hole five feet deep and five feet in diameter; learning how to get along with the Lord of the Flies-styled pack of boys in Group D; and fearing the warden, who paints her fingernails with rattlesnake venom. But when Stanley realizes that the boys may not just be digging to build character--that in fact the warden is seeking something specific--the plot gets as thick as the irony.
It's a strange story, but strangely compelling and lovely too. Louis Sachar uses poker-faced understatement to create a bizarre but believable landscape--a place where Major Major Major Major of Catch-22 would feel right at home. But while there is humor and absurdity here, there is also a deep understanding of friendship and a searing compassion for society's underdogs. As Stanley unknowingly begins to fulfill his destiny--the dual plots coming together to reveal that fate has big plans in store--we can't help but cheer for the good guys, and all the Yelnats everywhere. (Ages 10 and older) --Brangien Davis [via]
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How To Be Lostby Amanda Eyre WardISBN 0345483170 (0-345-48317-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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I Don't Know How She Does It : The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Motherby Allison PearsonISBN 0375414053 (0-375-41405-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Don't Know How She Does It : The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother'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 : The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother:
Indecisionby Benjamin KunkelISBN 0330444573 (0-330-44457-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Into the Storm: A Novelby Suzanne BrockmannISBN 0345480155 (0-345-48015-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Jesus' Son: Storiesby Denis JohnsonISBN 0374178925 (0-374-17892-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jesus' Son: Stories'Book summary:The unnamed narrator in Jesus' Son lives through a car wreck and a heroin overdose. Is he blessed? He cheats, lies, steals--but possesses a child's (or a mystic's) uncanny way of expressing the bare essence of things around him. In its own strange and luminous way, this linked collection of short fiction does the same. The stories follow characters who are seemingly marginalized beyond hope, drifting through a narcotic haze of ennui, failed relationships, and petty crime. In "Dundun" the narrator decides to take a shooting victim to the hospital, though not for the usual reasons: "I wanted to be the one who saw it through and got McInnes to the doctor without a wreck. People would talk about it, and I hoped I would be liked." Later he takes his own pathetic stab at violence in "The Other Man," attempting to avenge a drug rip-off but succeeding only at terrorizing an innocent family. Each meandering story--some utterly lacking in the usual elements of plot, including a beginning and an end--nonetheless demands compulsive reading, with Denis Johnson's first calling as a poet apparent in the off-kilter beauty of his prose. Open to any page and gems spill forth: "I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside that we'd have an accident in the storm."
The most successful stories in the collection offer moments of startling clarity. In "Car Crash While Hitchhiking," for instance, the narrator feels most alive while in the presence of another's loss: "Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead.... What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere." In "Work," while "salvaging" copper wire from a flooded house to fund their habits, the narrator and an acquaintance stop to watch the nearly unfathomable sight of a beautiful, naked woman paragliding up the river. Later the narrator learns that the house once belonged to his down-and-out accomplice and that the woman is his estranged wife. "As nearly as I could tell, I'd wandered into some sort of dream that Wayne was having about his wife, and his house," he reasons. Such is the experience for the reader. More Genet than Bukowski, Denis Johnson lures us into a misfit soul's dream from which he can't awake. --Langdon Cook [via]
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A Kiss of Shadows: Library Editionby Laurell K. HamiltonISBN 0345423402 (0-345-42340-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition'Book summary:Laurell K. Hamilton revitalized vampires, werewolves, and zombies in the popular Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books. In this new series, she updates faeries. A Kiss of Shadows introduces Merry Gentry, a.k.a. Meredith NicEssus, a faerie princess of the Unseelie Court, where politics is a blood sport. Merry, who's part sidhe (elvish), part brownie, and part human, never really fit in. She's short, not skilled in offensive magic, and mortal because of her human blood. These are real liabilities when your family, especially aunt Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, is out to kill you. Merry has been in hiding for three years, living in Los Angeles and working for the Grey Detective Agency, which specializes in "supernatural problems, magical solutions." A new case sets her against a man who uses forbidden magic to seduce fey women and drain their power. A plan to trap him goes awry and Merry's cover is blown. Now Andais knows where she is. But things have changed in Andais's court, and Merry is changing too.
