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books tagged “women writers”
books tagged “women writers”
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Accordion Crimesby E. Annie ProulxISBN 0786208015 (0-7862-0801-5)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Accordion Crimes'Book summary:Proulx found fertile, if rocky, soil for her first two novels (Postcards and The Shipping News) in the far northeastern corner of North America. In Accordion Crimes she ranges much further afield. The novel follows an accordion from the hands of its maker in Sicily in 1890 until it is flattened by a truck in Florida in 1996. In the intervening century it passes through the hands of a host of unlucky owners and their kin: Abelardo Relampago, who dies from the bite of a poisonous spider; Dolor Gagnon, decapitated by his own chain saw; Silvano, cut down in the jungles of Venezuela by an Indian's arrow. [via]
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Bee Seasonby Myla GoldbergISBN 0786225440 (0-7862-2544-0)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bee Season'Book summary:In Myla Goldberg's outstanding first novel, a family is shaken apart by a small but unexpected shift in the prospects of one of its members. When 9-year-old Eliza Naumann, an otherwise indifferent student, takes first prize in her school spelling bee, it is as if rays of light have begun to emanate from her head. Teachers regard her with a new fondness; the studious girls begin to save a place for her at lunch. Even Eliza can sense herself changing. She had "often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see."
Eliza's father, Saul, a scholar and cantor, had long since given up expecting sparks of brilliance on her part. While her brother, Aaron, had taken pride in reciting his Bar Mitzvah prayers from memory, she had typically preferred television reruns to homework or reading. This belated evidence of a miraculous talent encourages Saul to reassess his daughter. And after she wins the statewide bee, he begins tutoring her for the national competition, devoting to Eliza the hours he once spent with Aaron. His daughter flowers under his care, eventually coming to look at life "in alphabetical terms." "Consonants are the camels of language," she realizes, "proudly carrying their lingual loads."
Vowels, however, are a different species, the fish that flash and glisten in the watery depths. Vowels are elastic and inconstant, fickle and unfaithful.... Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood.
When Saul sees the state of transcendence that she effortlessly achieves in competition, he encourages his daughter to explore the mystical states that have eluded him--the influx of God-knowledge (shefa) described by the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Although Saul has little idea what he has set in motion, "even the sound of Abulafia's name sets off music in her head. A-bu-la-fi-a. It's magic, the open sesame that unblocked the path to her father and then to language itself."Meanwhile, stunned by his father's defection, Aaron begins a troubling religious quest. Eliza's brainy, compulsive mother is also unmoored by her success. The spelling champion's newfound gift for concentration reminds Miriam of herself as a girl, and she feels a pang for not having seen her daughter more clearly before. But Eliza's clumsy response to Miriam's overtures convinces her mother that she has no real ties to her daughter. This final disappointment precipitates her departure into a stunning secret life. The reader is left wondering what would have happened if the Naumanns' spiritual thirsts had not been set in restless motion. A poignant and exceptionally well crafted tale, Bee Season has a slow beginning but a tour-de-force conclusion. --Regina Marler [via]
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Beekeeper's Apprenticeby Laurie R. KingISBN 0783819323 (0-7838-1932-3)
Hardcover, G K Hall & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beekeeper's Apprentice'Book summary:In 1915, long since retired from his observations of criminal humanity, Sherlock Holmes is engaged in a reclusive study of honeybee behavior on the Sussex Downs. Never did he think to meet an intellect to match his ownuntil his acquaintance with Miss Mary Russell, a very modern fifteen-year-old whose mental acuity is equaled only by her audacity, tenacity, and penchant for trousers and cloth caps.
Under Holmess tutelage, Russell hones her talent for deduction, disguises, and danger: in the chilling case of a landowners mysterious fever and in a kidnapping in the wilds of Wales. But her ultimate challenge is yet to come. Soon the two sleuths are on the trail of a murderer whose machinations scatter meaningless clues&but whose objective is quite unequivocal: to end Russell and Holmess partnershipand their lives. [via]More editions of Beekeeper's Apprentice:
Between Friends/Entre Amisby Lorraine Monk, National Film Board of Canada, National Film Board of Canada Still PhotISBN 0771067186 (0-7710-6718-6)
Hardcover, Firefly Books Ltd
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The Biographer's Taleby A. S. ByattISBN 0786235233 (0-7862-3523-3)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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Black Sun Risingby C. S. FriedmanISBN 0756403146 (0-7564-0314-6)
Softcover, Daw Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Sun Rising'Book summary:[via]The Coldfire trilogy tells a story of discovery and battle against evil on a planet where a force of nature exists that is capable of reshaping the world in response to psychic stimulus. This terrifying force, much like magic, has the power to prey upon the human mind, drawing forth a person's worst nightmare images or most treasured dreams and indiscriminately giving them life. This is the story of two men: one, a warrior priest ready to sacrifice anything and everything for the cause of humanity's progress; the other, a sorcerer who has survived for countless centuries by a total submission to evil. They are absolute enemies who must unite to conquer an evil greater than anything their world has ever known.
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Bluebeards Eggsby AtwoodISBN 0771008082 (0-7710-0808-2)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bluebeards Eggs'Book summary:collectible first edition book [via]
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The Bonesetter's Daughterby Amy TanISBN 0786229519 (0-7862-2951-9)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bonesetter's Daughter'Book summary:At the beginning of Amy Tan's fourth novel, two packets of papers written in Chinese calligraphy fall into the hands of Ruth Young. One bundle is titled Things I Know Are True and the other, Things I Must Not Forget. The author? That would be the protagonist's mother, LuLing, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In these documents the elderly matriarch, born in China in 1916, has set down a record of her birth and family history, determined to keep the facts from vanishing as her mind deteriorates.
A San Francisco career woman who makes her living by ghostwriting self-help books, Ruth has little idea of her mother's past or true identity. What's more, their relationship has tended to be an angry one. Still, Ruth recognizes the onset of LuLing's decline--along with her own remorse over past rancor--and hires a translator to decipher the packets. She also resolves to "ask her mother to tell her about her life. For once, she would ask. She would listen. She would sit down and not be in a hurry or have anything else to do."
