Download or read book A Reunion Of Ghosts written by Judith Claire Mitchell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST “The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” —Lauren Groff, New York Timesbestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters—three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself. “Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”—People Book of the Week “A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”—Emma Straub, New York Timesbestselling author

Download or read book A Reunion of Ghosts written by Judith Claire Mitchell and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘A triumphant, beautiful, and devastating novel about coincidences, family, and the sins of our fathers’ Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See ‘Had me devouring the pages ... Tragic, touching and – against all odds – strangely uplifting’ Stylist Magazine, 5 Stars

Download or read book A Reunion Of Ghosts written by Judith Claire Mitchell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do three sisters write a single suicide note? This is the riddle the Alter sisters--Lady, Vee and Delph--pose at the outset of this darkly funny novel as they finalize their plans to collectively end their lives on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Their reasons are not theirs alone, and they prove that the sins of the father are indeed visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generations. The Jewish Alter family has been haunted by suicide ever since the sisters’ great-grandfather, the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Lenz Alter, developed the first poison gas used in warfare and also the lethal agent used in the gas chambers of the Third Reich. Lenz and his wife, Iris, their son Richard and his children, Rose, Violet and Dahlie, all took their own lives. Now Dahlie’s children are the only ones remaining. Lady, Vee and Delph love one another fiercely and protect one another from the shadows of the past through a shared sense of dark, deeply brilliant humour. As they gather in the Upper West Side apartment in which they were raised to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic and achingly human tale--inspired in part by the true story of Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of mustard gas--unfolds. Part wry memoir, part unflinching eulogy for those who have gone before, this is an intensely personal but profound commentary on the events of the 20th century. As one of the characters remarks, “Too bad Lenz Alter didn’t invent Prozac instead of chlorine gas; that probably would have saved them all.” Judith Claire Mitchell’s epic narrative captures three unforgettable characters--and their haunted family--within one brutally witty, achingly human voice.

Download or read book The Last Day of the War written by Judith Claire Mitchell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yael Weiss, eighteen years old and looking for adventure, finds it in the library one day when she discovers a packet of guns meant for Erinyes, an Armenian organization set on avenging their people’s massacre by the Turks in 1915. While the weapons make her nervous, Dub Hagopian, the young Armenian-American soldier sent to retrieve them, excites her in a completely different way.Smitten, Yael impulsively follows Dub to France by volunteering with the YMCA, reinventing herself along the way as twenty-five-year-old Methodist Yale White. When she and Dub cross paths again, Yael gets caught up in a crowd bursting with both the passionate ideals and the devil-may-care energy of youth–with consequences neither of them could ever foresee.

Download or read book A Season of Ghosts written by Ruskin Bond and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A superb storyteller who keeps his readers in thrall’—Statesman It is said that if the smell of the Himalayas creeps into a man’s blood, he will return to the hills again and again. Master storyteller Ruskin Bond shows how this love may persist to death and beyond. The agents of the supernatural may be gentle like the fairy folk in ‘On Fairy Hill’, or malevolent like the well-dressed diners of ‘The Prize’; humorous like the very proper witch, Miss Bellows, in ‘The Black Cat’, or tragic like the haunting Gulabi in ‘Wilson’s Bridge’. Bond aficionados will meet familiar faces in other stories and be thrilled by the gripping mystery, ‘Who Killed the Rani?’ This exciting collection, animated by the brooding presence of the Himalayas, establishes Bond as a connoisseur of the mysterious and macabre.

Download or read book Alibis written by André Aciman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the reader that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

Download or read book So Weird Family Reunion Book 1 written by Cathy East Dubowski and published by Disney Press. This book was released on 2000-04-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Fi sees the ghost of a young boy at the band's gig in Chicago, she's determined to find out why he's haunting the club ...

Download or read book Perfect Circle written by Sean Stewart and published by Small Beer Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark, funny, fast-moving novel of Texas, family, and perfect pop songs.

Download or read book City of Ghosts written by Stacia Kane and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IT’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN ALIVE AND UNDEAD. Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’s bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case. Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city’s most notorious crime boss—and Chess’s drug dealer—gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn’t bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he’s not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity. Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths, First Elders, and a lot of seriously nasty magic—all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man Chess can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.

Download or read book Ghosts of the Confederacy written by Gaines M. Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1987-04-23 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.

Download or read book Music of the Ghosts written by Vaddey Ratner and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “novel of extraordinary humanity” (Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing) from New York Times bestselling author Vaddey Ratner reveals “the endless ways that families can be forged and broken hearts held” (Chicago Tribune) as a young woman begins an odyssey to discover the truth about her missing father. Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared twenty-five years ago. In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, confronts her long-buried memories, and prepares to learn her father’s fate. Meanwhile, the Old Musician, who earns his modest keep playing ceremonial music at a temple, awaits Teera’s visit. He will have to confess the bonds he shared with her parents, the passion with which they all embraced the Khmer Rouge’s illusory promise of a democratic society, and the truth about her father’s end. A love story for things lost and restored, a lyrical hymn to the power of forgiveness, Music of the Ghosts is a “sensitive portrait of the inheritance of survival” (USA TODAY) and a journey through the embattled geography of the heart where love can be reborn.

Download or read book The Big Book of Ghost Stories written by Otto Penzler and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a thousand pages of haunted—and haunting—ghost tales: the most complete collection of uncanny, spooky, creepy tales ever published! Edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler. Including stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Rudyanrd Kipling, Isaac Asimov, James MacCreigh, and many more! Featuring eerie vintage ghost illustrations. The ghost story is perhaps the oldest of all the supernatural literary genres and has captured the imagination of almost every writer to put pen to the page. Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance in book form. Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight. Including such classics as “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Open Window” and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

Download or read book When the Smoke Clears written by Lynette Eason and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thrilling romantic suspense, smokejumper Alexia Allen returns home to face her past only to find a long-buried secret that threatens her life.

Download or read book The Afterlives written by Thomas Pierce and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ridiculously good” (The New York Times) author Thomas Pierce's debut novel is a funny, poignant love story that answers the question: What happens after we die? (Lots of stuff, it turns out). Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age thirty. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what--if anything--awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love. Funny, fiercely original, and gracefully moving, The Afterlives will haunt you. In a good way.

Download or read book Ship of Ghosts written by James D. Hornfischer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "Son, we’re going to Hell." The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death. Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again–until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home. In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston—a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will–power—and the undying faith that their country would prevail. Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every single word is true. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from James D. Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno.

Download or read book Creatures of Passage written by Morowa Yejidé and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Yejidé's novel explores a forgotten quadrant of Washington, DC, and the ghosts that haunt it. Longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction “Yejidé’s writing captures both real news and spiritual truths with the deftness and capacious imagination of her writing foremothers: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and N.K. Jemisin . . . Creatures of Passage is that rare novel that dispenses ancestral wisdom and literary virtuosity in equal measure.” —Washington Post Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash—reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw—has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the “River Man.” When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys’s door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most. Morowa Yejidé’s deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim itself.

Download or read book Ghosts written by Adrian Plass and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2001 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new novel by the best-selling author of the Sacred Diary series. The strangest things happen when friends are reunited after twenty years apart.