Despite the selkies, brownies, goblins, and ogres in this book, it's not for children. The fey are "creatures of the senses"--and in the Unseelie court, sex and pain go together. Merry is sexually adventurous and surrounded by gorgeous, powerful males, most of whom want her badly. She's politically savvy and no coward, though she's not the warrior Anita is. Hamilton fans and readers of adult fairy tales like Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy will want to give Merry a look. --Nona Vero [via]
More editions of A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition:
- A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition: ISBN 0345478150 (0-345-47815-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books - A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition: ISBN 0345490657 (0-345-49065-7)
Softcover, Ballantine Books - A Kiss of Shadows: ISBN 0345423399 (0-345-42339-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition: ISBN 0345423402 (0-345-42340-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
- A Kiss of Shadows: Library Edition: ISBN 0345478150 (0-345-47815-0)
The Last Honest Woman/Dance to the Piper: The Last Honest Woman, Dance to the Piperby Nora RobertsISBN 0373218761 (0-373-21876-1)
Softcover, Silhouette
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Last Loversby William WhartonISBN 0374183899 (0-374-18389-9)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Last Lovers'Book summary:In Last Lovers, William Wharton gives us his most intimate look yet at the ways each of us can be drawn away from love, creativity, and innocence, and at the forces that, when we are lucky, bring us back.[via]More editions of Last Lovers:
Letters to Kellyby Suzanne BrockmannISBN 0373272839 (0-373-27283-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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Lunar Parkby Bret Easton EllisISBN 0375412913 (0-375-41291-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Book Description:
Imagine becoming a bestselling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while after American Psycho your celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs.Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety--only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father's, his stepdaughter's doll violently "malfunctions," and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events--a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his sons age--Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania.
Lunar Park confounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution--about love and loss, fathers and sons--in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
A Tale of Two Brets: An Amazon.com Interview with Bret Easton Ellis
In his novel Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis takes first-person narrative to an extreme, inserting himself (and a host of real characters from the publishing world) into the haunting story of a drugged-out famous writer living in the suburbs trying to reconnect with his wife and son and reconcile his damaged past. Ellis is at the top of his game in Lunar Park, his first novel since 1999's Glamorama, delivering a disturbing and delirious novel about celebrity, writers, and fathers and sons (not to mention a cameo from notorious Ellis creation, Patrick Bateman). Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons spoke with Ellis in a Seattle to Los Angeles phone call to talk about the fact and fiction behind Lunar Park, New York versus LA, '80s music, and the whole "American Psycho thing."
Read the Amazon.com interview with Bret Easton EllisLess Than Zero (1985)
Published when Ellis was a junior at Bennington, Less Than Zero is the mesmerizing first-person chronicle of Clay, our laconic, zoned-out guide to a subculture of over-privileged nihilism in early '80s Los Angeles. He travels back home from Camden College (a thinly veiled Bennington) for Christmas break and re-enters his circle of jaded friends--including his ex-girlfriend Blair, and his best friend Julian, who's now hustling to support his drug habit--and a parade of Porches, late-night parties, cocaine, and casual destruction.Ellis on Ellis: "I don't think it's a perfect book by any means, but it's valid. I get where it comes from. I get what it is. There's a lot of it that I wish was slightly more elegantly written. Overall, I was pretty shocked. It was pretty good writing for someone who was 19."
The Rules of Attraction (1987)
A line-up of Camden College students share the narrating duties in The Rules of Attraction, Ellis' sex-fueled, drug-baked second novel. There's Lauren (who's in the midst of losing her virginity as the book opens), who longs for her boyfriend Victor, currently traveling through Europe; Lauren's ex, Paul, a bisexual party boy who hooks up with hard-drinking closet-case Sean (surname Bateman--that's right, younger brother of Patrick), who also has the hots for Lauren. Less than Zero's Clay makes a cameo appearance as well as a passing glimpse of Ellis' Bennington classmate Donna Tartt's murderous Classics majors from The Secret History. Ellis on Ellis: "It might be my favorite book of mine. I was writing that book while I was at college. Sort of like the best of times, the worst of times. There was a lot of elation, there was a lot of despair. It was just a really fun book to write. I loved mimicking all the different voices. The stream of conscious does get a little out of hand. I kind of like that about the book. It's kind of all over the place. It's casual. It's scruffy. That's the one book of mine that I have a very, very soft spot for."
