| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
books tagged “suicide”
books tagged “suicide”
›› Find signed collectible books by ''
-
Absalom, Absalom!by William FaulknerISBN 0394747755 (0-394-74775-5)
Softcover, Vintage Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Absalom, Absalom!'Book summary:Read, read, read. Read everythingtrash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! Youll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, youll find out. If its not, throw it out the window. William Faulkner
[via]
Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkners epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him. -
The Acid Houseby Irvine WelshISBN 0393312801 (0-393-31280-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Acid House'Book summary:Irvine Welsh's scintillating, disturbing, and altogether outrageous collection of storiesthe basis for the 1998 cult movie directed by Paul McGuigan.
He is called "the Scottish Celine of the 1990s" (Guardian) and "a mad, postmodern Roald Dahl" (Weekend Scotsman). Using a range of approaches from bitter realism to demented fantasy, Irvine Welsh is able to evoke the essential humanity, well hidden as it is, of his generally depraved, lazy, manipulative, and vicious characters. He specializes particularly in cosmic reversalsGod turn a hapless footballer into a fly; an acid head and a newborn infant exchange consciousnesses with sardonically unexpected resultsalways displaying a corrosive wit and a telling accuracy of language and detail. Irvine Welsh is one hilariously dangerous writer who always creates a sensation.
[via]More editions of The Acid House:
-
Amsterdamby Ian McEwanISBN 0385494246 (0-385-49424-6)
Softcover, Anchor Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Amsterdam'Book summary:When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the upmarket newspaper the Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them be stricken with such an illness, the other will bring about his death. From this point onward we are in little doubt as to Amsterdam's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumors circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavory Garmony comes out on top. Ian McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot. --Lisa Jardine [via]
-
And I Don't Want to Live This Lifeby Deborah SpungenISBN 0394533720 (0-394-53372-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'And I Don't Want to Live This Life'Book summary:For most of us, it was just another horrible headline. But for Deborah Spungen, the mother of Nancy, who was stabbed to death at the Chelsea Hotel, it was both a relief and a tragedy. Here is the incredible story of an infant who never stopped screaming, a toddler who attacked people, a teenager addicted to drugs, violence, and easy sex, a daughter completely out of control--who almost destroyed her parents' marriage and the happiness of the rest of her family.
"Honest and moving...Her painful tale is engrossing."
WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of And I Don't Want to Live This Life:
-
Appointment in Samarraby John O'HaraISBN 0394711920 (0-394-71192-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Appointment in Samarra'Book summary:A twentieth-century classic, Appointment in Samarra is the first and most widely read book by the writer Fran Leibowitz called the real F. Scott Fitzgerald.
In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville social circuit is electrified with parties and dances, where the music plays late into the night and the liquor flows freely. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline Englishthe envy of friends and strangers alike. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction. Appointment in Samarra brilliantly captures the personal politics and easy bitterness of small-town life. It is John OHaras crowning achievement, and a lasting testament to the keen social intelligence of a major American novelist. [via]More editions of Appointment in Samarra:
The Attack: Library Editionby John Cullen, Yasmina KhadraISBN 0385517483 (0-385-51748-3)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Attack: Library Edition'More editions of The Attack: Library Edition:
-
Beauty and Sadnessby Yasunari KawabataISBN 0394460553 (0-394-46055-3)
Hardcover
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Beauty and Sadness'Book summary:The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets. He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover. Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover. This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever. [via]
More editions of Beauty and Sadness:
-
Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plathby Anne StevensonISBN 0395538467 (0-395-53846-7)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath'Book summary:"A vivid and, to me, moving portrait of a young woman who, carrying the full mixed cultural load of Americans born in 1932, as well as personal distresses and limitations peculiar to herself, (became) in ten driven years . . . the most ruthlessly original poet of her generation."--John Updike. [via]
More editions of Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath:
Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosbyby Geoffrey WolffISBN 0394724720 (0-394-72472-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby'Book summary:Includes an afterword by the author.
Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the twenties and directing the Black Sun Press, which published James Joyce among others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the lost generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosbys pastimes until 1929, when he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.