Framed at either end by Ruth's chapters, the central portion of The Bonesetter's Daughter takes place in China in the remote, mountainous region where anthropologists discovered Peking Man in the 1920s. Here superstition and tradition rule over a succession of tiny villages. And here LuLing grows up under the watchful eye of her hideously scarred nursemaid, Precious Auntie. As she makes clear, it's not an enviable setting:
I noticed the ripe stench of a pig pasture, the pockmarked land dug up by dragon-bone dream-seekers, the holes in the walls, the mud by the wells, the dustiness of the unpaved roads. I saw how all the women we passed, young and old, had the same bland face, sleepy eyes that were mirrors of their sleepy minds.
Nor is rural isolation the worst of it. LuLing's family, a clan of ink makers, believes itself cursed by its connection to a local doctor, who cooks up his potions and remedies from human bones. And indeed, a great deal of bad luck befalls the narrator and her sister GaoLing before they can finally engineer their escape from China. Along the way, familial squabbles erupt around every corner, particularly among mothers, daughters, and sisters. And as she did in her earlier The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan uses these conflicts to explore the intricate dynamic that exists between first-generation Americans and their immigrant elders. --Victoria Jenkins [via]More editions of The Bonesetter's Daughter:
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Chasing Shakespearesby Sarah SmithISBN 0743464834 (0-7434-6483-4)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chasing Shakespeares'Book summary:With this exhilarating novel from the author the San Francisco Chronicle calls "daring" and "splendid," Sarah Smith cuts to the heart of one of literature's most fascinating and enduring mysteries: the enigma of Sir William Shakespeare.
Meet Joe Roper, a thoroughly modern graduate student who has landed the job of a lifetime working in the famed Kellogg Collection of Elizabethan texts and curiosities. He's been passionate about Shakespeare since reading a duct-taped paperback copy of Macbeth as a kid. But if all the world's a stage, Joe's working-class roots do little to prepare him for his role in the academic arena. Enter Posy Gould, stage right. A glamorous rising star at Harvard, she insists that a letter Joe's found, signed by one W. Shakespeare of Stratford, is a career-making discovery for them both -- particularly because the letter suggests that the plays were not written from Shakespeare's quill. What follows is a literary adventure story that places Joe and Posy in a world where the London Eye looks out over Shakespeare's city, Hollywood producers rub elbows with the Queen's court, and an unsolved mystery spans across five centuries and two continents. A first-rate thriller from one of the masters of the genre, Chasing Shakespeares is also an enduring tale about love, art, and poetic justice. [via]
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Crown of Shadowsby C. S. FriedmanISBN 0756403189 (0-7564-0318-9)
Softcover, Daw Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crown of Shadows'Book summary:[via]Unlikely allies Damien and Tarrant are faced with an enemy who may prove invulnerable-a demon who has declared war on mankind. Called Calesta, he is a master of illusion and devourer of pain, and he plans to remake the human species until it exists only to sate his unquenchable thirst for suffering. The war against Calesta will take Damien and Tarrant from the depths of Hell to the birthplace of demons and beyond-in a battle that could cost them not only their lives, but the very soul of mankind.
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Daliby Kirsten BradburyISBN 0752555162 (0-7525-5516-2)
Hardcover, Parragon Inc
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Deerskinby Robin McKinleyISBN 0785754628 (0-7857-5462-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Deerskin'Book summary:As Princess Lissar reaches womanhood, it is clear to all the kingdom that in her breathtaking beauty she is the mirror image of her mother, the queen. But this seeming blessing forces her to flee for safety from her father's lust and madness. With her loyal dog Ash at her side, Lissar will unlock a door to a world of magic, where she will find the key to her survival-and an adventure beyond her wildest dreams. [via]
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The Dispossessedby Ursula K. Le GuinISBN 0785764038 (0-7857-6403-8)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dispossessed'Book summary:The ideas of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the anarchist world of Anarres are being stifled by jealous colleagues. So he goes to the hell-planet Urras, seeking a different kind of freedom - and finds himself embroiled in deadly intrigue and bloody revoulution. [via]
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Double Hookby WatsonISBN 0771099983 (0-7710-9998-3)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
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The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Thingsby Carolyn MacKlerISBN 0763620912 (0-7636-2091-2)
Softcover, Candlewick Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Earth, My Butt, And Other Big Round Things'Book summary:An overweight teen is sure that shes the weakest link in her high-powered family - until her handsome, athletic, star-student brother has a shocking fall from grace.
Fifteen-year-old Virginia Shreves has a larger-than-average body and a plus-size inferiority complex. She lives on the Web, snarfs junk food, and follows the "Fat Girl Code of Conduct." Her stuttering best friend has just moved to Walla Walla (of all places). Her new companion, Froggy Welsh the Fourth (real name), has just succeeded in getting his hand up her shirt, and she lives in fear that hell look underneath. Then there are the other Shreves: Mom, the successful psychologist and exercise fiend; Dad, a top executive who ogles thin women on TV; and older siblings Anaïs and rugby god Byron, both of them slim and brilliant. Delete Virginia, and the Shreves would be a picture-perfect family. Or so shes convinced. And then a shocking phone call changes everything.
