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books tagged “contemporary”
books tagged “contemporary”
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All over Creationby Ruth L. OzekiISBN 0142003891 (0-14-200389-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Animal Farmby George Orwell, Ralph SteadmanISBN 0151002177 (0-15-100217-7)
Hardcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Animal Farm'Book summary:Since its publication in 1946, George Orwell's fable of a workers' revolution gone wrong has rivaled Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea as the Shortest Serious Novel It's OK to Write a Book Report About. (The latter is three pages longer and less fun to read.) Fueled by Orwell's intense disillusionment with Soviet Communism, Animal Farm is a nearly perfect piece of writing, both an engaging story and an allegory that actually works. When the downtrodden beasts of Manor Farm oust their drunken human master and take over management of the land, all are awash in collectivist zeal. Everyone willingly works overtime, productivity soars, and for one brief, glorious season, every belly is full. The animals' Seven Commandment credo is painted in big white letters on the barn. All animals are equal. No animal shall drink alcohol, wear clothes, sleep in a bed, or kill a fellow four-footed creature. Those that go upon four legs or wings are friends and the two-legged are, by definition, the enemy. Too soon, however, the pigs, who have styled themselves leaders by virtue of their intelligence, succumb to the temptations of privilege and power. "We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of the farm depend on us. Day and night, we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples." While this swinish brotherhood sells out the revolution, cynically editing the Seven Commandments to excuse their violence and greed, the common animals are once again left hungry and exhausted, no better off than in the days when humans ran the farm. Satire Animal Farm may be, but it's a stony reader who remains unmoved when the stalwart workhorse, Boxer, having given his all to his comrades, is sold to the glue factory to buy booze for the pigs. Orwell's view of Communism is bleak indeed, but given the history of the Russian people since 1917, his pessimism has an air of prophecy. --Joyce Thompson [via]
The Art of Hungerby Paul AusterISBN 0140171681 (0-14-017168-1)
Softcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of Hunger'Book summary:This collection includes essays on Kafka, Beckett and other 20th-century literary figures, and reflections by Auster on his own work - on the need to break down the boundary between living and writing, and on the use of certain genre conventions to penetrate matters of memory and identity. [via]
The Art of Hunger: Essays, Prefaces, Interviews and the Red Notebookby Paul AusterISBN 0140267506 (0-14-026750-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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At Home in Mitfordby Jan KaronISBN 014025448X (0-14-025448-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'At Home in Mitford'Book summary:Father Tim, a cherished small-town rector, is the steadfast soldier in this beloved slice of life story set in an American village where the grass is still green, the pickets are still white, and the air still smells sweet. The rector's forthright secretary, Emma Garret, worries about her employer, as she sees past his Christian cheerfulness into his aching loneliness. Slowly but surely, the empty places in Father Tim's heart do get filled. First with a gangly stray dog, later with a seemingly stray boy, and finally with the realization that he is stumbling into love with his independent and Christian-wise next-door neighbor. Much more than a gentle love story, this is a homespun tale about a town of endearing characters-- including a mysterious jewel thief--who are as quirky and popular as those of Mayberry, R.F.D. --Gail Hudson [via]
Author, Authorby David LodgeISBN 0143036092 (0-14-303609-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Big Fishby Daniel WallaceISBN 0140282777 (0-14-028277-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Big Fish'Book summary:In Big Fish, Daniel Wallace angles in search of a father and hooks instead a fictional debut as winning as any this year. From his son's standpoint, Edward Bloom leaves much to be desired. He was never around when William was growing up; he eludes serious questions with a string of tall tales and jokes. This is subject matter as old as the hills, but Wallace's take is nothing if not original. Desperate to know his father before he dies, William recreates his father's life as the stuff of legend itself. In chapters titled "In Which He Speaks to Animals," "How He Tamed the Giant," "His Immortality," and the like, Edward Bloom walks miles through a blizzard, charms the socks off a giant, even runs so fast that "he could arrive in a place before setting out to get there." In between these heroic episodes, Bloom dies not once but four times, working subtle variations on a single scene in which he counters his son's questions with stories--some of which are actually very witty, indeed. After all, he admits, "...if I shared my doubts with you, about God and love and life and death, that's all you'd have: a bunch of doubts. But now, see, you've got all these great jokes." The structure is a clever conceit, and the end product is both funny and wise. At the heart of both legends and death scenes live the same age-old questions: Who are you? What matters to you? Was I a good father? Was I a good son? In mapping the territory where myth meets everyday life, Wallace plunges straight through to fatherhood's archaic and mysterious heart. --Mary Park [via]
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The Big over Easyby Jasper FfordeISBN 0143037234 (0-14-303723-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Big over Easy'Book summary:[via]Jasper Fforde's bestselling Thursday Next series has delighted readers of every genre with its literary derring-do and brilliant flights of fancy. In The Big Over Easy, Fforde takes a break from classic literature and tumbles into the seedy underbelly of nursery crime. Meet Inspector Jack Spratt, family man and head of the Nursery Crime Division. He's investigating the murder of ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Dumpty, found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Yes, the big egg is down, and all those brittle pieces sitting in the morgue point to foul play.