Black Sun is novelist and master biographer Geoffrey Wolffs subtle and striking picture of a man who killed himself to make his life a work of art. [via]More editions of Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby:
-
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin : Writers Running Wild in the Twentiesby Marion MeadeISBN 0385502427 (0-385-50242-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin : Writers Running Wild in the Twenties'Book summary:In her exuberant new work, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN, Marion Meade presents a portrait of four extraordinary writers--Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber--whose loves, lives, and literary endeavors embodied the spirit of the 1920s.
Capturing the jazz rhythms and desperate gaiety that defined the era, Meade gives us Parker, Fitzgerald, Millay, and Ferber, traces the intersections of their lives, and describes the men (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, Harold Ross, and Robert Benchley) who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. Here are the social and literary triumphs (Parker's Round Table witticisms appeared almost daily in the newspapers and Ferber and Millay won Pulitzer Prizes) and inevitably the penances each paid: crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and finally, overdoses and even madness.
These literary heroines did what they wanted, said what they thought, living wholly in the moment. They kicked open the door for twentieth-century women writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom. Meade recreates the excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, a decade celebrated for cultural innovation--the birth of jazz, the beginning of modernism--and social and sexual liberation, bringing to light, as well, the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous behavior.
A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and scandal, BOBBED HAIR AND BATHTUB GIN is a rich evocation of a period that will forever intrigue and captivate us. [via]More editions of Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin : Writers Running Wild in the Twenties:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Readerby Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman, Ann J. LaneISBN 0394510852 (0-394-51085-2)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader'More editions of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader:
The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Fictionby Ann J. LaneISBN 0394739337 (0-394-73933-7)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Fiction'More editions of The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader: The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Fiction:
-
The Clientby John GrishamISBN 0385339089 (0-385-33908-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Client'Book summary:In a weedy lot on the outskirts of Memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb...Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America. Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client -- even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them both their lives. [via]
More editions of The Client:
- The Client: ISBN 038542471X (0-385-42471-X)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group - The Client: ISBN 0385468652 (0-385-46865-2)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing - The Client: ISBN 0385470150 (0-385-47015-0)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing - The Client: ISBN 0385339089 (0-385-33908-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
- The Client: ISBN 038542471X (0-385-42471-X)
The Death Notebooks.by Anne SextonISBN 0395184622 (0-395-18462-2)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Death Notebooks.'Book summary:This book is collection of poetry by Anne Saxton. [via]
The Epicure's Lamentby Kate ChristensenISBN 038572098X (0-385-72098-X)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Epicure's Lament'More editions of The Epicure's Lament:
-
Ethan Fromeby Edith Wharton, Kristin O. Lauer, Cynthia Griffin WolffISBN 0393966356 (0-393-96635-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Ethan Frome'Book summary:This Norton Critical Edition of Edith Wharton's celebrated novella is based on the first edition, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1911.
It is fully annotated for undergraduate readers.
"Backgrounds and Contexts" includes a rich selection of materials, some previously unavailable, for the study of contemporary psychological, social, and economic issues, as well as Wharton's private correspondence and writings and biographical accounts of the author.
Arranged under two headings, "Criticism" reveals Ethan Frome's impact as both a literary work and a social commentary. "Contemporary Reviews" consists of eight prominent assessments of Ethan Frome, including reviews from the New York Times Book Review, Outlook, The Nation, the Saturday Review, and those penned by Frederic Taber Cooper and Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, among others. "Modern Criticism" (1956-1991) includes seven interpretations of the novella by Lionel Trilling, Elizabeth Ammons, Judith Fryer, Jean Frantz Blackall, Lev Raphael, Candace Waid, and Cynthia Griffin Wolff.
A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.
[via]More editions of Ethan Frome:
The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath, 1955-1960by Peter DavisonISBN 0393313581 (0-393-31358-1)
Softcover, Norton & Company, Incorporated, W. W.