With irreverent humor, insight, and surprising gravity, Carolyn Mackler creates an endearingly blunt heroine whose story will speak to every teen who struggles with family expectations - and serve as a welcome reminder that the most impressive achievement is to be true to yourself. [via]More editions of The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things:
Eat More Dirt: Diverting and Instructive Tips for Growing and Tending an Organic Gardenby Ellen SandbeckISBN 0767909208 (0-7679-0920-8)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Emily Dickinson Poems: First and Second Seriesby Emily DickinsonISBN 0781226287 (0-7812-2628-7)
Hardcover, Reprint Services Corp
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Emily Dickinson Poemsby Johanna BrownellISBN 0785812849 (0-7858-1284-9)
Hardcover, Book Sales
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Emily Dickinson: Selected Poemsby Emily Dickinson, Helen McNeilISBN 0753816598 (0-7538-1659-8)
Hardcover, Phoenix Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems'Book summary:Much madness is divinest sense--
To a discerning Eye--
Much Sense--that starkest Madness
--From 'Tis the Majority[via]
Emily Dickinson, the Belle of Amherst, stayed close to home, finding inspiration in the small world around her. Often writing more than a poem a day--although few were published during her lifetime--she perfected a highly personal, condensed, and enduring style. Among her most famous poems included here are: Success Is Counted Sweetest, I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed, and This Is My Letter to the World.More editions of Emily Dickinson: Selected Poems:
Ethan Fromeby Edith Wharton, Cynthia Brantley Johnson, Lynn MillerISBN 0743487702 (0-7434-8770-2)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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Falling Leavesby Adeline Yen Mah, Suzanne OaksISBN 0767903579 (0-7679-0357-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Falling Leaves'Book summary:Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative Eurasian stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.
A compelling, painful, and ultimately triumphant story of a girl's journey into adulthood, Adeline's story is a testament to the most basic of human needs: acceptance, love, and understanding. With a powerful voice that speaks of the harsh realities of growing up female in a family and society that kept girls in emotional chains, Falling Leaves is a work of heartfelt intimacy and a rare authentic portrait of twentieth-century China. [via]More editions of Falling Leaves:
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Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughterby Adeline Yen MahISBN 0786219149 (0-7862-1914-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Family Newsby Joan BarfootISBN 0771599382 (0-7715-9938-2)
Hardcover, Macmillan of Canada
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Finder: A Novel of the Borderlandsby Emma BullISBN 0765347776 (0-7653-4777-6)
Softcover, Tor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Finder: A Novel of the Borderlands'Book summary:American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults[via]
VOYA Best Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror
Welcome to Bordertown. A hybrid community of misfits, oddballs and runaways. Where humans, elves and halflings co-exist. Where magic and the brutal realities of survival clash and mix. For Orient and Tick-Tick, it's just home.
Death and dark magic hang ov er the city. A seductive new drug lures young runaways to their destruction. A mysterious plague spreads through the streets. And beneath the clock tower on High Street, Bonnie Prince Charlie lies slain by an unseen hand. A cop named Sunny Rico exploits Orient's talent for finding objects to track the killer and leads both herself and him into the darker secrets of Elflands' immigrant citizens.More editions of Finder: A Novel of the Borderlands:
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Forest Houseby Marion Zimmer BradleyISBN 0785765182 (0-7857-6518-2)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forest House'Book summary:The author of The Mists of Avalon presents a tale set in Druidic England, as Eilan feels torn between her love of a young Roman soldier and her inner need to become a priestess for her Goddess. 100,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. [via]
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Friend of My Youthby Alice MunroISBN 077106697X (0-7710-6697-X)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
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The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True-Life Tales of Friendships That Blew Up, Burned Out, or Faded Awayby Jenny Offill, Elissa SchappellISBN 0767917197 (0-7679-1719-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Geisha : A Lifeby Mineko IwasakiISBN 0743444299 (0-7434-4429-9)
Softcover, Washington Square Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Geisha, a Life'Book summary:Now in her 50s, Mineko Iwasaki was one of the most famed geishas of her generation (and the chief informant for Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha). Her ascent was difficult, not merely because of the hard, endless training she had to undergo--learning how to speak a hyper-elevated dialect of Japanese and how to sing and dance gracefully while wearing a 44-pound kimono atop six-inch wooden sandals--but also because many of the elaborate, self-effacing rules of the art went against her grain. A geisha "is an exquisite willow tree who bends to the service of others," she writes. "I have always been stubborn and contrary. And very, very proud." And playful, too: one of the funniest moments in this bittersweet book describes a disastrous encounter with the queen of England and her all-too-interested husband.
Revealing the secrets of the geisha's "art of perfection," this graceful memoir documents a disappearing world. --Gregory McNamee [via]
Geisha, A Lifeby Rande Brown, Mineko IwasakiISBN 0756781612 (0-7567-8161-2)
Hardcover, Diane Pub Co
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The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishingby Melissa BankISBN 0786221690 (0-7862-2169-0)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing'Book summary:Jane Rosenal, the narrator of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, is wise beyond her years. Not that that's saying much--since none of her elders, with the exception of her father, is particularly wise. At the age of 14, Jane watches her brother and his new girlfriend, searching for clues for how to fall in love, but by the end of the summer she's trying to figure out how not to fail in love. At twice that age, Jane quickly internalizes How to Meet and Marry Mr. Right, even though that retro manual is ruining her chances at happiness. In the intervening years, Melissa Bank's heroine struggles at love and work. The former often seems indistinguishable from the latter, and her experiences in book publishing inspire little in the way of affection. As Jane announces in "The Worst Thing a Suburban Girl Could Imagine": "I'd been a rising star at H----- until Mimi Howlett, the new executive editor, decided I was just the lights of an airplane."
Bank's first collection has a beautiful, true arc, and all the sophistication and control her heroine could ever desire. In "The Floating House," Jane and her boyfriend, Jamie, visit his ex-girlfriend in St. Croix, and right from the start she can't stop mimicking her beautiful competitor, in a notably idiotic fashion. "I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive," she realizes--one of several thousand of Bank's ruefully funny phrases. But even as Jane clowns around, desperately trying to keep up appearances, she is so hyperaware it hurts. Again and again, the author explores the dichotomy between life as it happens and the rehearsed anecdote, the preferred outcome. In The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, even suburban quiet has "nothing to do with peace." Bank's much-anticipated debut merits all its buzz and, more to the point, transcends it. --Kerry Fried [via]
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Good Earthby Pearl S. BuckISBN 0743272935 (0-7432-7293-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Earth'Book summary:The story begins on the wedding day of farmer Wang Lung and follows his simple, often one-sided view of the Chinese culture, times, and his connection with the land. The land is a recurring theme throughout the novel, seemingly nurtured by the apparent protagonists, rejected and ruined by the antagonists. The author uses the House of Hwang, a nearby house of nobles, to contrast and predict their rise and fall. As the House of Hwang meets its slow and desperate end, Wang Lung rises.