American Psycho (1991)
Shopaholic sociopath Patrick Bateman's killer grip drags readers into a bloody, brand-name, urban nightmare as the 26-year-old Wall Street yuppie executes his grooming habits and eviscerates strangers with equal élan. Simon & Schuster dropped the too-hot-to-handle American Psycho which was then published as a paperback original by Vintage Books. Ellis received death threats while the book was boycotted, sliced up by reviewers, and went on to become a bestseller. Mary Harron's 2000 film version starred then little-known British actor Christian Bale, who would later suit up as the Dark Knight in 2005's Batman Begins. Ellis on Ellis: "It was good. It was fun. It was not nearly as pretentious as I remember I wanted it to be when I was writing it. I found it really fast-moving. I found it really funny. And I liked it a lot. The violence was... it made my toes curl. I really freaked out. I couldn't believe how violent it was. It was truly upsetting. I had to steel myself to re-read those passages."
The Informers (1994)
Ellis returns to early '80s Los Angeles ennui with The Informers, a loosely connected collection of stories of the bored, rich, and morally depraved, written around the same time as Less than Zero. Sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence take center stage, with characters including an aging, predatory anchorwoman, a debauched rock star tearing through Japan, and a pick-up artist vampire. While some of the vignettes echo better Ellis works, ultimately the stories don't add to much as a whole. Book critics are less than receptive to Ellis' post-American Psycho offering. Ellis on Ellis: "Those were written while I was at Bennington. I wrote a lot of short stories between 1981 or 1982 or so... The Informers more or less kind of represented probably the best of those stories. I wrote a lot of really bad ones, but those are the ones that worked the best together."
Glamorama (1999)
Actor-model Victor Ward (who first made an appearance in the Ellis oeuvre in The Rules of Attraction) is the narrator of Glamorama, Ellis longest novel yet. Ellis offers bold-faced names and celebrity skewering in the first half of the book as Victor tries to open a Manhattan club while cheating on his supermodel girlfriend and double-crossing his partner, but the second half takes a violent, paranoid turn as Victor is sent to England and unwittingly lured into a sadistic ring of international terrorists (posing as supermodels) leaving a bloody trail across the globe. Ellis on Ellis: "[T]he book wasn't necessarily about terrorism to me. It was about a whole bunch of other stuff. It's definitely the book that I can tell--I don't know if other people can tell but I can tell as a writer--is probably the most divisive that I've written. It has an equal number of detractors as it does fans. It doesn't really hold true with the other books. It was the one that took the longest to write, and the one that seemed the most important at the time. It's an unwieldy book... I like it."
Ellis on DVD
Less Than Zero
American Psycho
The Rules of AttractionWill the Real Bret Easton Ellis Please Stand Up?
Visit the author's Web site at www.2brets.com.
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Many Watersby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374347964 (0-374-34796-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Many Waters'Book summary:We've all done it. In the frigid depths of winter we've wished we could be magically transported to someplace warm and sunny. But most people don't have genius parents who just happen to be working on a scientific experiment with time travel at the moment of our wish. Sandy and Dennys Murry, the "normal" boys in a family of geniuses, suddenly find themselves trudging through a blazing-hot desert, seeking a far-off oasis for shade. Their desperate wandering brings them face-to-face with history--biblical history. Soon they're feeling right at home with Noah and his family. Even so, the urgent question is, how will Sandy and Dennys get back to their own place and time before the floods--the many waters--come? As they begin to cross the invisible border into adulthood, the twins must confront their ability to resist temptation and embrace integrity.