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Bookby Robert GrudinISBN 0140231137 (0-14-023113-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The British Museum Is Falling Downby David LodgeISBN 0140124195 (0-14-012419-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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Budding Prospectsby T. C. BoyleISBN 0140299963 (0-14-029996-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Budding Prospects'Book summary:All Felix Nasmyth and friends have to do is harvest a crop of Cannabis Sativa...[via]...and half a million tax-free dollars will be theirs. But they haven't reckoned on nosy Northern California-style neighbors, torrential rain, demands of the flesh, and Felix's improbable new love, a wayward sculptress on whose behalf he undertakes a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. As their deal escalates through crises into nightmare, their dreams of easy money get nipped in the bud.
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The Camomile Lawnby Mary WesleyISBN 014012392X (0-14-012392-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Camomile Lawn'Book summary:Sad, funny, and whimsical, The Camomile Lawn is the story of one extended family's adventures in London during the Blitz. "A distinctive, absorbing novel, told with a true storyteller's verve, an enchanting ability to involve, touch and surprise the reader." [via]
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The Castle of Crossed Destiniesby Italo CalvinoISBN 015115998X (0-15-115998-X)
Hardcover, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
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![Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ; [and], The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore ; [and], The Night of the Iguana](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0140481303.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ; [and], The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore ; [and], The Night of the Iguana")
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ; [and], The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore ; [and], The Night of the Iguanaby Tennessee WilliamsISBN 0140481303 (0-14-048130-3)
Hardcover, Penguin
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Other Playsby Tennessee WiliamsISBN 0140183841 (0-14-018384-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Club Dumasby Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Sonia SotoISBN 0151001820 (0-15-100182-0)
Hardcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Club Dumas'Book summary:Fallen angels, satanic manuals, and a passion for the works of Raphael Sabatini and Alexandre Dumas among others--this is the stuff of Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte's engrossing novel The Club Dumas. Set in a world of antiquarian booksellers where dealers would gladly betray their own mothers to get their hands on a rare volume, The Club Dumas is a thinking person's thriller: in addition to a riveting plot, the book is full of intriguing details that range from the working habits of Alexandre Dumas to how one might go about forging a 17th-century text. Woven through these meditations is enough murder, sex, and the occult to keep both the hero, Lucas Corso, and the reader hopping.
As in his previous novel, The Flanders Panel, set in the world of art restoration, Mr. Pérez-Reverte has written a literary thriller to tease both the intellect and adrenaline gland. Lucas Corso makes a complex, ultimately sympathetic hero, and there's plenty to delight in the intricate twists and turns the story takes before the mystery of The Club Dumas is finally solved. [via]
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The Comfort of Strangersby Ian McEwanISBN 0140112839 (0-14-011283-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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A Common Lifeby Jan KaronISBN 0142000345 (0-14-200034-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Common Life'Book summary:A Common Life is a celebration of faith and love [via]
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Contemporary American Poetryby Hall, Donald, EdISBN 0140586180 (0-14-058618-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Counterlifeby Philip RothISBN 0140097694 (0-14-009769-4)
Softcover, Penguin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Counterlife'Book summary:The saga of Henry and Nathan Zuckerman continues, 13 years after novelist Nathan Zuckerman first appeared in Roth's 1974 effort, My Life as a Man. In The Counterlife, the dentist Henry suffers an unsettling--and for Roth, a predictable--side effect to his heart medication: impotence, which leads him to undergo an ill-fated operation. The multi-layered plot line travels from New York to London to Israel, while the characters undergo a series of surprising transformations. In the words of Nathan, a change in one's life causes "a counterlife that is one's own anti-myth." It's vintage Roth. [via]
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The Deptford Trilogyby Robertson DaviesISBN 0140147551 (0-14-014755-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Deptford Trilogy'Book summary:"Who killed Boy Staunton?"
This is the question that lies at the heart of Robertson Davies's elegant trilogy comprising Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders. Indeed, Staunton's death is the central event of each of the three novels, and Rashomon-style, each circles round to view it from a different perspective. In the first book, Fifth Business, Davies introduces us to Dunstan Ramsey and his "lifelong friend and enemy, Percy Boyd Staunton," both aged 10. It is a winter evening in the small Canadian village of Deptford, and Ramsey and Boy have quarreled. In a rage, Boy throws a snowball with a stone in it, misses his friend and hits the Baptist minister's pregnant wife by mistake. She becomes hysterical and later that night delivers her child prematurely, a baby with birth defects. Even worse, she loses her mind. The snowball, the stone, the deformed baby christened Paul Dempster--this is the secret guilt that will bind Ramsey and Staunton together through their long lives:
I was perfectly sure, you see, that the birth of Paul Dempster, so small, so feeble, and troublesome, was my fault. If I had not been so clever, so sly, so spiteful in hopping in front of the Dempsters just as Percy Boyd Staunton threw that snowball at me from behind, Mrs. Dempster would not have been struck. Did I never think that Percy was guilty? Indeed I did.