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath, 1955-1960'More editions of The Fading Smile: Poets in Boston from Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath, 1955-1960:
Faithful Are the Woundsby May SartonISBN 0393317153 (0-393-31715-3)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Faithful Are the Wounds'
The Farewell Partyby Milan KunderaISBN 0394496604 (0-394-49660-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Farewell Party'More editions of The Farewell Party:
-
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,by Hunter S. ThompsonISBN 0394464354 (0-394-46435-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,'Book summary:Heralded as the "best book on the dope decade" by the New York Times Book Review, Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the "Great Red Shark." In its trunk, they stow "two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls," which they manage to consume during their short tour.
On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400"--a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert--the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first-rate sensibility twinger, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past, and a nugget of pure comedic genius. --Rebekah Warren [via]
More editions of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,:
-
The Ghost in the Machineby Arthur KoestlerISBN 0394524721 (0-394-52472-1)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ghost in the Machine'Book summary:Koestler examines the notion that the parts of the human brain-structure which account for reason and emotion are not fully coordinated. This kind of deficiency may explain the paranoia, violence, and insanity that are central parts of human history, according to Koestler's challenging analysis of the human predicament. [via]
More editions of The Ghost in the Machine:
-
The Good Soldierby Ford Madox FordISBN 0393966348 (0-393-96634-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Soldier'Book summary:Set just before World War I, The Good Soldier chronicles the tragedies of the lives of two seemingly perfect couples. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks, it also makes use of the device of the unreliable narrator as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads you to believe. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life. [via]
Haywireby Brooke HaywardISBN 0394493257 (0-394-49325-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Haywire'More editions of Haywire:
-
The House of Mirthby Edith Wharton, Elizabeth AmmonsISBN 0393959015 (0-393-95901-5)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Mirth'Book summary:"The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth," warns Ecclesiastes 7:4, and so does the novel by Edith Wharton that takes its title from this call to heed. New York at the turn of the century was a time of opulence and frivolity for those who could afford it. But for those who couldn't and yet wanted desperately to keep up with the whirlwind, like Wharton's charming Lily Bart, it was something else altogether: a gilded cage rather than the Gilded Age.
One of Wharton's earliest descriptions of her heroine, in the library of her bachelor friend and sometime suitor Lawrence Selden, indicates that she appears "as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the conventions of the drawing room." Indeed, herein lies Lily's problem. She has, we're told, "been brought up to be ornamental," and yet her spirit is larger than what this ancillary role requires. By today's standards she would be nothing more than a mild rebel, but in the era into which Wharton drops her unmercifully, this tiny spark of character, combined with numerous assaults by vicious society women and bad luck, ultimately renders Lily persona non grata. Her own ambivalence about her position serves to open the door to disaster: several times she is on the verge of "good" marriage and squanders it at the last moment, unwilling to play by the rules of a society that produces, as she calls them, "poor, miserable, marriageable girls.
Lily's rather violent tumble down the social ladder provides a thumbnail sketch of the general injustices of the upper classes (which, incidentally, Wharton never quite manages to condemn entirely, clearly believing that such life is cruel but without alternative). From her start as a beautiful woman at the height of her powers to her sad finale as a recently fired milliner's assistant addicted to sleeping drugs, Lily Bart is heroic, not least for her final admission of her own role in her downfall. "Once--twice--you gave me the chance to escape from my life and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward," she tells Selden as the book draws to a close. All manner of hideous socialite beasts--some of whose treatment by Wharton, such as the token social-climbing Jew, Simon Rosedale, date the book unfortunately--wander through the novel while Lily plummets. As her tale winds down to nothing more than the remnants of social grace and cold hard cash, it's hard not to agree with Lily's own assessment of herself: "I have tried hard--but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else." Nevertheless, it's even harder not to believe that she deserved better, which is why The House of Mirth remains so timely and so vital in spite of its crushing end and its unflattering portrait of what life offers up. --Melanie Rehak [via]
More editions of The House of Mirth:
-
House of Sand and Fogby Andre DubusISBN 0393046974 (0-393-04697-4)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'House of Sand and Fog'Book summary:Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.
Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber [via]
More editions of House of Sand and Fog:
-
I, the Divineby Rabih AlameddineISBN 0393323560 (0-393-32356-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'I, the Divine'Book summary:Named after the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt, red-haired Sarah Nour El-Din is "wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing," raves Amy Tan. Determined to make of her life a work of art, she tries to tell her story, sometimes casting it as a memoir, sometimes a novel, always fascinatingly incomplete.
"Alameddine's new novel unfolds like a secret... creating a tale...humorous and heartbreaking and always real" (Los Angeles Times). "[W]ith each new approach, [Sarah] sheds another layer of her pretension, revealing another truth about her humanity" (San Francisco Weekly). Raised in a hybrid family shaped by divorce and remarriage, and by Beirut in wartime, Sarah finds a fragile peace in self-imposed exile in the United States. Her extraordinary dignity is supported by a best friend, a grown-up son, occasional sensual pleasures, and her determination to tell her own story. "Like her narrative, [Sarah's] life is broken and fragmented. [But] the bright, strange, often startling pieces...are moving and memorable" (Boston Globe). Reading group guide included. [via] 
In a Dark Woodby Amanda CraigISBN 038572117X (0-385-72117-X)
Softcover, Anchor Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'In a Dark Wood'
The Invisible Circusby Jennifer EganISBN 0385473796 (0-385-47379-6)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invisible Circus'More editions of The Invisible Circus:
-
Jude the Obscureby Thomas Hardy, Norman PageISBN 039397278X (0-393-97278-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Jude the Obscure'Book summary:This is the story of a struggle between the flesh and spirit. It concerns Jude Fawley, a young Wessex villager of exceptional promise, who goes to Oxford, contracts a loveless marriage and becomes embroiled in a doomed love affair with his cousin. [via]
More editions of Jude the Obscure:
- Jude the Obscure: ISBN 0395051916 (0-395-05191-6)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div - Jude the Obscure: ISBN 0393090892 (0-393-09089-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - Jude the Obscure: ISBN 0393044734 (0-393-04473-4)
Hardcover, Norton - Jude the Obscure: ISBN 0394604628 (0-394-60462-8)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - Jude the Obscure: ISBN 039397278X (0-393-97278-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
- Jude the Obscure: ISBN 0395051916 (0-395-05191-6)
-
Julius Caesar and Related Readingsby William ShakespeareISBN 0395775426 (0-395-77542-6)
Hardcover, McDougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Julius Caesar and Related Readings'Book summary:u [via]
More editions of Julius Caesar and Related Readings:
Lie down in Darknessby William StyronISBN 0394506596 (0-394-50659-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Lie down in Darkness'More editions of Lie down in Darkness:
Live or Dieby Anne SextonISBN 0395081807 (0-395-08180-7)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Live or Die'More editions of Live or Die:
-
Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Familyby Froma Walsh, Monica McGoldrickISBN 0393702030 (0-393-70203-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family'Book summary:This work provides a guide to coping with the death of a family member. [via]
More editions of Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family:
Madame De Sadeby Y. MishimaISBN 039417304X (0-394-17304-X)
Softcover, Grove Pr
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Madame De Sade'More editions of Madame De Sade:
The Master of Goby Yasunari KawabataISBN 0394475410 (0-394-47541-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Master of Go'More editions of The Master of Go:
-
Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Beganby Art SpiegelmanISBN 0394556550 (0-394-55655-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began'Book summary:Acclaimed as a "quiet triumph"* and a "brutally moving work of art,"** the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. As the New York Times Book Review commented," [it is] a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness...an unfolding literary event."
This long-awaited sequel, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.