However, as the weather turns disastrous for farming, Wang Lung's family has to flee to the city to scrape out a meager living. Upon returning home, the family fares better. Wang Lung eventually becomes a prosperous man, his rise contrasting with the downfall of the Hwang family, who lose their connection to the land. At the end of the novel, when Wang Lung is an old man, he overhears his sons plotting to sell some of the land, thus showing the end of the cycle of wealth and downfall. [via]
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A Great And Terrible Beautyby Libba BrayISBN 0786280824 (0-7862-8082-4)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Great And Terrible Beauty'Book summary:A Victorian boarding school story, a Gothic mansion mystery, a gossipy romp about a clique of girlfriends, and a dark other-worldly fantasy--jumble them all together and you have this complicated and unusual first novel.
Gemma, 16, has had an unconventional upbringing in India, until the day she foresees her mothers death in a black, swirling vision that turns out to be true. Sent back to England, she is enrolled at Spence, a girls academy with a mysterious burned-out East Wing. There Gemma is snubbed by powerful Felicity, beautiful Pippa, and even her own dumpy roommate Ann, until she blackmails herself and Ann into the treacherous clique. Gemma is distressed to find that she has been followed from India by Kartik, a beautiful young man who warns her to fight off the visions. Nevertheless, they continue, and one night she is led by a child-spirit to find a diary that reveals the secrets of a mystical Order. The clique soon finds a way to accompany Gemma to the other-world realms of her visions "for a bit of fun" and to taste the power they will never have as Victorian wives, but they discover that the delights of the realms are overwhelmed by a menace they cannot control. Gemma is left wi! th the knowledge that her role as the link between worlds leaves her with a mission to seek out the "others" and rebuild the Order. A Great and Terrible Beauty is an impressive first book in what should prove to be a fascinating trilogy. (Ages 12 up) Patty Campbell [via]
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Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Storiesby Alice MunroISBN 0771065256 (0-7710-6525-6)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories'Book summary:Readers know what they are going to get when they pick up an unfamiliar Alice Munro collection, and yet almost every page carries a bounty of unexpected action, feeling, language, and detail. Her stories are always unique, blazing an invigorating originality out of her seemingly commonplace subjects. Each collection develops her oeuvre in increments, subtly expanding her range.
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage is, of course, no exception. It is a fairly conservative collection of nine stories, none of which move far beyond Munro's favored settings: the tiny towns and burgeoning cities of southern Ontario and British Columbia. There are glimpses of youth here--in the title story, an epistolary prank by two teenage girls leads to a one-sided cross country elopement and, seemingly, a happy marriage, and in "Nettles," disrupted childhood affection fleetingly returns through a chance meeting--but most of these pieces are stories of aging women and men, confronting the twin travails of death and late love. As is always the case with Munro, their plots are too elegantly elaborate to summarize, and their unsentimental power is a given; baroque praise would be futile. Read these stories--it is the only way to really understand the miracles that Munro so regularly performs. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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High Tide in Tucsonby Barbara Kingsolver, Paul MirochaISBN 0786206306 (0-7862-0630-6)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'High Tide in Tucson'Book summary:The bestselling author of Animal Dreams and Pigs in Heaven brings her acclaimed voice to the essay, in a handsomely designed book. High Tide in Tucson provides readers with a reflection of Kingsolver's sensibility and creativity, as she constantly examines the urgent business of being alive. 25 line drawings. [via]
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Hitchhiking Vietnam: A Woman's Solo Journey in an Elusive Landby Karin MullerISBN 0762702575 (0-7627-0257-5)
Hardcover, Globe Pequot Pr
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The House on Mango Streetby Sandra CisnerosISBN 0747560870 (0-7475-6087-0)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The House on Mango Street'Book summary:Told in a series of vibrant vignettes, The House On Mango Street is the story of Esperanza Cordera, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago. For Esperanza, Mango Street is a desolate landscape of concrete and run-down tenements where she discovers the hard realities of life - the fetters of class and gender, the spectre of racial enmity and the mysteries of sexuality. Capturing her thoughts and emotions in poems and stories, Esperanza is able to rise above hopelessness and create for herself "a house all of my own quiet as snow, a space for myself to go" in the midst of her oppressive surroundings. [via]
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Icy Sparks: Library Editionby Gwyn Hyman RubioISBN 0783895100 (0-7838-9510-0)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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Irish Girls About Townby Maeve Binchy, Cathy Kelly, Marian KeyesISBN 0743457463 (0-7434-5746-3)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Irish Girls About Town'Book summary:Get ready to paint the town green.
New York Times bestselling authors Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes top an impressive roster of the Emerald Isle's most popular women writers as they celebrate the joys and perils of love and the adventure and constancy of female friendships.
In Maeve Binchy's "Carissima," an ex-pat returns to Ireland and shakes things up for her family, who finds her free spirit scandalous. In "Soulmates," by Marian Keyes, one woman's relationship is so bleedin' perfect that it's driving her friends crazy. In Cathy Kelly's "Thelma, Louise and the Lurve Gods," two women on a madcap Stateside road trip encounter a pair of insanely good-looking men....These fabulous stories and a baker's dozen more prove that when it comes to spinning a good yarn, the Irish are the best in the business. [via]
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Island of Bonesby P. J. ParrishISBN 0786016051 (0-7860-1605-1)
Softcover, Kensington Pub Corp
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It's All in the Frijoles: 100 Famous Latinos Share Real-Life Stories, Time-Tested Dichos, Favorite Folktales, and Inspiring Words of Wisdomby Yolanda NavaISBN 0756758653 (0-7567-5865-3)
Softcover, Diane Pub Co
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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrellby Susanna ClarkeISBN 0765356155 (0-7653-5615-5)
Softcover, Tor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell'Book summary:At the dawn of the nineteenth century, two very different magicians emerge to change England's history. In the year 1806, with the Napoleonic Wars raging on land and sea, most people believe magic to be long dead in England--until the reclusive Mr Norrell reveals his powers, and becomes a celebrity overnight.[via]
Soon, another practicing magician comes forth: the young, handsome, and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell's student, and they join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic, straining his partnership with Norrell, and putting at risk everything else he holds dear.
Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year « Book Sense Book of the Year « People Top Ten Books of the Year « Winner of the Hugo Award « A New York Times Notable Book of the Year « Salon.com Top Ten of 2004 «Winner of the World Fantasy Award « Nancy Pearl's Top 12 Books of 2004 « Washington Post Book World's Best of 2004 « Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction 2004 « San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004 « Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel « Chicago Tribune Best of 2004 « Seattle Times 25 Best Books of 2004 « Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 12 Books of 2004 « Village Voice "Top Shelf" « Raleigh News & Observer Best of 2004 « Rocky Mountain News critics' favorites of 2004 « Kansas City Star 100 Newsworthy Books of 2004 « Fort Worth Star-Telegram 10 Best Books of 2004 « Hartford Courant Best Books of 2004More editions of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell:
Kamouraskaby Anne HerbertISBN 0773674195 (0-7736-7419-5)
Softcover, General Pub Co Ltd
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A Killing Rainby P. J. ParrishISBN 078601606X (0-7860-1606-X)
Softcover, Kensington Pub Corp
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Kitchen Privilegesby Mary Higgins ClarkISBN 0743412613 (0-7434-1261-3)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Healby Rachel Naomi Remen, Dean OrnishISBN 078389340X (0-7838-9340-X)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Le Divorceby Diane JohnsonISBN 0754095657 (0-7540-9565-7)
Hardcover, Chivers
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Local Girlsby Alice HoffmanISBN 0786220090 (0-7862-2009-0)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Lolitaby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0783880804 (0-7838-8080-4)
Hardcover, G K Hall & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lolita'Book summary:Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:
She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake [via]More editions of Lolita:
Loving Pedro Infanteby Denise ChavezISBN 0743445732 (0-7434-4573-2)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Mad Shadowsby Marie-Claire BlaisISBN 0771098677 (0-7710-9867-7)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mad Shadows'Book summary:Mad Shadows, Marie-Claire Blais's astonishing first novel, caused an immediate sensation when it was first published in French in 1959. Blais was only 20 years old at the time, and many critics were simply too surprised to respond articulately to her work. Looking back now, decades later, it is clear that Mad Shadows (published in French as La Belle Bête), while not a perfect novel, can justifiably be compared to Beckett, Strindberg, or the early psychological novels of Knut Hamsun.
It is a short, spare novel, without an identifiable setting or nationality. Its characters are few, and most are driven by pure carnivorous vanity. The beautiful beast of the original title is Patrice, a mindless Adonis worshipped by his widowed mother, Louise, and loathed by his ugly but intelligent sister, Isabelle-Marie. Louise's devotion to her son wanes when she takes a new husband, a dandy with a golden cane. The characters prey upon one another in a nightmarish cycle of physical and psychological violence, broken only by Isabelle-Marie's doomed marriage to a beautiful, blind--but recovering--young man. Blais's later works, like Dürer's Angel or These Festive Nights, are more sophisticated, but the lurid energy of Mad Shadows makes for an unforgettable morality tale. Despite the depravity of Blais's characters, their motives and worries are all too familiar. The most disturbing feature of Mad Shadows is its relevance. --Jack Illingworth [via]
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Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Seduced the Westby Lesley DownerISBN 0755310314 (0-7553-1031-4)
Softcover, Review
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Map Of Loveby Ahdaf SoueifISBN 0747545634 (0-7475-4563-4)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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Map of the Worldby Jane HamiltonISBN 0783811896 (0-7838-1189-6)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Map of the World'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, December 1999: In A Map of the World, appearance overwhelms reality and communal hysteria threatens common sense. Howard and Alice Goodheart, the couple at the center of Jane Hamilton's 1994 novel, have labored mightily to create a pastoral paradise in a Wisconsin subdivision. Their 400-acre dairy farm is the last in Prairie Center, and they're working flat out to raise their two young girls in a traditionally bucolic manner. Yet paradoxically, they strike their neighbors as unacceptably modern, and have been treated as interlopers since the day of their arrival. Howard, in love with his vocation, chooses not to believe that they've been frozen out. But Alice, flinty and quick to judge, finds things harder. And her job as school nurse doesn't work wonders for her reputation either. Happily, there's one exception to this epidemic of unfriendliness: their closest neighbors. Theresa and Dan, who also have two young daughters, function as a virtual lifeline for the embattled family.
But in June 1990, whatever idyll the Goodhearts have worked for comes to a permanent end. On a beautiful morning--marred by her 5-year-old's tantrum but still recuperable--Alice looks forward to taking her children and Theresa's youngest for a swim. Distracted for several minutes, she has no idea that the 2-year-old is no longer in the house:
Lizzy had run to the pond and splashed in. It had felt good on her hot feet and she kept running and then she was pedaling and pedaling. She tried to grab hold of the water, pawing for the metal bar, a ladder rung, her mother, but there was nothing. She clutched and flailed.... She sank. The trout that Howard had stocked in the pond swam along through the dark water. They noticed Lizzy out of the corner of their eyes. They had inherited the knowledge of that look, and they knew it by heart.
