Download or read book Alice Knott written by Blake Butler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Refinery29 A hypnotic, wildly inventive novel about art, violence, and endurance Alice Knott lives alone, a reclusive heiress haunted by memories of her deceased parents and mysterious near-identical brother. Much of her family’s fortune has been spent on a world-class collection of artwork, which she stores in a vault in her lonely, cavernous house. One day, she awakens to find the artwork destroyed, the act of vandalism captured in a viral video that soon triggers a rash of copycat incidents. As more videos follow and the world’s most priceless works of art are destroyed one by one, Alice finds that she has become the chief suspect in an international conspiracy—even as her psyche becomes a shadowed landscape of childhood demons and cognitive disorder. Unsettling, almost physically immersive, Alice Knott is a virtuoso exploration of the meaning of art and the lasting afterlife of trauma, as well as a deeply humane portrait of a woman whose trials feel both apocalyptic and universal.
Download or read book Washington and Hamilton written by Tony Williams and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of the friendship between founding fathers George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. From the American Revolution to the nation's first tempestuous years, this history book tells the largely untold story of the men who built America from the ground up and changed US history. In the wake of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers faced a daunting task: overcome their competing visions to build a new nation, the likes of which the world had never seen. As hostile debates raged over how to protect their new hard-won freedoms, two men formed an improbable partnership that would launch the fledgling United States: George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Washington and Hamilton chronicles the unlikely collaboration between these two conflicting characters at the heart of our national narrative: Washington, the indispensable general devoted to classical virtues, and Hamilton, an ambitious officer and lawyer eager for fame of the noblest kind. Working together, they laid the groundwork for the institutions that govern the United States to this day and protected each other from bitter attacks from Jefferson and Madison, who considered their policies a betrayal of the republican ideals they had fought for. Yet while Washington and Hamilton's different personalities often led to fruitful collaboration, their conflicting ideals also tested the boundaries of their relationship—and threatened the future of the new republic. From the rumblings of the American Revolution through the fractious Constitutional Convention and America's turbulent first years, this captivating history reveals the stunning impact of this unlikely duo that set the United States on the path to becoming a superpower. Ideal for fans of nonfiction best sellers Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and The First Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer, Washington and Hamilton is a story of American history, political intrigue, and a friendship for the people.
Download or read book Scorch Atlas written by Blake Butler and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-06-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this striking novel-in-stories, a series of strange apocalypses have hit America. Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we've become. In ''the Disappeared,''a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic in ''the Ruined Child.'' Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.
Download or read book Sky Saw written by Blake Butler and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Another disturber from the author of Nothing and There Is No Year.
Download or read book The Office written by Alice Munro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A short story from Nobel Prize–winning Alice Munro’s first collection, Dance of the Happy Shades “It is no exaggeration to state that Munro’s short stories are among the finest that have ever been written.”—The Dallas Morning News The solution came to the writer one evening: she should have an office. From Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, a brilliantly executed and revelatory story—one of the earliest published works of her career—in which simply finding a place to write turns out to be the hardest act of all. In “The Office,” a selection from her first short story collection, Alice Munro demonstrates the precise observation, straightforward prose style, and masterful technique hailed by John Updike, who wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “one must go back to Tolstoy and Chekhov . . . for comparable largeness.” “What a stunning, subtle and sympathetic explorer of the heart Munro is.”—Ron Hansen, The Washington Post A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection
Download or read book Alice from Dallas written by Marilyn Sadler and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice is the most rootin’, tootin’ cowgirl in all of Dallas . . . Pennsylvania. Each day she puts on her favorite boots and hat and sets off on her stick pony for school with a “Yippee ki-yay!” Alice is used to being the only cowgirl around, until Lexis from Texas arrives at school one day. Lexis seems to be a real cowgirl, with her fancy hat, jingling spurs, and lasso tricks. Alice decides there’s only one way to know who the best cowgirl is: a school-yard showdown at high noon! But will Alice learn there’s room for more than one cowgirl in town? Bestselling author and illustrator Marilyn Sadler and Ard Hoyt team up to create a rollicking tale of friendship that will have readers dancing the Texas Two-Step and shouting “Yee-haw,” no matter where they’re from. Praise for Alice from Dallas "The comic watercolor-and-ink illustrations don’t miss a beat in capturing the amusing rivalry that turns into friendship...The clever ending is a yee-haw moment that will rope in readers as quick as tumbling tumbleweeds." --Kirkus Reviews "Hoyt’s bright ink-and-watercolor illustrations gleefully capture the girls’ enthusiasm for all things western, from their fringed cowgirl blouses to the bandannas tied jauntily around their necks. A lively story for cowgirls everywhere, with a breezy lesson about jealousy." --Booklist Award: NAPPA Gold Award Winner
Download or read book Infinite Resignation written by Eugene Thacker and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Scholarly advice for dark times.” —The New Yorker “Provides a metric ton of misery and a lot of company.” —New York Times “Probably philosophy’s only beach read.” —Vice A ‘nihilist’s devotional,’ this collection aphorisms, fragments, and observations on philosophy and pessimism offer a raw look at the human condition Dark times lie around us and ahead of us, and what better way to survive the coming Apocolypse than by immersing yourself in some of the greatest thinkers on pessimism, brought together with his own thoughts on the subject by Eugene Thacker, author of the contemporary classic, In the Dust of This Planet. Comprised of aphorisms, fragments, and observations both philosophical and personal, Infinite Resignation traces the contours of pessimism, caught as it often is between a philosophical position and a bad attitude. Reflecting on the universe’s “looming abyss of indifference,” Thacker explores the pessimism of a range of philosophers, from the well-known (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus), to the lesser-known (E.M. Cioran, Lev Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno). Readers will find food for thought in Thacker’s handling of a range of themes in Christianity and Buddhism, as well as his engagement with literary figures (from Dostoevsky to Thomas Bernhard, Osamu Dazai, and Fernando Pessoa), whose pessimism about the world both inspires and depresses Thacker. By turns melancholic, misanthropic, and darkly funny, Infinite Resignation is a welcome antidote to the exuberant imbecility of our times.
Download or read book The Last Town written by Blake Crouch and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final book of the smash-hit Wayward Pines trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade What’s inside was a nightmare. What’s outside is a thousand times worse. Welcome to Wayward Pines, the last town. Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed. But Ethan has discovered the astonishing secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond. And now that secret is about to come storming through the fence to wipe out this last, fragile remnant of humanity. The Last Town at last pitches Ethan Burke and his fellow residents into all-out war against the forces outside the town’s gates—and in doing so delivers every bit the riotously horrific, breathlessly action-packed conclusion that the Wayward Pines trilogy deserves.
Download or read book Imagine a Death written by Janice Lee and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn’t the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and struggles to finish her book. The photographer, stunted by the death of his grandmother and caretaker, struggles to take a single picture and enters into a complicated relationship with the writer. The old man, facing his past in small doses, spends his time watching television and reorganizing the objects in his apartment to stay distracted from the deterioration around him. A depiction of the cycles of abuse and trauma in a prolonged end-time, Imagine a Death examines the ways in which our pasts envelop us, the ways in which we justify horrible things in the name of survival, all of the horrible and beautiful things we are capable of when we are hurt and broken, and the animal (and plant) companions that ground us. Innovative Prose
Download or read book 300 000 000 written by Blake Butler and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unforgettable novel of an American suburb devastated by a fiendish madman—the most ambitious and important work yet by “the 21st century answer to William Burroughs” (Publishers Weekly). Blake Butler’s fiction has dazzled readers with its dystopian dreamscapes and swaggering command of language. Now, in his most topical and visceral novel yet, he ushers us into the consciousness of two men in the shadow of a bloodbath: Gretch Gravey, a cryptic psychopath with a small army of burnout followers, and E. N. Flood, the troubled police detective tasked with unpacking and understanding his mind. A mingled simulacrum of Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Thomas Harris’s Buffalo Bill, Gravey is a sinister yet alluring God figure who enlists young metal head followers to kidnap neighboring women and bring them to his house—where he murders them and buries their bodies in a basement crypt. Through parallel narratives, Three Hundred Million lures readers into the cloven mind of Gravey—and Darrel, his sinister alter ego—even as Flood’s secret journal chronicles his own descent into his own, eerily similar psychosis. A portrait of American violence that conjures the shadows of Ariel Castro, David Koresh, and Adam Lanza, Three Hundred Million is a brutal and mesmerizing masterwork, a portrait of contemporary America that is difficult to turn away from, or to forget.