Vladek's troubled remarriage, minor arguments between father and son, and life's everyday disappointments are all set against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale -- and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors. [via]More editions of Maus : A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began:
-
Mein Kampfby Adolf HitlerISBN 0395083621 (0-395-08362-1)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mein Kampf'Book summary:The angry ranting of an obscure, small-party politician, the first volume of Mein Kampf was virtually ignored when it was originally published in 1925. Likewise the second volume, which appeared in 1926. The book details Hitler's childhood, the "betrayal" of Germany in World War I, the desire for revenge against France, the need for lebensraum for the German people, and the means by which the National Socialist party can gain power. It also includes Hitler's racist agenda and his glorification of the "Aryan" race. The few outside the Nazi party who read it dismissed it as nonsense, not believing that anyone could--or would--carry out its radical, terrorist programs. As Hitler and the Nazis gained power, first party members and then the general public were pressured to buy the book. By the time Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, the book stood atop the German bestseller lists. Had the book been taken seriously when it was first published, perhaps the 20th century would have been very different.
Beyond the anger, hatred, bigotry, and self-aggrandizing, Mein Kampf is saddled with tortured prose, meandering narrative, and tangled metaphors (one person was described as "a thorn in the eyes of venal officials"). That said, it is an incredibly important book. It is foolish to think that the Holocaust could not happen again, especially if World War II and its horrors are forgotten. As an Amazon.com reader has pointed out, "If you want to learn about why the Holocaust happened, you can't avoid reading the words of the man who was most responsible for it happening." Mein Kampf, therefore, must be read as a reminder that evil can all too easily grow. --Sunny Delaney [via]
-
A Million Little Piecesby James FreyISBN 0385507755 (0-385-50775-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Million Little Pieces'Book summary:News from Doubleday & Anchor Books
The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesnt matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.
We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces.
Note: The following editorial reviews were written before the recent revelations by James Frey and the publisher.
Amazon.com
The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.
One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.
The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons
More editions of A Million Little Pieces:
The Music Roomby Dennis McFarlandISBN 0395544173 (0-395-54417-3)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Music Room'More editions of The Music Room:
No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved Oneby Carla FineISBN 0385485514 (0-385-48551-4)
Softcover, Main Street Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One'More editions of No Time to Say Goodbye: Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One:
On the Nature of Human Romantic Interactionby Karl IagnemmaISBN 0385335946 (0-385-33594-6)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction'Book summary:Winner of the Paris Review Discovery Prize for best first fiction and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2002, Karl Iagnemma has been recognized as a writer of rare talent. His literary terrain is the world of science, with its charged boundary between the rational mind and the restless heart.
In Iagnemmas stories, mathematicians and theoreticians, foresters and doctors, yearn to create bonds as steadfast as the equations and principles that anchor their lives. A frustrated academic tries to diagram his troubled relationship with his girlfriend but fails to create a formula for romance. A nineteenth-century phrenologist must reexamine the connection between knowledge and passion when a young con-woman beats him at his own game. A jaded professor dreams endlessly of his two obsessions: a beautiful former colleague and the theorem that made her famous.
Inventive, wise, funny, and disquieting, Karl Iagnemmas first collection attests to his spirited imagination and his prodigious literary gifts.
From the eBook edition. [via]More editions of On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction:
Painted Birdby Jerzy N. KosinskiISBN 0394604334 (0-394-60433-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Painted Bird'Book summary:Many writers have portrayed the cruelty people inflict upon each other in the name of war or ideology or garden-variety hate, but few books will surpass Kosinski's first novel, The Painted Bird, for the sheer creepiness in its savagery. The story follows an abandoned young boy who wanders alone through the frozen bogs and broken towns of Eastern Europe during and after World War II, trying to survive. His experiences and actions occur at and beyond the limits of what might be called humanity, but Kosinski never averts his eyes, nor allows us to. [via]
Personal Historyby Katharine GrahamISBN 0394585852 (0-394-58585-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Personal History'Book summary:In lieu of an unrevealing Famous-People-I-Have-Known autobiography, the owner of the Washington Post has chosen to be remarkably candid about the insecurities prompted by remote parents and a difficult marriage to the charismatic, manic-depressive Phil Graham, who ran the newspaper her father acquired. Katharine's account of her years as subservient daughter and wife is so painful that by the time she finally asserts herself at the Post following Phil's suicide in 1963 (more than halfway through the book), readers will want to cheer. After that, Watergate is practically an anticlimax. [via]