In Many Waters, Madeleine L'Engle continues the Murry family saga, which includes A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind in the Door; and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which won the American Book Award. L'Engle's mystical mix of science fiction and fantasy, time and space travel, history, morals, religion, and culture once again urges her many adoring readers to stretch their minds and hearts to understand why the world is the way it is. (Ages 9 and older) --Emilie Coulter [via]
The Millionaire's Marriageby Catherine SpencerISBN 0373122209 (0-373-12220-9)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imaginationby Helen FieldingISBN 0330432737 (0-330-43273-7)
Hardcover, Picador
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination'Book summary:From the white heat of Miami to the implants of LA, the glittering waters of the Caribbean to the deserts of Arabia, Olivia Joules pits herself against the forces of terror armed only with a hatpin, razor sharp wits and a very special underwired bra. Is it possible that the alluring and powerful Pierre Ferramo, with his impeccable taste and unimaginable wealth, is actually a major terrorist, bent on the western world's destruction? Or is it all just a product of Olivia Joules' overactive imagination? Join Olivia in her heart-stopping and hilarious quest to save the world in this witty, contemporary and utterly unputdownable thriller. [via]
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The Pilot's Wifeby Anita ShreveISBN 0316789909 (0-316-78990-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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Plainsongby Kent HarufISBN 0375406182 (0-375-40618-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Playing With Fireby Gena ShowalterISBN 0373771290 (0-373-77129-0)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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The Pleasure Slaveby Gena ShowalterISBN 0373770324 (0-373-77032-4)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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The Queen of the Damnedby Anne RiceISBN 0345351525 (0-345-35152-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Queen of the Damned'Book summary:Did you ever wonder where all those mischievous vampires roaming the globe in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles came from? In this, the third book in the series, we find out. That raucous rock-star vampire Lestat interrupts the 6,000-year slumber of the mama of all bloodsuckers, Akasha, Queen of the Damned.
Akasha was once the queen of the Nile (she has a bit in common with the Egyptian goddess Isis), and it's unwise to rile her now that she's had 60 centuries of practice being undead. She is so peeved about male violence that she might just have to kill most of them. And she has her eye on handsome Lestat with other ideas as well.
If you felt that the previous books in the series weren't gory and erotic enough, this one should quench your thirst (though it may cause you to omit organ meats from your diet). It also boasts God's plenty of absorbing lore that enriches the tale that went before, including the back-story of the boy in Interview with the Vampire and the ancient fellowship of the Talamasca, which snoops on paranormal phenomena. Mostly, the book spins the complex yarn of Akasha's eerie, brooding brood and her nemeses, the terrifying sisters Maharet and Mekare. In one sense, Queen of the Damned is the ultimate multigenerational saga. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Serena and Caineby Nora RobertsISBN 0373483880 (0-373-48388-0)
Softcover, Silhouette Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Serena and Caine'Book summary:In the wake of the success of The MacGregor Brides and The MacGregor Grooms, New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts has repackaged and reissued the sagas of earlier generations, beginning with Serena and Caine, daughter and son of family patriarch Daniel MacGregor. Daniel's romantic machinations embroil Serena and Caine with another brother and sister team, Justin and Diana Blade. In Playing the Odds, Comanche gambler Justin Blade finds himself on a vacation cruise to the Bahamas where he is instantly attracted to a violet-eyed casino dealer. Only later does he learn that the lissome Serena is one and the same as the much-degreed Rena MacGregor, daughter of his longtime silent business partner, Daniel MacGregor. Serena makes it her practice to never get involved with gamblers, but the predatory gaze of Justin Blade steals her breath and steels her resolve to ignore his overtures. When Justin makes her an offer she can't refuse--the position of casino manager in his Atlantic City hotel-casino--Serena finds herself drawn to the man who worked his way up from nowhere, never swerving in his pursuit of financial success and possession of Serena. In this contemporary drama, the house (and the heart) always wins! Once settled as Justin's partner in business and in life, Serena invites Justin's sister Diana to visit. To Diana, Justin is the beloved older brother who abandoned her 20 years earlier, after their mother's death, leaving Diana to be raised by her cold Aunt Adelaide who demanded absolute obedience from her. Now a Harvard-educated lawyer in Boston, Diana is a cool operator, her emotions packed tightly away, until Caine MacGregor, her new sister-in-law's brother and infamous rogue of Harvard Law's ivied halls, greets her at the airport on her visit to get to know the brother she loved so long ago. Diana finds herself in turmoil, trying to deal with her hurt and anger toward her brother and the attraction that she feels for Caine who just happens to be near whenever Diana's well-guarded shell cracks. Caine works inexorably to overcome the much-exaggerated tales of his law school peccadilloes, slowly changing Diana's mind about his playboy reputation and teaching her to trust her heart and him. No one builds romantic tension better than Nora Roberts; even the second (or third or fourth) reading is every bit as exciting as the first! --Alison Trinkle [via]
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Sinfully Sexy: A Novelby Linda Francis LeeISBN 0345462726 (0-345-46272-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sinfully Sexy: A Novel'Book summary:In this enchanting contemporary romance, sure to delight readers of Rachel Gibson and Susan Elizabeth Phillips, a close encounter of the sexy kind leads a plain Jane to discover her wild side.
