Download or read book Homesick for Another World written by Ottessa Moshfegh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time "I can’t recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book. Simultaneously, I’m shocked and scandalized. She’s brilliant, this young woman."—David Sedaris Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel. And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Download or read book A Dark and Winding Road written by Matthew Weber and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brace yourself for eleven twisted tales from the small towns of America's Deep South. From forest monsters and demons of vengeance to devious children with wicked intent, Matthew Weber serves up eleven tales of murder and mayhem to keep you shivering in suspense. This new selection of stories, all set in the Heart of Dixie, chronicles the hidden horrors of small town America. After-school fights lead to blood-covered bodies, everyday neighbors hide hideous secrets, and unspeakable horrors lurk around every corner. Fast-paced, fun and downright frightening, "A Dark & Winding Road" is an action-packed entry into the wild world of genre fiction.

Download or read book McGlue written by Ottessa Moshfegh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut novella from one of contemporary fiction's most exciting young voices, now in a new edition. Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation--he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection. They said I've done something wrong? . . . And they've just left me down here to starve. They'll see this inanition and be so damned they'll fall to my feet and pass up hot cross buns slathered in fresh butter and beg I forgive them. All of them . . . : the entire world one by one. Like a good priest I'll pat their heads and nod. I'll dunk my skull into a barrel of gin.

Download or read book Black Leopard Red Wolf written by Marlon James and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time Winner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." --Neil Gaiman "Gripping, action-packed....The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard. As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying? Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Download or read book How He Loved Them written by Kevin Prufer and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest collection from an award-winning poet about the complications of romantic, familial, and patriotic love

Download or read book The Dark and Lonely Road written by Sean Gates and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly 20 years after World War II, Harry Cogbill is drifting through life, unable to hold down a steady job or form lasting relationships. All of that is about to change when Ethel Burkitt comes to his door looking for an ally against the hoodlums buying her uncle's property. Cogbill's not a private detective, but even the most reluctant soldier knows some things are worth fighting for.

Download or read book I Don t Care About Your Band written by Julie Klausner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Read Julie Klausner's posts on the Penguin Blog In the tradition of Cynthia Heimel and Chelsea Handler, and with the boisterous iconoclasm of Amy Sedaris, Julie Klausner's candid and funny debut I Don't Care About Your Band sheds light on the humiliations we endure to find love--and the lessons that can be culled from the wreckage. I Don't Care About Your Band posits that lately the worst guys to date are the ones who seem sensitive. It's the jerks in nice guy clothing, not the players in Ed Hardy, who break the hearts of modern girls who grew up in the shadow of feminism, thinking they could have everything, but end up compromising constantly. The cowards, the kidults, the critics, and the contenders: these are the stars of Klausner's memoir about how hard it is to find a man--good or otherwise--when you're a cynical grown-up exiled in the dregs of Guyville. Off the popularity of her New York Times "Modern Love" piece about getting the brush-off from an indie rock musician, I Don't care About Your Band is marbled with the wry strains of Julie Klausner's precocious curmudgeonry and brimming with truths that anyone who's ever been on a date will relate to. Klausner is an expert at landing herself waist-deep in crazy, time and time again, in part because her experience as a comedy writer (Best Week Ever, TV Funhouse on SNL) and sketch comedian from NYC's Upright Citizens Brigade fuels her philosophy of how any scene should unfold, which is, "What? That sounds crazy? Okay, I'll do it." I Don't Care About Your Band charts a distinctly human journey of a strong-willed but vulnerable protagonist who loves men like it's her job, but who's done with guys who know more about love songs than love. Klausner's is a new outlook on dating in a time of pop culture obsession, and she spent her 20's doing personal field research to back up her philosophies. This is the girl's version of High Fidelity. By turns explicit, funny and moving, Klausner's debut shows the evolution of a young woman who endured myriad encounters with the wrong guys, to emerge with real- world wisdom on matters of the heart. I Don't Care About Your Band is Julie Klausner's manifesto, and every one of us can relate.

Download or read book On a Windy Night written by Nancy Raines Day and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a windy Halloween night as a boy is returning home through the woods after trick-or-treating, he hears scary noises behind him.

Download or read book Blueprints for Building Better Girls written by Elissa Schappell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elissa Schappell, “a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora’s box of feeling in a single line” (The New York Times Book Review) delivers eight provocative, darkly funny linked stories that map America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Blueprints for Building Better Girls delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters—from the high school slut to the good girl, the struggling artist to the college party girl, the wife who yearns for a child to the reluctant mother—mapping America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Its interconnected stories explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell alters how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.

Download or read book Long Winding Road written by Ken Raggio and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pentecost! I might have wished that I had never heard the word. In my entire life, nothing else has affected me more profoundly, caused me more anguish, or consumed me more completely than Pentecost! I loved it. I hated it. It shaped me. It destroyed me. It saved me. One way or the other, Pentecost is the story of my life. And I still believe. It has been a LONG WINDING ROAD.