This is only the first of Alice's body blows. Next, she's questioned about one of her students, a memorably bad seed. On the verge of collapse, she cries out, "I hurt everybody!"--which will later be construed as a confession. Charged with sexual abuse and unable to come up with $100,000 in bail, she is forced to await trial in jail.Narrated first by Alice, then Howard, and then Alice again, A Map of the World moves from intimate domesticity to courtroom drama with grace and subtlety. Hamilton wrote her book when accusations of abuse in schools and day care were peaking, yet this is not a modish work or an "issue novel" but a lasting creation of several complex lives. At one point, fed up with civil mechanisms, Alice tells her lawyer: "'Let Oprah be the judge.... Let Robbie and me, Mrs. Mackessy, Howard, Theresa, Dan, Mrs. Glevitch--let all of us come before Oprah. Let the studio audience decide. They're nice suburban woman, many of them, dressed for a lark. They have common sense and speak their minds.'" Apparently La Winfrey was listening, since she chose this beautifully observed novel for her book club. --Kerry Fried [via]
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Mauve Desertby Nicole Brossard, Susanne de Lotbiniere-HarwoodISBN 0771016859 (0-7710-1685-9)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart
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Midnight At The Dragon Cafeby Judy Fong BatesISBN 0771010982 (0-7710-1098-2)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart
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Moons of Jupiterby Alice MunroISBN 0771597258 (0-7715-9725-8)
Hardcover, Nelson Canada
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Mother of Pearlby Melinda HaynesISBN 0786221828 (0-7862-2182-8)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mother of Pearl'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 1999: Twenty-eight-year-old Even Grade is a black man who was orphaned as a child; 15-year-old Valuable Korner is a white girl who might as well have been. Petal, Mississippi, circa 1956, seems an unlikely spot for these two to connect, but it soon becomes apparent in Mother of Pearl that a friendship across race lines is just one of many miracles waiting to happen in this small Southern town. Melinda Haynes's remarkable debut novel begins in a hot August, when young Val's lifelong friendship with Jackson McClain is starting to change into something more profound, and Even is falling crazy in love with Joody Two Sun, a mixed-race woman with amazing powers.
Woven in and around these two central love stories are myriad other characters, other tales. There is 16-year-old Joleb Green, for example, whose mother was incapacitated by a stroke when he was born, and who was raised by the black housekeeper, Grace. There is Even's friend Canaan, an older black man who spends his time reading Greek tragedy and writing his work "The Reality of the Negro"; Valuable's mother, Enid, the town whore; and Neva and Bea, a lesbian couple who have helped to raise the girl. Until this year, blacks and whites have occupied separate universes, for the most part; then Joleb Green suffers a terrible accident, and it is Joody Two Sun who saves his life and Grace who restores his soul. At the same time, a pregnant Val arrives on Joody and Even's doorstep, hungry for the understanding and acceptance she cannot find at home. Though at first Even is resistant, Val's humanity soon transcends her color in his mind:
Even chuckled and shook his head, happy for a reason he couldn't distinguish other than at that moment of Canaan's near-perfect cast, all seemed right with the world, as right as a thing can be what with a white girl camped out in the middle of the Quarter with no plans of leaving.
Gradually, without really intending it, Joleb, Val, Even, Joody, Grace, and Canaan form something that looks suspiciously like a family--a relationship that will soon be tested to the limit when Val's baby is born.Melinda Haynes has taken on a Herculean task, crafting a multicharacter story that reaches across racial barriers to encompass an entire community. She doesn't shy away from the ugliness in life--bigotry of every stripe, mean-spiritedness, betrayal, thoughtless cruelty, and death--but what interests her is the potential of the human heart to find space within itself for the most unexpected people. With its strong, lyrical language and fully realized characters, Mother of Pearl is a fine novel and a terrific introduction to a new literary voice. --Alix Wilber [via]
Mother of Pearlby Melinda Rucker HaynesISBN 0743431030 (0-7434-3103-0)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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Murder in the Mews and Other Storiesby Agatha ChristieISBN 0785748814 (0-7857-4881-4)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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My Sister's Keeper: A Novelby Jodi PicoultISBN 0743454537 (0-7434-5453-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Sister's Keeper: A Novel'Book summary:"New York Times" bestselling author Jodi Picoult is widely acclaimed for her keen insights into the hearts and minds of real people. Now she tells the emotionally riveting story of a family torn apart by conflicting needs and a passionate love that triumphs over human weakness.
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
"My Sister's Keeper" examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? Once again, in "My Sister's Keeper, " Jodi Picoult tackles a controversial real-life subject with grace, wisdom, and sensitivity. [via]
Old New Yorkby Edith WhartonISBN 074345149X (0-7434-5149-X)
Softcover, Pocket Classics
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Open SecretsISBN 0771066996 (0-7710-6699-6)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
Find This BookBook summary:Open Secrets may be Alice Munro's strangest book. These original, eccentric stories skirt their own secrets, resolving their plots but leaving everything else open. The stories are all connected (often very tenuously) to Carstairs, Ontario, a tiny, fictitious town hidden somewhere north of Georgian Bay, but they also ramble as far afield as rural Albania, wartime France, and Australia.
The title story concerns the disappearance of a young girl from a Canadian Girls in Training camping trip. While the characters speculate whether the incident was a simple drowning, an assignation with a secret lover, or a murder, Munro sits, enigmatically, on the outside of resolution:
Heather Bell will not be found. No body, no trace. She has blown away like ashes. Her displayed photograph will fade in public places. Its tight-lipped smile, bitten in at one corner as if suppressing a disrespectful laugh, will seem to be connected with her disappearance rather than her mockery of the school photographer. There will always be a tiny suggestion, in that, of her free will.
