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The Clothing of Books
Brief Summary
How do you clothe a book?
In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer.
Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, "the covers become a part of me.”
ISBN:9780525432753
Author:Jhumpa Lahiri
Speak No Evil
Brief Summary
A revelation shared between two privileged teenagers from very different backgrounds sets off a chain of events with devastating consequences.
On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, D.C., he’s a top student and a track star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard in the fall, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is queer—an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except Meredith, his best friend, the daughter of prominent Washington insiders—and the one person who seems not to judge him.
When his father accidentally discovers Niru is gay, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding toward a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.
ISBN:9780062798961
Author:Uzodinma Iweala
The Woman Who Stole My Life
Brief Summary
Stella Sweeney is back in Dublin. After living the dream in New York for a year - touring her self-help book, appearing on talk shows all over the USA and living it up in her 10-room duplex on the Upper West Side - she's back to normality with a bang. And she's got writer's block.
Stella wants a clean break as she didn't exactly leave New York on a high. Why is she back in Ireland so soon? Who is it who keeps calling? Stella wants to get back to being the woman she used to be.
But can she? And should she?
ISBN:9780718155346
Author:Marian Keyes
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendrick...
The Wife between Us: A Gripping Psychological Thriller with a Shocking Twist You Won't See Coming.
A novel of suspense that explores the complexities of marriage and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.
When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
• You will assume you are reading about a jealous wife and her obsession with her replacement.
• You will assume you are reading about a woman about to enter a new marriage with the man she loves.
• You will assume the first wife was a disaster and that the husband was well rid of her.
• You will assume you know the motives, the history, and the anatomy of the relationships.
Assume nothing.
Discover the next blockbuster novel of suspense, and get ready for the read of your life.
The Great Alone
Brief Summary
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.
Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown.
At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.
But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.
In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska?a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.Age Range: Adult.
ISBN:9780312577230
Author:Kristin Hannah
Born to Love Cursed to Feel
Brief Summary
For fans of r.h. Sin comes a new voice, Samantha King’s raw, relatable poetry both celebrates love and mourns the human "curse to feel.” Her verse transports readers to the most private reaches of love and longing.
Born to Love, Cursed to Feel is about love—the good, the bad, and the confusing. It touches on morals and how when emotions are involved it’s not as black and white. The poetry is frequently written in a narrative manner that evocatively pulls you in and makes you feel.
This book is about falling in love, bad decisions, and ultimately growth. The essence of it all is to show that no matter how far one falls all the mistakes don’t have to be what defines them.
ISBN:9781449480950
Author:Samantha King
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.
Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.
Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him a doorway into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All
Brief Summary
Hitman Anders, recently out of prison, is doing small jobs for the big gangsters. Then his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets a female Protestant vicar (who also happens to be an atheist), and a homeless receptionist at a former brothel which is now a one-star hotel.
The three join forces and concoct an unusual business plan based on Hitman Anders’ skills and his fearsome reputation. The vicar and receptionist will organize jobs for a group of gangsters, and will attract customers using the tabloids’ love of lurid headlines.
The perfect plan—if it weren’t for Hitman Anders’ curiosity about the meaning of it all. In conversations with the vicar, he turns to Jesus and, against all odds, Jesus answers him! The vicar can’t believe what’s happening.
When Hitman Anders turns to religion, the lucrative business is in danger, and the vicar and the receptionist have to find a new plan, quick.
Fast-paced and sparky, the novel follows these bizarre but loveable characters on their quest to create a New Church, with all of Sweden’s gangsters hunting them.
Along the way, it explores the consequences of fanaticism, the sensationalist press, the entrepreneurial spirit and straightforward human stupidity—and underlying all of it, the tenuous hope that it’s never too late to start again.
ISBN:9781443446761
Author:Jonas Jonasson
The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read.
She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.
McMafia Seriously Organised Crime
Brief Summary
Have you ever bought a pirate DVD? Taken drugs? Fallen for a phishing scam?
Organized crime is part of all our worlds - often without us even knowing. McMafia is a journey through the new world of international organized crime, from gunrunners in Ukraine to money launderers in Dubai, by way of drug syndicates in Canada and cyber criminals in Brazil.
During his investigation into the dark side Misha Glenny speaks to countless gangsters, policemen and victims of organized crime, and also explores the ferocious consumer demands for drugs, trafficked women, illegal labor and arms across five continents.
ISBN:9780099481256
Author:Misha Glenny
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by...
The essential universe, from our most celebrated and beloved astrophysicist.
What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There’s no better guide through these mind-expanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and best-selling author Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapter’s consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.
While you wait for your morning coffee to brew, for the bus, the train, or a plane to arrive, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry will reveal just what you need to be fluent and ready for the next cosmic headlines: from the Big Bang to black holes, from quarks to quantum mechanics, and from the search for planets to the search for life in the universe.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Brief Summary
The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday.
Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
ISBN:9780061124297
Author:Lionel Shriver
The Selfish Capitalist Origins of Aff...
Brief Summary
In the bestselling Affluenza, world-renowned psychologist Oliver James introduced us to a modern-day virus sweeping through the English-speaking world — how our obsessive, envious tendencies make us twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions as people in other developed nations.
Now The Selfish Capitalist provides more detailed substantiation for the claims made in Affluenza, and outlines the political, economic and social climate in which the virus has grown.