Download or read book Rough Magic written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: Transplanting characters from The Tempest to present-day New York, ROUGH MAGIC is a Shakespearean action-adventure-fantasy in the tradition of Harry Potter and The X-Men that conjures a mythical, magical meta-universe in which the

Download or read book The Road written by Cormac McCarthy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle). • From the bestselling author of The Passenger A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Download or read book Mordew written by Alex Pheby and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alex Pheby's Mordew launches an astonishingly inventive epic fantasy trilogy. God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew. In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew. The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength—and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it. So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him—and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book Back Roads written by Tawni O'Dell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Funny and heartbreaking, this New York Times bestselling debut perfectly captures the maddening confusion of adolescence and the prickly nature of family with irony and unerring honesty. Harley Altmyer should be in college having the time of his life. He should be free from the backwards Pennsylvania coal town he calls home, with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead, he’s constantly reminded of just how messed up everything is... Harley’s mother is in prison for killing his father, so he’s in charge of bringing up his younger sisters and working two jobs to pay the bills—and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for distractions. But lately, he’s getting more and more sidetracked by lusting after Callie Mercer, his middle-aged neighbor. As he struggles to keep it together, things begin to spin out of control. Soon Harley finds that as shattered as his family is, there are still more crushing surprises in store. “In Harley, O’Dell has created a hero who’s heartbreakingly believable; like Holden Caulfield, he uses caustic humor to hide his pain. Readers will care very much about him and his future, if indeed he has one.”—St. Petersburg Times

Download or read book The Long Winding Road of Harry Raymond written by Patrick Jenning and published by Bay City Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raymond is remembered by historians today for surviving a bomb placed in his automobile by a secret squad of the Los Angeles Police Department. After the bombing, newspapers across the country ran photographs showing him stalwartly smoking a cigarette while doctors removed shrapnel from his legs. This brazen attempt on his life would transform Los Angeles, leading to the recall of the mayor, the termination of many Los Angeles Police Department leaders, and the imprisonment of members of a secret LAPD police squad. The assassination attempt would also fuel the growth of Las Vegas, to where many LA underworld figures migrated afterward.For some, Harry Raymond would go down in Los Angeles history as a modern knight in the story of the city's corrupt days, a real-life Philip Marlowe. Others, looking back at his previous career, regarded him as the kind of cop Marlowe hated: brutal and unscrupulous. Although Raymond often worked for the LAPD as a special investigator, he also associated with leading underworld figures of the twenties and thirties. Although it was never clear which side he was on, there was no doubt that he knew a lot about what was wrong with Los Angeles and almost paid the ultimate price for his knowledge.While my book focuses mainly on Raymond's career, its backdrop is LA's growth in the first decades of the twentieth century. It not only tells Raymond's story for the first time but also recounts the history of LA's criminal underworld in the pre-War era. It should appeal both to the general public and scholars interested in the history of Los Angeles in the first part of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Winding Ways Quilt written by Jennifer Chiaverini and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer Chiaverini's bestselling Elm Creek Quilts series continues with The Winding Ways Quilt, in which the arrival of newcomers into the circle of quilters heralds unexpected journeys down pathways near and far. Quilters have flocked to Elm Creek Manor to learn from Master Quilter Sylvia Compson and her expert colleagues. There's Sarah, Sylvia's onetime apprentice who's paired her quilting accomplishments with a mind for running the business of Elm Creek Quilts; Agnes, who has a gift for appliqué; Gwen, who stitches innovative art quilts; Diane, a whiz at the technicalities of quick-piecing; and Bonnie, with her encyclopedic knowledge of folk art patterns. But with Judy and Summer, two other founding members of the Elm Creek Quilters, departing to pursue other opportunities, will the new teachers be able to fill in the gaps created by the loss of their expertise—and more important, their friendship? "When I think of all the different paths I could have followed in my life, all the twists and turns that could have led me anywhere," muses incoming teacher Gretchen, "it's something of a miracle that I ended up here, surrounded by loving friends." But what of friends departed? As Sylvia contemplates a tribute to the partnership of the Elm Creek Quilters, she is reminded of a traditional quilt pattern whose curved pieces symbolize a journey. Winding Ways, a mosaic of overlapping circles and intertwining curves, would capture the spirit of their friendship at the moment of its transformation. Will Sylvia's choice inspire the founding members to remember that each is a unique part of a magnificent whole? Will the newcomers find ways to contribute, and to earn their place? The Winding Ways Quilt considers the complicated, often hidden meanings of presence and absence, and what change can mean for those who have come to rely upon one another.

Download or read book The Road to Paris written by Nikki Grimes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-01-10 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Coretta Scott King Honor Book Paris has just moved in with the Lincoln family, and she isn't thrilled to be in yet another foster home. She has a tough time trusting people, and she misses her brother, who's been sent to a boys' home. Over time, the Lincolns grow on Paris. But no matter how hard she tries to fit in, she can't ignore the feeling that she never will, especially in a town that's mostly white while she is half black. It isn't long before Paris has a big decision to make about where she truly belongs.