More editions of Personal History:
The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar Wilde, Michael Patrick GillespieISBN 0393927547 (0-393-92754-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary:The wish spoken by Dorian Gray as he looks at his portrait forms the basis of the plot of this story of a gilded and spoilt hedonist who is willing to sell his soul for his beauty. [via]
More editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray:
The Prince of Tidesby Pat ConroyISBN 0395353009 (0-395-35300-9)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince of Tides'Book summary:In his most brilliant and powerful novel, Pat Conroy tells the story of Tom Wingo, his twin sister, Savannah, and the dark and violent past of the family into which they were born. Set in New York City and the lowcountry of South Carolina, the novel opens when Tom, a high school football coach whose marriage and career are crumbling, flies from South Carolina to New York after learning of his twin sister's suicide attempt. Savannah is one of the most gifted poets of her generation, and both the cadenced beauty of her art and the jumbled cries of her illness are clues to the too-long-hidden story of her wounded family. In the paneled offices and luxurious restaurants of New York City, Tom and Susan Lowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment, and love. And Tom realizes that trying to save his sister is perhaps his last chance to save himself. With passion and a rare gift of language, the author moves from present to past, tracing the amazing history of the Wingos from World War II through the final days of the war in Vietnam and into the 1980s, drawing a rich range of characters: the lovable, crazy Mr. Fruit, who for decades has wordlessly directed traffic at the same intersection in the southern town of Colleton; Reese Newbury, the ruthless, patrician land speculator who threatens the Wingos' only secure worldly possession, Melrose Island; Herbert Woodruff, Susan Lowenstein's husband, a world-famous violinist; Tolitha Wingo, Savannah's mentor and eccentric grandmother, the first real feminist in the Wingo family. Pat Conroy reveals the lives of his characters with surpassing depth and power, capturing the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina lowcountry and a lost way of life. His lyric gifts, abundant good humor, and compelling storytelling are well known to readers of The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline. The Prince of Tides continues that tradition yet displays a new, mature voice of Pat Conroy, signaling this work as his greatest accomplishment.[via]More editions of The Prince of Tides:
The Return of the Nativeby Thomas HardyISBN 0393927873 (0-393-92787-3)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Return of the Native'Book summary:Wild passion leads to tragedy as love is perverted by marriage. But the concerns of mortals are belittled by the sombre, immemorial presence of Egdon Heath, perhaps Hardy's finest evocation of his native landscape. The text is accompanied by a critical introduction. [via]
More editions of The Return of the Native:
- The Return of the Native: ISBN 0395052017 (0-395-05201-7)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0393097919 (0-393-09791-9)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0393043002 (0-393-04300-2)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Return of the Native: ISBN 0393927873 (0-393-92787-3)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, the Pill Versus the Springhill Mind Disaster, and in Watermelon Sugarby Richard BrautiganISBN 0395500761 (0-395-50076-1)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, the Pill Versus the Springhill Mind Disaster, and in Watermelon Sugar'More editions of Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, the Pill Versus the Springhill Mind Disaster, and in Watermelon Sugar:
The Road from Coorainby Jill Ker ConwayISBN 0394574567 (0-394-57456-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Road from Coorain'Book summary:In A Memoir that pierces and delights us, Jill Ker Conway tells the story of her astonishing journey into adulthood -- a journey that would ultimately span immense distances and encompass worlds, ideas, and ways of life that seem a century apart.
She was seven before she ever saw another girl child. At eight, still too small to mount her horse unaided, she was galloping miles, alone, across Coorain, her parents' thirty thousand windswept, drought-haunted acres in the Australian outback, doing a "man's job" of helping herd the sheep because World War II had taken away the able-bodied men. She loved (and makes us see and feel) the vast unpeopled landscape, beautiful and hostile, whose uncertain weathers tormented the sheep ranchers with conflicting promises of riches and inescapable disaster. She adored (and makes us know) her large-visioned father and her strong, radiant mother, who had gone willingly with him into a pioneering life of loneliness and bone-breaking toil, who seemed miraculously to succeed in creating a warmly sheltering home in the harsh outback, and who, upon her husband's sudden death when Jill was ten, began to slide -- bereft of the partnership of work and love that had so utterly fulfilled her -- into depression and dependency.