A modern-day The State We’re In, the book’s argument will chime with a public deeply disenchanted with all the main political parties. James points out that, since the Seventies, the rich have become much, much richer, yet the average person’s wage has not increased at all.
He provides a wealth of evidence to show that we have become more miserable and distressed during this time, and suggests that this is a direct consequence of Thatcherite/Blairite "Selfish Capitalism,” whose most significant act has been to rob the poor to give to the rich.
The Selfish Capitalist is a rallying cry to reduce levels of distress by adopting a form of unselfish capitalism.
It is a hard-hitting and thought-provoking work that tells us why our personal well-being must take precedence over the wealth of a tiny minority if we are to cure ourselves of this disease.
ISBN:9780091923815
Author:Oliver James
Papillon
Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape.
After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.
Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who would not be defeated.
ISBN:9780061120664
Author:Henri Charrière
Spilt Milk
Brief Summary
A story of two passionate people who share a shameful past and a tenuous present, this remarkable narrative follows headmistress Mohumagadi—of the elite Sekolo sa Ditlhora school for talented black children—and Father Bill, a disgraced preacher, as they are brought together again decades after a childhood love affair expelled them from their communities.
Much to the dismay of her students, Mohumagadi hires Father Bill as a teacher, resulting in a battle of wills and wits for the hearts and minds of the children living in the shadow of revolution and change.
Entertaining and thought-provoking, this unique account offers insight into the workings of African culture.
ISBN:9781770097919
Author:Kopano Matlwa
What Will People Say
Brief Summary
Rehana Rossouw’s unique voice gives life and drama to this family saga.
Hanover Park. The heart of the Cape Flats. It is 1986. Michael Jackson and Brenda Fassie rule every hi-fi. Princess Di and George Michael hairstyles are all the rage. There are plans to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1976 student uprising.
Neville and Magda Fourie live in Magnolia Court with their three children. They are trying to ‘raise them decent’ in a township festering with gang wars and barricaded with burning tyres.
Suzette, the eldest, is beautiful and determined to escape her family’s poverty. Nicky, the sensitive middle child, has ambitions to use her intellect as a way out. Anthony, the only son, attracted by power and wealth, is lured away from his family by a gangster.
In What Will People Say? a rich variety of township characters – the preachers, the teachers, the gangsters and the defeated – come to life in vivid language as they eke out their lives in the shadows of grey concrete blocks of flats.
Which members of the Fourie family will thrive, which ones will not survive?
Generously spiced with Cape Flats slang; lots of vivid and gritty description that give an authentic feel to the story; plenty of plot – the writer draws us in and makes us curious about what will happen next; and very human characters we come to care about.
ISBN:9781431420247
Author:Rehana Rossouw
Gone West A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery
Brief Summary
In September 1926, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.
Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase.
Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions. But before Daisy can even get decently underway, Humphrey Birtwhistle dies under suspicious circumstances and Daisy now faces a death to untangle, a house full of suspects and a Scotland Yard detective husband who is less than pleased at this turn of events, in Gone West.
ISBN:9780312675486
Author:Carola Dunn
The Right Attitude to Rain
Brief Summary
The delectable new installment in the bestselling and already beloved adventures of Isabel Dalhousie and her no-nonsense housekeeper, Grace.
When friends from Dallas arrive in Edinburgh and introduce Isabel to Tom Bruce – a bigwig at home in Texas – several confounding situations unfurl at once. Tom’s young fiancée’s roving eye leads Isabel to believe that money may be the root of her love for Tom. But what, Isabel wonders, is the root of the interest Tom begins to show for Isabel herself? And she can’t forget about her niece, Cat, who’s busy falling for a man whom Isabel suspects of being an incorrigible mama’s boy.
Of course Grace and Isabel’s friend Jamie counsel Isabel to stay out of all of it, but there are irresistible philosophical issues at stake – when to tell the truth and when to keep one’s mouth shut, to be precise – and philosophical issues are meat and drink to Isabel Dalhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. In any case, she’s certain of the ethical basis for a little sleuthing now and again – especially when the problems involve matters of the heart.
ISBN:9780375423000
Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Civil War Land in Bad Decline
Brief Summary
Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way.
In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With a new introduction by Joshua Ferris and a new author’s note by Saunders himself, this edition is essential reading for those seeking to discover or revisit a virtuosic, disturbingly prescient voice.
ISBN:9780812987683
Author:George Saunders
The Presidents The Transformation of ...
Brief Summary
The Presidents: The Transformation of the American Presidency from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama.
In this magisterial examination of the Presidency over the course of the 20th Century, the author explores the history of the world's greatest elective office and the role each incumbent has played in changing the scope of its powers.
Using individual presidential portraits of each of the presidents of the past century Graubard asks, and answers, a wide variety of crucial questions about each President. What intellectual, social and political assets did they bring to the White House, and how quickly did they deplete or mortgage that capital? How well did they cope with crises, foreign and domestic? How much attention did they pay to their election pledges after they were elected? How did they use the media, old and new? Above all, how did they conduct themselves in office and what legacy did they leave to their successors? Graubard provides original analysis in each case, and reaches many surprising conclusions.
ISBN:9780713996180
Author:Stephen Graubard