Boy, however, "would fight, lie, do anything rather than admit" he feels guilty, too, and so the subject remains unresolved between them right up until the night Boy's body is found in his car, in a lake, with a stone in his mouth. The second novel, The Manticore, follows Staunton's son, David, through a course of Jungian therapy in Switzerland, while World of Wonders concentrates on Magnus Eisengrim, a renowned magician and hypnotist with ties to both Ramsey and Boy Staunton.When it came to writing, three was Davies's favorite number. Before the Deptford books, he wrote The Salterton Trilogy (Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties), and after it came The Cornish Trilogy (The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus). Excellent as these and Davies's other novels are, The Deptford Trilogy is arguably the masterpiece for which he'll best be remembered, as the combination of magic, archetype, and good, old-fashioned human frailty at work in these novels is a world of wonders unto itself, and guarantees these three books a permanent place among the great books of our time. --Alix Wilber [via]
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East of Edenby John SteinbeckISBN 0140049975 (0-14-004997-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'East of Eden'Book summary:Book [via]
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East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repairby John SteinbeckISBN 0140186395 (0-14-018639-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair'Book summary:'Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man'. California's fertile Salinas Valley is home to two families whose destinies are fruitfully, and fatally, intertwined. Over the generations, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, the Trasks and the Hamiltons will helplessly replay the fall of Adam and Eve and the murderous rivalry of Cain and Abel. "East of Eden" was considered by Steinbeck to be his magnum opus, and its epic scope and memorable characters, exploring universal themes of love and identity, ensure it remains one of America's most enduring novels. [via]
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- East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair: ISBN 0142000655 (0-14-200065-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA - East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair: ISBN 0142004235 (0-14-200423-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA - East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair: ISBN 0140186395 (0-14-018639-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
- East of Eden: An Easy Guide to Car Maintenance And Repair: ISBN 0142000655 (0-14-200065-5)
Elizabeth Costelloby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0142004812 (0-14-200481-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Equusby Peter ShafferISBN 0140260706 (0-14-026070-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Equus'Book summary:In "equus," which took critics and public alike by storm and has gone on to become a modern classic, peter shaffer depicts the story of a deranged youth who blinds six horses with a spike. Through a psychiatrist's analysis of the events, shaffer creates a chilling portrait of how materialism and convenience have killed our capacity for worship and passion and, consequently, our capacity for pain. Rarely has a playwrite created an atmosphere and situation that so harshly pinpoint the spiritual and mental decay of modern man [via]
Eucalyptusby Murray BailISBN 0156007819 (0-15-600781-9)
Softcover, Harcourt
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Fencing Masterby Arturo Perez-Reverte, Margaret Jull CostaISBN 0156029839 (0-15-602983-9)
Softcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fencing Master'Book summary:In The Club Dumas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte explored the labyrinthine world of antiquarian book dealers, spicing his tale of mystery and murder with characters straight out of Paradise Lost and The Three Musketeers. Next came The Flanders Panel, a brilliant puzzle comprised of art, chess, and untimely death whose resolution lies in a painting by a Flemish master. In The Seville Communion, Pérez-Reverte turned his sights on the tangled politics of the Roman Catholic Church as an appropriate backdrop--for murder. In his fourth novel translated into English, the Spanish writer changes centuries (if not his focus on homicide), returning to the mid-1800s to follow the exploits of Don Jaime Astarloa, the eponymous fencing master.
The year is 1866 and revolution is brewing in Spain. The corrupt Bourbon queen, Isabella II, is slowly losing her grip on power as equally corrupt exiled politicians vie to be her successor in a new republic. Against this background of political upheaval, Don Jaime goes about his business, teaching a dying art to a dwindling number of students. This is a man who resists changing times; to a friend he explains, "I have spent my whole life trying to preserve a certain idea of myself, and that is all. You have to cling to a set of values that do not depreciate with time. Everything else is the fashion of the moment, fleeting, mutable. In a word, nonsense." But then Adela de Otero--a woman with a mysterious past and an amazing talent for swordplay--comes into his life, and Don Jaime's world is turned upside down. As always, Pérez-Reverte offers literary excellence, a thumping good mystery, and fascinating insight into an arcane practice, in this case, fencing. Though the 19th-century politics in the book may resonate more with a Spanish audience than with English readers, the moral at the heart of The Fencing Master is universal: "to be honest, or at least honorable--anything, indeed, that has its roots in the word honor." In this, Don Jaime and Arturo Pérez-Reverte both succeed. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Great Gatsbyby F. Scott FitzgeraldISBN 0140620184 (0-14-062018-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Gatsby'Book summary:[via]Kathleen Parkinson places this brilliant and bitter satire on the moral failure of the jazz age firmly in the context of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life and times. She explores the intricate patterns of the novel, its chronology, locations, imagery and use of colour, and how these contribute to a seamless interplay of social comedy and symbolic landscape. She devotes a perceptive chapter to F. Scott Fitzgerald's controversial portrayal of women and goes on to discuss how the central characters, Gatsby and Nick Carraway, embody and confront the dualism inherent in the American Dream.