Elsewhere, Munro takes conventional beginnings and turns them into extraordinary, expansive tales. The opening story, "Carried Away," features the Carstairs librarian, who falls in love with a soldier who begins writing to her from the trenches of the First World War, even though they have never formally met. When he comes home, however, he does not introduce himself to her, but marries his old fiancé. Most writers would be content to leave the story there, but for Munro this is merely an introduction. As she does in so many of her stories of mundane but utterly extraordinary women, she takes this piece in surprising and refreshing directions. --Jack Illingworth [via]More editions of Open Secrets:
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Parable of the Sowerby Octavia E. ButlerISBN 0785756175 (0-7857-5617-5)
Hardcover, Bt Bound
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parable of the Sower'Book summary:Octavia E. Butler, the grande dame of science fiction, writes extraordinary, inspirational stories of ordinary people. Parable of the Sower is a hopeful tale set in a dystopian future United States of walled cities, disease, fires, and madness. Lauren Olamina is an 18-year-old woman with hyperempathy syndrome--if she sees another in pain, she feels their pain as acutely as if it were real. When her relatively safe neighborhood enclave is inevitably destroyed, along with her family and dreams for the future, Lauren grabs a backpack full of supplies and begins a journey north. Along the way, she recruits fellow refugees to her embryonic faith, Earthseed, the prime tenet of which is that "God is change." This is a great book--simple and elegant, with enough message to make you think, but not so much that you feel preached to. [via]
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Practical Magicby Alice HoffmanISBN 0786205148 (0-7862-0514-8)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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The Professor's Houseby Willa CatherISBN 0766198200 (0-7661-9820-0)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co
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Reason for Hopeby Phillip Berman, Jane GoodallISBN 078622343X (0-7862-2343-X)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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River, Cross My Heartby Breena ClarkeISBN 0786224312 (0-7862-2431-2)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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Running Wildby Victoria ClaytonISBN 0752825178 (0-7528-2517-8)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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Scottish Girls About Townby Jenny ColganISBN 0743450361 (0-7434-5036-1)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Scottish Girls About Town'Book summary:A lighthearted, fund-raising anthology by Scottish women writers. In this hugely enjoyable anthology, established bestselling Scottish writers have joined forces with up-and-coming new stars to raise money for a very good cause. Poignant,provocative, hilarious and heartwarming in turn, this varied and memorable collection includes never-before-published stories by Jenny Colgan, Isla Dewar, Muriel Gray, Manda Scott, Tania Kindersley, Julia Hamilton, Sara Sheridan, Leila Aboulela, Helen Lamb, Abigail Bosanko, Shari Low, Sian Preese, Miller Lau, Aline Templeton, Morag Joss, Carol Anne Davis, Lennox Morrison, Carmen Reid and Katie Agnew. [pound]1 from every copy sold will be divided between Barnardo's children's charity and Women Onto Work, a Scottish-based charity which helps women from disadvantaged backgrounds. [via]
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A Season in the Life of Emmanuelby Marie C. Blais, Derek ColtmanISBN 0771098804 (0-7710-9880-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Selected Short Storiesby Alice MunroISBN 0771066708 (0-7710-6670-8)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
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Sometimes a Great Notionby David DonnellISBN 0771028261 (0-7710-2826-1)
Softcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
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Spellbinderby Melanie RawnISBN 0765315327 (0-7653-1532-7)
Hardcover, St Martins Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Spellbinder'Book summary:There is magic in the big city&literally. New York City has a small, and by preference discrete, population of witches and wizards who live and love and go dancing just like everyone else. Holly McClure is one of them, a successful writer who tries to ignore her heritage, except when the local Magistrate needs her special gift in his coven. Holly is far more interested in Evan Lachlan, the handsome federal marshal who works with her best friend, assistant district attorney Susannah Wingfield.[via]
But trouble is coming to the City in the form of a black coven run by a murderous psychopath, and deputy marshals and ADAs are powerless to deal with that kind of crime. The danger to Holly is extreme, for her special gift is the power of her blood to strengthen and bind any spell, for good or for evil. Holly's passionate love affair will be derailed by those who want to drain her for their own purposes. In the end it will be magic against magic, and Holly McClure will have to risk all for life and love.More editions of Spellbinder:
The Stone Diariesby Carol ShieldsISBN 0745131832 (0-7451-3183-2)
Softcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Stone Diaries'Book summary:The Stone Diaries was a prizewinner among prizewinners for Canadian novelist Carol Shields, garnering her the Governor General's Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. In this fictional autobiography of eightysomething Daisy Goodwill, Shields includes a variety of other documents and perspectives--letters that Daisy received over the years, a list of her bridal trousseau, an occasional reminiscence by a son, daughter, or family friend, an objective third-person description of a house, and a wonderful collection of photos that supposedly come from the Goodwill family--which give us the sense that this is more than just fiction. Here we have a rare glimpse into the nooks and crannies of an ordinary life as we watch Daisy cope with love, marriage, children, gardening, old age, and death. The book serves as a diary of the last century as well, ripe with details that make readers feel they're witnessing the passage of time. Shields renders with loving care, genuine affection, and acute insight the world Daisy Goodwill makes her own. The Stone Diaries lingers in the memory, an extraordinary achievement by an extraordinary writer. --Jeffrey Canton [via]
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Stones from the Riverby Ursula HegiISBN 0783882025 (0-7838-8202-5)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stones from the River'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1997: Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River clamors for comparisons to Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum; her protagonist Trudi Montag--like the unforgettable Oskar Mazerath--is a dwarf living in Germany during the two World Wars. To its credit, Stones does not wilt from the comparison. Hegi's book has a distinctive, appealing flavor of its own. Stone's characters are off-center enough to hold your attention despite the inevitable dominance of the setting: There's Trudi's mother, who slowly goes insane living in an "earth nest" beneath the family house; Trudi's best friend Georg, whose parents dress him as the girl they always wanted; and, of course, Trudi herself, whose condition dooms her to long for an impossible normalcy. Futhermore, the reader's inevitable sympathy for Trudi, the dwarf, heightens the true grotesqueness of Nazi Germany. Stones from the River is a nightmare journey with an unforgettable guide. [via]
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Summerby Edith WhartonISBN 0783818319 (0-7838-1831-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Summer'Book summary:A groundbreaking study of society, nature, and human needs, Edith Wharton's starkly simple Summer---a portrayal of a young woman's sexual and social awakening---is admittedly one of the author's favorites.[via]More editions of Summer:
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Talented Mr. Ripleyby Patricia HighsmithISBN 0762188561 (0-7621-8856-1)
Hardcover, Readers Digest
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Talented Mr. Ripley'Book summary:One of the great crime novels of the 20th century, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley is a blend of the narrative subtlety of Henry James and the self-reflexive irony of Vladimir Nabokov. Like the best modernist fiction, Ripley works on two levels. First, it is the story of a young man, Tom Ripley, whose nihilistic tendencies lead him on a deadly passage across Europe. On another level, the novel is a commentary on fictionmaking and techniques of narrative persuasion. Like Humbert Humbert, Tom Ripley seduces readers into empathizing with him even as his actions defy all moral standards.