We see Jill, staggered by the loss of her father, catapulted to what seemed another planet -- the suburban Sydney of the 1950s and its crowded, noisy, cliquish school life. Then the heady excitement of the University, but with it a yet more demanding course of lessons -- Jill embracing new ideas, new possibilities, while at the same time trying to be mother to her mother and resenting it, escaping into drink, pulling herself back, striking a balance. We see her slowly gaining strength, coming into her own emotionally and intellectually -and beginning the joyous love affair that gave wings to her newfound self.
Worlds away from Coorain, in America, Jill Conway became a historian and the first woman president of Smith College. Her story of Coorain and the road from Coorain startles by its passion and evocative power, by its understanding of the ways in which a total, deep-rooted commitment to place -- or to a dream -- can at once liberate and imprison. It is a story of childhood as both Eden and anguish, and of growing up as a journey toward the difficult life of the free. [via]More editions of The Road from Coorain:
The Roots of Coincidenceby Arthur KoestlerISBN 0394719344 (0-394-71934-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Roots of Coincidence'Book summary:Mr. Koestler writes of ESP, the perversity of physics, seriality and synchronicity, Janus, lastly the country of the blind. In an attempt to bring balance to the book Mr. Koestler asked Renee Haynes to write a postscript. She wrote, "Mr. Koestler has given us a lucid exposition of modern data as to space, time, matter, causality, neurophysiology, and phsycical research, out of which a remarkable syntheses emerges. His concept of 'Janus-faced holons' may well prove as stimulating to our generation as was Bergson's ELAN VITAL to the thinkers of the early part of the century." [via]
More editions of The Roots of Coincidence:
Runaway Horsesby Yukio MishimaISBN 0394466187 (0-394-46618-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Runaway Horses'More editions of Runaway Horses:
The Sea of Fertilityby Yukio MishimaISBN 0394466136 (0-394-46613-6)
Hardcover, Knopf
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sea of Fertility'More editions of The Sea of Fertility:
Sleepwalkingby Meg WolitzerISBN 0394521552 (0-394-52155-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sleepwalking'More editions of Sleepwalking:
Sophie's Choiceby William StyronISBN 0394461096 (0-394-46109-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sophie's Choice'Book summary:Set in Brooklyn in 1947, this is the story of Sophie, a Polish Catholic immigrant who is haunted by her memories of the concentration camp in wartime Europe, and the terrible choice she was forced to make. [via]
More editions of Sophie's Choice:
A Spot of Botherby Mark HaddonISBN 0385520514 (0-385-52051-4)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Spot of Bother'Book summary:George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely. Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored.
At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has stranglers hands. Katie cant decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husbands ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.
Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.
The way these damaged people fall apart and come together as a family is the true subject of Haddons disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.
A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddons unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness literally of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddons crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love. [via]More editions of A Spot of Bother:
Spring Snowby Yukio Mishima, Michael GallagherISBN 0394442393 (0-394-44239-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Spring Snow'Book summary:Tokyo, 1912. The closed world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders - rich provincial familes, a new and powerful political and social elite. Kiyoaki has been raised among the elegant Ayakura family - members of the waning aristocracy - but he is not one of them. Coming of age, he is caught up in the tensions between old and new, and his feelings for the exquisite, spirited Satoko, observed from the sidelines by his devoted friend Honda. When Satoko is engaged to a royal prince, Kiyoaki realises the magnitude of his passion. [via]
More editions of Spring Snow:
Stepsby Jerzy N. KosinskiISBN 0394757165 (0-394-75716-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Steps'
Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Survivorsby John L. McIntosh, Edward J. Dunne, Karen Dunne-MaximISBN 0393700399 (0-393-70039-9)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Survivors'More editions of Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Survivors:
Summer Sistersby Judy BlumeISBN 0385337663 (0-385-33766-3)
Softcover, Delta
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer Sisters'Book summary:Judy Blume first won legions of fans with such young adult classics as Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and Forever, in which she tackles the cultural hot button of teenage sexuality. In Summer Sisters, her third novel for adults, the author again explores the ramifications of love--and lust--on two friends. Initially, the differences between Caitlin Somers and Victoria Leonard (or "Vix," as Caitlin christens her) draw them together: privileged Caitlin is wild and outspoken, beautiful but emotionally fragile, while working-class Vix is shy, reserved, and plain in comparison. After Caitlin selects Vix to accompany her to her father's home in Martha's Vineyard for the summer, the two become inextricably connected as "summer sisters."