A House for Mr. Biswasby V.S. NaipaulISBN 0140186042 (0-14-018604-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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If the River Was Whiskeyby T. C. BoyleISBN 0140119507 (0-14-011950-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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In Between the Sheets, and Other Storiesby Ian McEwanISBN 0140112812 (0-14-011281-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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In the Lake of the Woodsby Tim O'BrienISBN 0140250948 (0-14-025094-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In the Lake of the Woods'Book summary:Tim O'Brien has been writing about Vietnam in one way or another ever since he served there as an infantryman in the late 1960s. His earliest work on the subject, If I Die in a Combat Zone, was an intensely personal memoir of his own tour of duty; his books since then have featured many of the same elements of fear, boredom, and moral ambiguity but in a fictional setting. In 1994 O'Brien wrote In the Lake of the Woods, a novel that, while imbued with the troubled spirit of Vietnam, takes place entirely after the war and in the United States. The main character, John Wade, is a man in crisis: after spending years building a successful political career, he finds his future derailed during a bid for the U.S. Senate by revelations about his past as a soldier in Vietnam. The election lost by a landslide, John and his wife, Kathy, retreat to a small cabin on the shores of a Minnesota lake--from which Kathy mysteriously disappears.
Was she murdered? Did she run away? Instead of answering these questions, O'Brien raises even more as he slowly reveals past lives and long-hidden secrets. Included in this third-person narrative are "interviews" with the couple's friends and family as well as footnoted excerpts from a mix of fictionalized newspaper reports on the case and real reports pertaining to historical events--a mélange that lends the novel an eerie sense of verisimilitude. If Kathy's disappearance is at the heart of this work, then John's involvement in a My Lai-type massacre in Vietnam is its core, and O'Brien uses it to demonstrate how wars don't necessarily end when governments say they do. In the Lake of the Woods may not be true, but it feels true--and for Tim O'Brien, that's true enough. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The Invention of Solitudeby Paul Auster, Pascal BrucknerISBN 0143112228 (0-14-311222-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invention of Solitude'Book summary:Beginning with the deconstructed detective novels of the New York Trilogy, Paul Auster has proved himself to be one of the most adventurous writers in contemporary fiction. In book after book, he seems compelled to reinvent his style from scratch. Yet he always returns to certain preoccupations--most notably, solitude and coincidence--and these themes get a powerful workout in this early memoir. In the first half, "Portrait of an Invisible Man," Auster comes to terms with the death of his father, and as he investigates this elusive figure, he makes a rather shocking (and enlightening) discovery about his family's history. The second half, "The Book of Memory," finds the author on more abstract ground, toying with the entwined metaphors of coincidence, translation, solitude, and language. But here, too, the autobiographical element gives an extra kick to Auster's prose and keeps him from sliding off into armchair aesthetics. An eloquent, mesmerizing book. [via]
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![Borges, Jorge Luis: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings [translated from the Spanish]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0140029818.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "Borges, Jorge Luis: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings [translated from the Spanish]")
Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings [translated from the Spanish]by Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates, James East IrbyISBN 0140029818 (0-14-002981-8)
Hardcover, Penguin
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The Last Septemberby Elizabeth BowenISBN 0140183043 (0-14-018304-3)
Softcover, Viking Pr
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Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Streetby Michael LewisISBN 0140143459 (0-14-014345-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street'Book summary:In fiction there was Bonfire of the Vanities; in reality, there is Liar's Poker--the fascinating insider's account of what really happens on Wall Street. This irreverent and hilarious birds-eye view of Wall Street's heyday will appeal to anyone intrigued by the allure of million dollar deals. Now in trade paper. First serial to Manhattan Inc. [via]
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Liars Poker Rising Through the Wreckage/International Editionby Michael LewisISBN 0140143440 (0-14-014344-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Life and Times of Michael Kby Michael CoetzeeISBN 0140074481 (0-14-007448-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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A Light in the Windowby Jan KaronISBN 0140254544 (0-14-025454-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Light in the Window'Book summary:A Light in the Window is the second installment in this enormously popular series about a small-town rector, Father Tim, and the heartwarming cast of characters surrounding him. This time Father Tim, a lifelong bachelor, finds his heart distracted by his free-spirited neighbor Cynthia, but his stomach and the rectory cash box are distracted by Edith, a wealthy widow who is wooing the rector with love potion casseroles. At every turn, including when a brooding Irish cousin decides to move in, Father Tim must decide whether he will practice what he preaches.