Chloe Sinclair has never been bad . . . until she stumblesliterallyinto the arms of a gorgeous stranger. To make matters worse, the morning after, her world is rocked completely off its axis when the sensual dreamboat turns out to be the man brought in to save the TV station where she works.
Sterling Prescott is hard-driven, gorgeous as hell, and determined to turn the struggling KTEX into a success. But all bets are off when the shameless wildcat that disappeared on him last night walks back into his lifeacting like a squeaky-clean librarian. Life gets truly complicated, however, when Sterling decides to win more than the stationand to show Chloe that being sexy isnt a sin. [via]More editions of Sinfully Sexy: A Novel:
Sirens of Titanby Kurt VonnegutISBN 0340028769 (0-340-02876-9)
Hardcover, Hodder & Stoughton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sirens of Titan'Book summary:Winston has flown his craft into a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and been converted into pure energy. Materializing only when his waveforms intercept a planet, he only gets home once every 59 days. But at least it's some consolation that he knows all that ever has been and all that ever will be. [via]
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Sizzleby Jennifer CrusieISBN 0373832710 (0-373-83271-0)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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The Stanislaski Brothersby Nora RobertsISBN 0373484224 (0-373-48422-4)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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Sulaby Toni MorrisonISBN 0375415351 (0-375-41535-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sula'Book summary:In Sula, Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature, tells the story of two women--friends since childhood, separated in young adulthood, and reunited as grown women. Nel Wright grows up to become a wife and mother, happy to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace leaves Medallion to experience college, men, and life in the big city, an exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s.
As girls, Nel and Sula are the best of friends, only children who find in each other a kindred spirit to share in each girl's loneliness and imagination. When they meet again as adults, it's clear that Nel has chosen a life of acceptance and accommodation, while Sula must fight to defend her seemingly unconventional choices and beliefs. But regardless of the physical and emotional distance that threatens this extraordinary friendship, the bond between the women remains unbreakable: "Her old friend had come home.... Sula, whose past she had lived through and with whom the present was a constant sharing of perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself."
Lyrical and gripping, Sula is an honest look at the power of friendship amid a backdrop of family, love, race, and the human condition. --Gisele Toueg [via]
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Againby David Foster WallaceISBN 0316925284 (0-316-92528-4)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again'Book summary:David Foster Wallace made quite a splash in 1996 with his massive novel, Infinite Jest. Now he's back with a collection of essays entitled A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. In addition to a razor-sharp writing style, Wallace has a mercurial mind that lights on many subjects. His seven essays travel from a state fair in Illinois to a cruise ship in the Caribbean, explore how television affects literature and what makes film auteur David Lynch tick, and deconstruct deconstructionism and find the intersection between tornadoes and tennis.