The novel begins with a play on James's The Ambassadors. Tom Ripley is chosen by the wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf's son, Dickie, from his overlong sojourn in Italy. Dickie, it seems, is held captive both by the Mediterranean climate and the attractions of his female companion, but Mr. Greenleaf needs him back in New York to help with the family business. With an allowance and a new purpose, Tom leaves behind his dismal city apartment to begin his career as a return escort. But Tom, too, is captivated by Italy. He is also taken with the life and looks of Dickie Greenleaf. He insinuates himself into Dickie's world and soon finds that his passion for a lifestyle of wealth and sophistication transcends moral compunction. Tom will become Dickie Greenleaf--at all costs.
Unlike many modernist experiments, The Talented Mr. Ripley is eminently readable and is driven by a gripping chase narrative that chronicles each of Tom's calculated maneuvers of self-preservation. Highsmith was in peak form with this novel, and her ability to enter the mind of a sociopath and view the world through his disturbingly amoral eyes is a model that has spawned such latter-day serial killers as Hannibal Lecter. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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Unlessby Carol ShieldsISBN 0786245999 (0-7862-4599-9)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Unless'Book summary:"A life is full of isolated events," writes Carol Shields near the end of Unless, "but these events, if they are to form a coherent narrative, require odd pieces of language to link them together, little chips of grammar (mostly adverbs or prepositions) that are hard to define... words like therefore, else, other, also, thereof, therefore, instead, otherwise, despite, already, and not yet." Shield's explanation for her novel's title lends meaning to this multilayered narrative in which a mother's grief over a daughter's break with the family revises her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction.
The oldest daughter of 44-year-old Reta Winters suddenly, inexplicably, drops out of college and ends up on a Toronto street corner panhandling, with a cardboard sign around her neck that reads "goodness." The quiet comforts of Reta's small-town life and the constancy of her feminist perspective sustain her hope that her daughter will snap out of this, whatever "this" is. Threaded into her family's crisis is her ongoing internal elegy on the exclusion of women from the literary canon, which she transposes to mean her daughter's exclusion from humanity. Reta wonders if her daughter has discovered, as she herself did years before, that the world is "an endless series of obstacles, an alignment of locked doors," and has chosen to pursue the one thing that doesn't require power or a voice: goodness.
In her own writing, Reta reaffirms her own sense of self, as well as her sense of humor. As her theoretical reflections on modern womanhood play counterpoint to her unwavering sense of creating a home and keeping her family together, Reta's smarts and fears form a wonderfully coherent narrative--a life worth reading about. With Unless, the inaugural title in HarperCollins's Fourth Estate imprint, Shields (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Stone Diaries) once again asserts her place in the canon. --Emily Russin [via]
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An Unquiet Graveby P. J. ParrishISBN 0786016078 (0-7860-1607-8)
Softcover, Kensington Pub Corp
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A Vindication of the Rights of Womanby Mary WollstonecraftISBN 0760754942 (0-7607-5494-2)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble Books
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Wilderness Tipsby Atwood, Margaret AtwoodISBN 0771008198 (0-7710-0819-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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The Witch of Exmoorby Margaret DrabbleISBN 077102875X (0-7710-2875-X)
Hardcover, McClelland & Stewart Ltd
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The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objectsby Barbara G. WalkerISBN 0785804609 (0-7858-0460-9)
Hardcover, Book Sales, Incorporated
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Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geishaby Lesley DownerISBN 0767904907 (0-7679-0490-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha'Book summary:From critically acclaimed author and Japanese scholar Lesley Downer, an enchanting portrait of the mysterious world of the geisha.
Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, they have been intrigued by Japanese womanhood and, above all, by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of extraordinary fictional creations, from Puccini's Madama Butterfly to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. The reality of the geisha's existence, though, whether today or in history, has rarely been addressed.
Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but, literally, "arts people." Their accomplishments include singing, dancing, playing a musical instruments; but above all, they are masters of the art of conversation, soothing the worries and stroking the egos of the wealthy businessmen who can afford their attentions. It is this which imbues the geisha with such powerand which makes absolute secrecy such a crucial aspect of their work.
As denizens of a world defined by silence and mystery, geisha are notoriously difficult to meet and even to find. Lesley Downer, an award- winning writer, Japanese scholar, and consummate storyteller, gained more access into this world than almost any other Westerner ever has and spent several months living among them. In Women of the Pleasure Quarters, she weaves together intimate portraits of modern geisha with the romantic legends and colorful historical tales of geisha of the past.
From Sadda Yakko, who dined with American presidents and had her portrait painted by Picasso, to Koito, a modern-day geisha who maintains her own website, geisha throughout history step out of the pages of Women of the Pleasure Quarters to become living, breathing creatures. Looking into such traditions as mizuage, the ritual deflowering which was once a rite of passage for all geisha, and providing colorful depictions of the geisha's dress, training, and homes, Downer, with grace, elegance, and respect, transforms their reality in a captivating narrative that both informs and entertains.
At once a symbol of a bygone age and an institution more quintessentially Japanese than any other, geisha are a society at a crossroads, struggling to reinvent their place in the new millennium while honoring the traditions of the past. Both instructive and evocative, Women of the Pleasure Quarters is an enthralling portrait of a world unlike any other. [via]More editions of Women of the Pleasure Quarters: The Secret History of the Geisha:
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Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secretsby B. WalkerISBN 0785807209 (0-7858-0720-9)
Hardcover, Book Sales
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets'Book summary:Barbara Walker's The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (HarperCollins, 1983) is an extremely valuable reference, based on the author's wide reading in folklore and mythology. It documents, entry by entry, the fate and historic distortion of matriarchal religion by triumphant patriarchy in the last few thousand years and makes sense of many of the seemingly senseless customs and rationalizations of creeds and beliefs of our major religions and our folkloric traditions. The Los Angeles Times called it a feminist-scholar's gold mine and a browser's delight. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book a mountain of scholarship, a vast mass of supremely documented material. The praise seems to be well-deserved. This book will encourage you to do independent research into history, anthropology, the pagan religions and other disciplines and the political struggle between the patriarchal religions and the pagan religions. [via]
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