Fans of the series say they long to buy real estate in Mitford, just so they can live next door to these funny and endearing characters and feel the embrace of such a loving community. But what author Jan Karon probably knows, and many readers are starting to figure out, is that the integrity and solid Christian values that these characters possess can be found in just about every neighborhood, and with inspiration like this book, anyone can build their own Mitford community. --Gail Hudson [via]
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Longitudeby Dava SobelISBN 0140258795 (0-14-025879-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Longitude'Book summary:Dava Sobel's Longitude tells the story of how 18th-century scientist and clockmaker William Harrison solved one of the most perplexing problems of history--determining east-west location at sea. This lush, colorfully illustrated edition adds lots of pictures to the story, giving readers a more satisfying sense of the times, the players, and the puzzle. This was no obscure, curious difficulty--without longitude, ships often found themselves so far off course that sailors would starve or die of scurvy before they could reach port. When a nationally-sponsored contest offered a hefty cash prize to the person who could develop a method to accurately determine longitude, the race was on. In the end, the battle of accuracy--and wills--fought between Harrison and arch-rival Maskelyne was ruthless and dramatic, worthy of a Hollywood feature film. Longitude's story is surprising and fascinating, offering a window into the past, before Global Positioning Satellites made it look easy. --Therese Littleton [via]
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Love Meby Garrison KeillorISBN 0142004995 (0-14-200499-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Maisie Dobbsby Jacqueline WinspearISBN 0142004332 (0-14-200433-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maisie Dobbs'Book summary:[via]Hailed by NPRs Fresh Air as part Testament of Youth, part Dorothy Sayers, and part Upstairs, Downstairs, this astonishing debut has already won fans from coast to coast and is poised to add Maisie Dobbs to the ranks of literatures favorite sleuths.
Maisie Dobbs isnt just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligenceand the patronage of her benevolent employersshe works her way into college at Cambridge. When World War I breaks out, Maisie goes to the front as a nurse. It is there that she learns that coincidences are meaningful and the truth elusive. After the War, Maisie sets up on her own as a private investigator. But her very first assignment, seemingly an ordinary infidelity case, soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.
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Master And Margaritaby Mikhail Bulgakov, Richard Pevear, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0141180145 (0-14-118014-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'MASTER AND MARGARITA'Book summary:[via]Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. Full of pungency and wit, this luminous work is Bulgakov's crowning achievement, skilfully blending magical and realistic elements, grotesque situations and major ethical concerns. Written during the darkest period of Stalin's repressive reign and a devastating satire of Soviet life, it combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with incident and with historical, imaginary, frightful and wonderful characters. Although completed in 1940, The Master and Margarita was not published until 1966 when the first section appeared in the monthly magazine Moskva. Russians everywhere responded enthusiastically to the novel's artistic and spiritual freedom and it was an immediate and enduring success. This new translation has been made from the complete and unabridged Russian text.
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The Mitford Yearsby Jan KaronISBN 0147712564 (0-14-771256-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Moon Palaceby Paul AusterISBN 0140115854 (0-14-011585-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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My Year of Meatsby Ruth L. OzekiISBN 0140280464 (0-14-028046-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Year of Meats'Book summary:At first glance, a novel that promises to expose the unethical practices of the American meat industry may not be at the top of your reading list, but Ruth Ozeki's debut, My Year of Meats is well worth a second look. Like the author, the novel's protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker; like Ozeki, who was once commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make television shows for the Japanese market, Jane is invited to work on a Japanese television show meant to encourage beef consumption via the not-so-subliminal suggestion that prime rib equals a perfect family:
TO: AMERICAN RESEARCH STAFF
FROM: Tokyo Office
DATE: January 5, 1991
RE: My American Wife!...
Here is list of IMPORTANT THINGS for My American Wife!
DESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Attractiveness, wholesomeness, warm personality
2. Delicious meat recipe (NOTE: Pork and other meats is second class meats, so please remember this easy motto: "Pork is Possible, but Beef is Best!")
3. Attractive, docile husband
4. Attractive, obedient children
5. Attractive, wholesome lifestyle
6. Attractive, clean house...
UNDESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Physical imperfections
2. Obesity
3. Squalor
4. Second class peoples
The series, My American Wife!, initally seems like a dream come true for Jane as she criss-crosses the United States filming a different American family each week for her Japanese audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on meat, and Ozeki has fun with out-there recipes such as rump roast in coke and beef fudge; but as Jane becomes more familiar with her subject, she becomes increasingly aware of the beef industry's widespread practice of using synthetic estrogens on their cattle and determines to sabotage the program.