These eclectic interests are enhanced by an eye (and nose) for detail: "I have seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled what suntan lotion smells like spread over 21,000 pounds of hot flesh . . ." It's evident that Wallace revels in both the life of the mind and the peculiarities of his fellows; in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again he celebrates both. [via]
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Suzanna and Megan: Suzanna and Meganby Nora RobertsISBN 0373285140 (0-373-28514-0)
Softcover, Silhouette
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Sweet Memoriesby Lavyrle SpencerISBN 0373770995 (0-373-77099-5)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sweet Memories'Book summary:A chrysalis awaiting change, Theresa Brubaker finds Brian only too willing to help her grow, but a decision she makes alone nearly destroys their budding love. [via]
The Tailor of Panamaby John Le CarreISBN 0345420438 (0-345-42043-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Temptationby Nora RobertsISBN 037308529X (0-373-08529-X)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Temptation'Times Changeby Nora RobertsISBN 0373073178 (0-373-07317-8)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Times Change'Book summary:Cynical Jacob had followed his brother into the past, intending to lure him back home. But once captivated by the spitfire Sunny Stone, Jacob discovered that even for a romance-resistant man, home is where the heart is. [via]
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneedby John IrvingISBN 0345404742 (0-345-40474-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxyby Douglas AdamsISBN 0345453743 (0-345-45374-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'Book summary:At last in paperback in one complete volume, here are the five classic novels from Douglas Adamss beloved Hitchiker series.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.
Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.
Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself? [via]More editions of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
Ulyssesby James Joyce, Danis RoseISBN 033035230X (0-330-35230-X)
Softcover, Trans-Atlantic Pubns
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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]
Until I Find Youby John IrvingISBN 0345479726 (0-345-47972-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Until I Find You'Book summary:Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns - his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents. When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead - has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or "scratcher."Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England - including, tellingly, a girls' school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women - from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda's, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym. Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack's hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, "sleeping in the needles" and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist's unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can't get rid of. Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. [via]
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The Vampire Lestatby Anne RiceISBN 0345313860 (0-345-31386-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vampire Lestat'Book summary:After the spectacular debut of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, Anne Rice put aside her vampires to explore other literary interests--Italian castrati in Cry to Heaven and the Free People of Color in The Feast of All Saints. But Lestat, the mischievous creator of Louis in Interview, finally emerged to tell his own story in the 1985 sequel, The Vampire Lestat.
As with the first book in the series, the novel begins with a frame narrative. After over a half century underground, Lestat awakens in the 1980s to the cacophony of electronic sounds and images that characterizes the MTV generation. Particularly, he is captivated by a fledgling rock band named Satan's Night Out. Determined both to achieve international fame and end the centuries of self-imposed vampire silence, Lestat takes command of the band (now renamed "The Vampire Lestat") and pens his own autobiography. The remainder of the novel purports to be that autobiography: the vampire traces his mortal youth as the son of a marquis in pre-Revolutionary France, his initiation into vampirism at the hands of Magnus, and his quest for the ultimate origins of his undead species.
While very different from the first novel in the Vampire Chronicles, The Vampire Lestat has proved to be the foundation for a broader range of narratives than is possible from Louis's brooding, passive perspective. The character of Lestat is one of Rice's most complex and popular literary alter egos, and his Faustian strivings have a mythopoeic resonance that links the novel to a grand tradition of spiritual and supernatural fiction. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
Waitingby Ha JinISBN 0375406530 (0-375-40653-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waiting'Book summary:"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Like a fairy tale, Ha Jin's masterful novel of love and politics begins with a formula--and like a fairy tale, Waiting uses its slight, deceptively simple framework to encompass a wide range of truths about the human heart. Lin Kong is a Chinese army doctor trapped in an arranged marriage that embarrasses and repels him. (Shuyu has country ways, a withered face, and most humiliating of all, bound feet.) Nevertheless, he's content with his tidy military life, at least until he falls in love with Manna, a nurse at his hospital. Regulations forbid an army officer to divorce without his wife's consent--until 18 years have passed, that is, after which he is free to marry again. So, year after year Lin asks his wife for his freedom, and year after year he returns from the provincial courthouse: still married, still unable to consummate his relationship with Manna. Nothing feeds love like obstacles placed in its way--right? But Jin's novel answers the question of what might have happened to Romeo and Juliet had their romance been stretched out for several decades. In the initial confusion of his chaste love affair, Lin longs for the peace and quiet of his "old rut." Then killing time becomes its own kind of rut, and in the end, he is forced to conclude that he "waited eighteen years just for the sake of waiting."