On the Vineyard, Vix and Caitlin first find love, then sex--and lots of it. Yet Blume soon moves beyond hot fun in the summer sun, tracing the romantic and familial travails of the two from pre-adolescence to adulthood. Solid Vix evolves into Victoria, an equally solid, Harvard-educated, Manhattan public-relations exec. Unpredictable Caitlin opts out of college and travels to Europe, where she has a string of short-lived affairs with a series of intriguing (in every sense of the word) foreigners. It is only after she returns to the Vineyard that Caitlin does the unthinkable, forever changing both her friendship with Vix and their lives. Blume once again proves herself a master of the female psyche, and Summer Sisters is likely to entertain both her postadolescent and more mature readers. [via]
More editions of Summer Sisters:
The Temple of Dawnby Yukio MishimaISBN 0394466144 (0-394-46614-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Temple of Dawn'More editions of The Temple of Dawn:
Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas Hardy, Scott ElledgeISBN 0393959031 (0-393-95903-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'Book summary:When John Durberyfield discovers a family connection to the ancient Norman family, the d'Urbervilles, the fate of daughter Tess is transformed. [via]
More editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles:
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0395051444 (0-395-05144-4)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin College Div - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0393045072 (0-393-04507-2)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0394604849 (0-394-60484-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0393959031 (0-393-95903-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Terence WrightISBN 0391034510 (0-391-03451-0)
Softcover, Humanities Press International
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'More editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles:
Things Fall Apartby Chinua AchebeISBN 0385474547 (0-385-47454-7)
Softcover, Anchor Books
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Things Fall Apart'Book summary:Great book. [via]
Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autismby Temple GrandinISBN 0385477929 (0-385-47792-9)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism'More editions of Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism:
The Time Tripby Rob SwigartISBN 0395277566 (0-395-27756-6)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Time Trip'More editions of The Time Trip:
Tin Drumby Gunter GrassISBN 0394745604 (0-394-74560-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'Tin Drum'More editions of Tin Drum:
You Are Not a Stranger Hereby Adam HaslettISBN 0385720726 (0-385-72072-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
Find This Book
› Find signed collectible books: 'You Are Not a Stranger Here'Book summary:In his debut story collection, You Are Not a Stranger Here, Adam Haslett drags into the light subjects often left in the cellar. Most of his stories are told from the viewpoint of the mentally ill (though one, "The Good Doctor," shows us madness from a caregiver's perspective). The rest of the stories deal with closeted homosexuality: boys who are just learning their identity, men who have never come to terms with it. Haslett is an enormously compassionate writer, and shows a lovely, plain-written acuity about his people. His writing is a convincing inside job--he never romanticizes or oversimplifies. In "The Volunteer," an old woman at a care facility is haunted by the voice of an ancestress named Hester: "For more than two decades, Elizabeth Maynard has done exactly as she is told and the voice of Hester, which has cost her so much, comes only quietly and intermittently. It is a negative sort of achievement, she thinks, to have spent a life warding something off."
Haslett has a gift for writing quietly about sensational topics: men cruising each other in the park at night; an abusive, self-hating relationship between two adolescent boys. The stories can get a bit too fancy: the writer can't resist the ironic twist or the surprise ending. Still, this is a beautifully written collection that's as heartfelt as it is intelligent. --Claire Dederer [via]
More editions of You Are Not a Stranger Here:
![[powered by Muze Inc.]](http://i.bookfinder.com/images/site/muze/powered_by_muze.gif){kind=small}