Cut to Tokyo where Akiko Ueno struggles through the dull misery of life with her brutish husband, who happens to be in charge of the show's advertising. After seeing one of Jane's subversive episodes about a vegetarian lesbian couple, Akiko gets in touch and the two women plot to expose the meat industry's hazardous practices. Romance, humor, intrigue, and even a message--My Year of Meats has it all. This is a book that even a vegetarian would love. [via]
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Nice Workby David LodgeISBN 0140133968 (0-14-013396-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nice Work'Book summary:"A funny, intelligent, superbly paced social comedy." -- The New York Times Vic Wilcox, a self-made man and managing director of an engineering firm. has little regard for academics, and even less for feminists. So when Robyn Penrose, a trendy leftist teacher, is assigned to "shadow" Vic under a goverment program created to foster mutual understanding between town and gown, the hilarious collusion of lifestyles and ideologies that ensues seems unlikely to foster anything besides mutual antipathy. But in the course of a bumpy year, both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds--and about themselves. [via]
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Oh the Glory of It Allby Sean WilseyISBN 0143036912 (0-14-303691-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oh the Glory of It All'Book summary:[via]"In the beginning we were happy. And we were always excessive. So in the beginning we were happy to excess." With these opening lines Sean Wilsey takes us on an exhilarating tour of life in the strangest, wealthiest, and most grandiose of families.
Sean's blond-bombshell mother (one of the thinly veiled characters in Armistead Maupin's bestselling Tales of the City) is a 1980s society-page staple, regularly entertaining Black Panthers and movie stars in her marble and glass penthouse, "eight hundred feet in the air above San Francisco; an apartment at the top of a building at the top of a hill: full of light, full of voices, full of windows full of water and bridges and hills." His enigmatic father uses a jet helicopter to drop Sean off at the video arcade and lectures his son on proper hygiene in public restrooms, "You should wash your hands first, before you use the urinal. Not after. Your penis isn't dirty. But your hands are."
When Sean, "the kind of child who sings songs to sick flowers," turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy.
With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.
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Our Lady of the Lost and Foundby Diane SchoemperlenISBN 0142001325 (0-14-200132-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Outsidersby S. E. HintonISBN 014038572X (0-14-038572-X)
Softcover, Puffin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Outsiders'Book summary:According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser. This classic, written by S. E. Hinton when she was 16 years old, is as profound today as it was when it was first published in 1967. [via]
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Paris Troutby Pete DexterISBN 0140122060 (0-14-012206-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Paris Trout'Book summary:In this novel of social drama, a casual murder in the small Georgia town of Cotton Point just after World War II and the resulting court case cleave open the ugly divisions of race and class. The man accused of shooting a black girl, a storekeeper named Paris Trout, has no great feeling of guilt, nor fear that the system will fail to work his way. Trout becomes an embarrassment to the polite white society that prefers to hold itself high above such primitive prejudice. But the trial does not allow any hiding from the stark reality of social and racial tensions. Dexter, a former newspaper columnist, is also the author of Deadwood and God's Pocket. Paris Trout won the 1988 National Book Award. [via]
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Possessing the Secret of Joyby Alice WalkerISBN 0151731527 (0-15-173152-7)
Hardcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Possessing the Secret of Joy'Book summary:A provocative novel about an African tribal womans battle with madness after the trauma of a childhood genital mutilation.[via]More editions of Possessing the Secret of Joy:
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The Quality of Life Reportby Meghan DaumISBN 014200443X (0-14-200443-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Quality of Life Report'Book summary:Meghan Daum's first book, the essay collection My Misspent Youth, was written with effortless humor and excoriating insight. This was a writer who made fun of everything, most especially herself. Humor and self-knowledge infuse her debut novel, The Quality of Life Report. Fans of Daum's essays probably know that her unworkable, expensive New York lifestyle led her to move to the Midwest. Same goes for the fictional Lucinda Trout, a New York TV producer who, while on assignment, falls in love with the town of Prairie City. Daum, with typical acuity, is wise to her character's real motivations for moving to the country: she wants to be a better person, and believes the Midwest will do the trick: "This was, after all, serious country. The real heartland, the plains. It was Willa Cather-novel serious. It was Sissy Spacek-movie serious and documentary-film-about-poor-conditions-in-meat-packing-plants-serious." Lucinda soon discovers that she's not immune to the less-than-perfect aspects of Prairie City living, and acquires a boyfriend of questionable hygiene and judgement; a rambling, isolated farmhouse that looks like the set to a Sam Shepard movie but is impossible to heat; and a tanning-bed tan and a set of false nails that are the region's signature style. The plot of the novel unwinds rather messily, and Daum doesn't always seem in control of her material. But she never lets Lucinda off the hook, and that's the key to the book's success. Daum has given her heroine a voice that is prickly, a little ruthless, and lovably vulnerable all at once. We don't always respect Lucinda, but we're pretty sure we'd be friends with her. --Claire Dederer [via]
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Short Fictionby Charles H. BohnerISBN 013809229X (0-13-809229-X)
Hardcover, Prentice Hall
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Siddharthaby Joachim Neugroschel, Hermann HesseISBN 0142437182 (0-14-243718-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Siddhartha'Book summary:Hesse's famous and influential novel, Siddartha, is perhaps the most important and compelling moral allegory our troubled century has produced. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, this strangely simple tale, written with a deep and moving empathy for humanity, has touched the lives of millions since its original publication in 1922. Set in India, Siddhartha is the story of a young Brahmin's search for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, through the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation. This new translation by award-winning translator Joachim Neugroschel includes an introduction by Hesse biographer Ralph Freedman. [via]
Slow Manby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0143037897 (0-14-303789-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Snapperby Roddy DoyleISBN 0140171673 (0-14-017167-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Snapper'Book summary:Twenty-year-old Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant. She's also unmarried, living at home, working in a grocery store, and keeping the father's identity a secret. Her own father, Jimmy Sr., is shocked by the news. Her mother says very little. Her friends and neighbors all want to know whose "snapper" Sharon is carrying. In his sparkling second novel, Roddy Doyle observes the progression of Sharon's pregnancy and its impact on the Rabbitte family-especially on Jimmy Sr.-with wit, candor, and surprising authenticity. [via]
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Speakby Laurie Halse AndersonISBN 0142407321 (0-14-240732-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Speak'Book summary:Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it's been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud: "My throat is always sore, my lips raw.... Every time I try to talk to my parents or a teacher, I sputter or freeze.... It's like I have some kind of spastic laryngitis." What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors' big end-of-summer party? Or maybe it's because her parents' only form of communication is Post-It notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why she's been struck mute: Andy Evans. He's a senior at Melinda's high school, and Melinda hasn't been able to speak clearly since he raped her at the senior party last August.