There's a political allegory here, of course, but it grows naturally from these characters' hearts. Neither Lin nor Manna is especially ideological, and the tumultuous events occurring around them go mostly unnoticed. They meet during a forced military march, and have their first tender moment during an opera about a naval battle. (While the audience shouts, "Down with Japanese Imperialism!" the couple holds hands and gazes dreamily into each other's eyes.) When Lin is in Goose Village one summer, a mutual acquaintance rapes Manna; years later, the rapist appears on a TV report titled "To Get Rich Is Glorious," after having made thousands in construction. Jin resists hammering ideological ironies like these home, but totalitarianism's effects on Lin are clear:
Let me tell you what really happened, the voice said. All those years you waited torpidly, like a sleepwalker, pulled and pushed about by others' opinions, by external pressure, by your illusions, by the official rules you internalized. You were misled by your own frustration and passivity, believing that what you were not allowed to have was what your heart was destined to embrace.
Ha Jin himself served in the People's Liberation Army, and in fact left his native country for the U.S. only in 1985. That a non-native speaker can produce English of such translucence and power is truly remarkable--but really, his prose is the least of the miracles here. Improbably, Jin makes an unconsummated 18-year love affair loom as urgent as political terror or war, while history-changing events gain the immediacy of a domestic dilemma. Gracefully phrased, impeccably paced, Waiting is the kind of realist novel you thought was no longer being written. --Mary Park [via]More editions of Waiting:
Waiting for Nickby Nora RobertsISBN 0373240880 (0-373-24088-0)
Softcover, Silhouette Books
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Walk on the Wild Sideby Donna KauffmanISBN 037325928X (0-373-25928-X)
Softcover, Harlequin Books
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Walking on Glassby Iain BanksISBN 0333379861 (0-333-37986-1)
Hardcover, Macmillan
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walking on Glass'Book summary:Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him. They are. Quiss is forced to play impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him. [via]
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A Wind in the Doorby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374384436 (0-374-38443-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Wind in the Door'Book summary:"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden," announces six-year-old Charles Wallace Murry in the opening sentence of The Wind in the Door. His older sister, Meg, doubts it. She figures he's seen something strange, but dragons--a "dollop of dragons," a "drove of dragons," even a "drive of dragons"--seem highly unlikely. As it turns out, Charles Wallace is right about the dragons--though the sea of eyes (merry eyes, wise eyes, ferocious eyes, kitten eyes, dragon eyes, opening and closing) and wings (in constant motion) is actually a benevolent cherubim (of a singularly plural sort) named Proginoskes who has come to help save Charles Wallace from a serious illness.
In her usual masterful way, Madeleine L'Engle jumps seamlessly from a child's world of liverwurst and cream cheese sandwiches to deeply sinister, cosmic battles between good and evil. Children will revel in the delectably chilling details--including hideous scenes in which a school principal named Mr. Jenkins is impersonated by the Echthroi (the evil forces that tear skies, snuff out light, and darken planets). When it becomes clear that the Echthroi are putting Charles Wallace in danger, the only logical course of action is for Meg and her dear friend Calvin O'Keefe to become small enough to go inside Charles Wallace's body--into one of his mitochondria--to see what's going wrong with his farandolae. In an illuminating flash on the interconnectedness of all things and the relativity of size, we realize that the tiniest problem can have mammoth, even intergalactic ramifications. Can this intrepid group voyage through time and space and muster all their strength of character to save Charles Wallace? It's an exhilarating, enlightening, suspenseful journey that no child should miss.
The other books of the Time quartet, continuing the adventures of the Murry family, are A Wrinkle in Time; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which won the American Book Award; and Many Waters. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson [via]
More editions of A Wind in the Door:
The Women's Roomby Marilyn FrenchISBN 0345353617 (0-345-35361-7)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Women's Room'
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