Laurie Halse Anderson's first novel is a stunning and sympathetic tribute to the teenage outcast. The triumphant ending, in which Melinda finds her voice and loudly confronts her rapist, is cause for cheering (while many readers might also shed a tear or two). After reading Speak, it will be hard for any teen to look at the class scapegoat again without a measure of compassion and understanding for that person--who may be screaming beneath the silence. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert [via]
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A Star Called Henryby Roddy DoyleISBN 0143034618 (0-14-303461-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Star Called Henry'Book summary:Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, Henry Smart lives through the evolution of modern Ireland, and in this extraordinary novel he brilliantly tells his story. From his own birth and childhood on the streets of Dublin to his role as soldier (and lover) in the Irish Rebellion, Henry recounts his early years of reckless heroism and adventure.
At once an epic, a love story, and a portrait of Irish history, A Star Called Henry is a grand picaresque novel brimming with both poignant moments and comic ones, and told in a voice that is both quintessentially Irish and inimitably Roddy Doyle's.
A New York Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, New York Post, and Independent bestseller
A Star Called Henry--one of only four works of fiction--was chosen by the editor's of The New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven Best Books of the Year
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, Newsday, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution
An American Library Association Notable Book
Nominated for Best Fiction of 1999, the New Yorker Book Awards [via] -
The Stone Diariesby Carol ShieldsISBN 014023313X (0-14-023313-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stone Diaries'Book summary:The Stone Diaries is Carol Shields's most celebrated work and one of the most critically acclaimed and successful novels of the past two decades. A fictional autobiography of an ordinary woman, this multi-award-winning book (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Governor-General's Award) serves as a record of the last century. Daisy Goodwill is on a journey of self-discovery. From her last days in a Florida nursing home she looks back in an attempt to make sense of her life story. Her birth in a turn of the century farmhouse is a shock, born to a woman so obese she doesn't even realize she is pregnant. Widowed on her honeymoon after her husband takes his own life, there is another marriage, children and a beloved hobby that becomes a career, of sorts. It is a life like any other, filled with the richness of human relations and the sting of disappointments both big and small. The beauty of this work lies in the details, the tiny brushstrokes of character and setting, at which Carol Shields is the undisputed master. This engrossing abridged recording was first broadcast on CBC Radio in 1995. Carol Shields both reviewed and approved the abridgement and the recording. [via]
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Tam Linby Pamela Dean, Terri WindlingISBN 014240652X (0-14-240652-X)
Softcover, Firebird
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tam Lin'Book summary:In the ancient Scottish ballad "Tam Lin," headstrong Janet defies Tam Lin to walk in her own land of Carterhaugh . . . and then must battle the Queen of Faery for possession of her lovers body and soul. In this version of "Tam Lin," masterfully crafted by Pamela Dean, Janet is a college student, "Carterhaugh" is Carter Hall at the university where her father teaches, and Tam Lin is a boy named Thomas Lane. Set against the backdrop of the early 1970s, imbued with wit, poetry, romance, and magic, Tam Lin has become a cult classicand once you begin reading, youll know why. This reissue features an updated introduction by the books original editor, the acclaimed Terri Windling. [via]
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Therapyby David LodgeISBN 0140249001 (0-14-024900-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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This Book Will Save Your Lifeby A. M. HomesISBN 0143038745 (0-14-303874-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Under the Skinby Michel FaberISBN 0156011603 (0-15-601160-3)
Softcover, Harcourt
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Under the Skin'Book summary:In the opening pages of Under the Skin, a lone female is scouting the Scottish Highlands in search of well-proportioned men: "Isserley always drove straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her." At this point, the reader might be forgiven for anticipating some run-of-the-mill psychosexual drama. But commonplace expectation is no help when it comes to Michel Faber's strange and unsettling first novel; small details, then major clues, suggest that something deeply bizarre is afoot. What are the reasons for Isserley's extensive surgical scarring, her thick glasses, her excruciating backache? Who are the solitary few who work on the farm where her cottage is located? And why are they all nervous about the arrival of someone called Amlis Vess?
The ensuing narrative is of such cumulative, compelling strangeness that it almost defies description. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that Under the Skin is unlike anything else you have ever read. Faber's control of his medium is nearly flawless. Applying the rules of psychological realism to a fictional world that is both terrifying and unearthly, he nonetheless compels the reader's absolute identification with Isserley. Not even the author's fine short-story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, prepared us for such mastery. Under the Skin is ultimately a reviewer's nightmare and a reader's dream: a book so distinctive, so elegantly written, and so original that one can only urge everybody in earshot to experience it, and soon. --Burhan Tufail [via]
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The Vanby Roddy DoyleISBN 0140171916 (0-14-017191-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Van'Book summary:Roddy Doyles acclaimed Booker Prize-nominated novel, a darker portrayal of midlife crisis and an expansively farcical chain of misadventures (The New York Times Book Review)[via]
Jimmy Rabitte, Sr., is unemployed, spending his days alone and miserable. When his best friend, Bimbo, also gets laid off, they keep busy by being miserable together. Things seem to look up when they buy a decrepit fish-and-chips van and go into business, selling cheap grub to the drunk and the hungryand keeping one step ahead of the environmental health officers.
Set during the heady days of Irelands brief, euphoric triumphs in the 1990 World Cup, The Van is a tender and hilarious tale of male friendship and family life.-
Vinelandby Thomas PynchonISBN 0141180633 (0-14-118063-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vineland'Book summary:Seventeen years after he shocked and dazzled readers with Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon returns with a novel as astonishing, as kaleidoscopic, as funny, and as satisfying as that legendary work. Vineland is peopled with a startling array of quirky characters and combines elements of daytime drama and the political thriller, resulting in a haunting evocation of 20th-century America. [via]
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Waiting for the Barbariansby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 014006110X (0-14-006110-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Waiting for the Barbarians'Book summary:For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency. [via]
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We Are Still Marriedby Garrison KeillorISBN 0140131566 (0-14-013156-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We Are Still Married'Book summary:"Garrison Keillor made it possible, after twenty years of black humor...to be both funny and nice, hip and winsome, scathing and loving, all in the flick of a single many-barbed quip--The Washington Post Book World"Keillor's literary style is as flexible and assured as his vocal delivery. It can slip from mood to mood so subtly and quickly you're never quite sure where you are.... [His] writing has the silvery slip of running water, so graceful and easy it's hard to believe it can carry so much that is jagged and unresolved. His integrity lies in his not smoothing away those rough edges in the swift current of his prose; they're bruisingly, sometimes cuttingly there." -The Village Voice [via]
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Wobegon Boyby Garrison KeillorISBN 0140274782 (0-14-027478-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wobegon Boy'Book summary:A decade after he first explored the small-town precincts of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, Garrison Keillor makes a comical return to his roots. Not that Wobegon Boy takes place entirely within Mist County. The narrator, John Tollefson, made an early exit from his hometown and has spent the last 20 years managing a college radio station in upstate New York. Here he seems to have put a healthy distance between himself and his Wobegonian past.
For the author, John's job is a handy pulpit, allowing him to fulminate against radio, New Age affectation, and campus politicking. Keillor remains a master of the cantankerous one-liner, yet there's a romance here, too--between John and a historian named Alida Freeman. And while Keillor can't resist roping Alida into his own pan-Scandinavian schtick--she's writing a scholarly study of a 19th-century Norwegian neuropath who administered high colonics to Lincoln himself--the love story is genuinely touching and gives the novel an extra emotional ballast.
So, too, does the magnetic pull of Lake Wobegon. John keeps describing life back in Minnesota as one long exercise in sensory (and emotional) deprivation: "We were not brought up to experience pleasure, so it doesn't register with us, like writing on glass with a pencil. Dullness is our stock-in-trade, dullness honed to its keenest edge." Nonetheless, he returns twice in the course of the novel, and his sojourns among the Lutherans are the source of not only comedy but home truths. [via]
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You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Freeby James KelmanISBN 0151010420 (0-15-101042-0)
Hardcover, Harcourt Trade Publishers
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Spanish
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LA Familia De Pascual Duarteby Camilo Jose CelaISBN 0135283078 (0-13-528307-8)
Softcover, Prentice Hall
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Familia De Pascual Duarte'Book summary:
[via]Unabridged edition of Cela's modern novel, with study aids. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature. More editions of LA Familia De Pascual Duarte:
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