Download or read book The Mother Knot written by Jane Lazarre and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A feminist classic and a valuable testimonial to the experience of mothering. Originally published in 1976 but still relevant today, this is a fierce, often funny, often painful description of Lazarre's first few years of motherhood.
Download or read book Sputnik s Guide to Life on Earth written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2017 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An out-of-this-world funny book from master storyteller Frank Cottrell Boyce, with illustrations throughout by Steven Lenton.Light-hearted and profound' Sunday Times Book of the Week'Wholly original and exceptionally funny' Bookseller Book of the MonthThe Blythes are a big, warm, rambunctious family who live on a small farm and sometimes foster children. Now Prez has come to live with them. But, though he seems cheerful and helpful, he never says a word.Then one day Prez answers the door to someone claiming to be his relative. This small, loud stranger carries a backpack, walks with a swagger and goes by the name of Sputnik.As Prez dithers on the doorstep, Sputnik strolls right past him and introduces himself to everyone in the household. Prez is amazed at the response. The family pat Sputnik on the head, call him a good boy and drop food into his mouth. It seems they all think Sputnik is a dog. It's only Prez who thinks otherwise.But Prez soon finds himself having to defend the family from the chaos and danger unleashed by Sputnik, as household items come to life - like a TV remote that fast-forwards people: 'Anyone can do it, it's just that people don't read the instructions properly'; and a toy lightsaber that entertains guests at a children's party, until one of them is nearly decapitated by it - and Prez is going to have to use his voice to explain himself.It turns out that Sputnik is writing a guidebook to Earth called Ten Things Worth Doing on Earth, and he takes Prez on a journey to discover just those ten things. Each adventure seems to take Prez nearer to the heart of the family he is being fostered by. But they also take him closer to the day that he is due to leave them forever...
Download or read book Rennie s Way written by Verna Mae Slone and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An intriguing mix of family history, lore, mountain culture, and folkways, skillfully bound together with an all-but-transparent thread of fiction.” —Library Journal When Rennie Slone’s mother dies in childbirth, the twelve-year-old girl is unexpectedly thrust into adulthood. She must keep house for her father, an itinerant preacher who finds little time for family, and raise her newborn sister—a task that becomes Rennie’s lifelong passion. Against all odds, she is determined that Sarah Ellen will have the education she herself has had to give up. This first work of fiction by Verna Mae Slone, firmly grounded in her own background, is set in the 1920s and 1930s in a closeknit community in eastern Kentucky, where family roots run deep. At its center stands as strong and resilient a heroine as any in American literature. The story of Rennie’s struggles and Sarah Ellen’s growth into womanhood form a richly textured picture of the simple, sturdy mountain people—their labor to wrest a living from the land, their neighborly care for one another, their shared joys, their quarrels with the outside world, and their distinctive dialect. We see the people of Lonesome Holler raising and preserving food, gathering for bean stringings, molasses stir-offs, play parties, and pie socials, pitching in to clear a neighbor’s land, assisting at a difficult birth, and helping to bury the dead. Verna Mae Slone, a native of Knott County, Kentucky, is the author of several books, including the bestselling memoir, What My Heart Wants to Tell. “Slone’s style, which includes dialogue written in dialect, is lively. Readers drawn to regional tales will enjoy learning about Lonesome Holler.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Truly Tasteless Jokes written by Blanche Knott and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1985-05-12 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original is back. TRULY TASTELESS JOKES took America by storm and made it laugh at itself. It's all in here, disgusting, repulsive, cruel, and just plain tasteless jokes and stories that will make you smile, laugh, or groan--and love every minute of it.
Download or read book Born Standing Up written by Steve Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.
Download or read book Realizing Rights written by Andrea Cornwall and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sexual and reproductive wellbeing has gained recognition as a basic right. Yet reality is different, as society, health programmes and aid agencies are all entrenched in old ways. This book portrays a range of examples from around the world.
Download or read book How Innovation Really Works Using the Trillion Dollar R D Fix to Drive Growth written by Anne Marie Knott and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you spending too much on R&D? Too little? Is your innovation program successful? And how do you measure that success? Your company is spending millions on R&D every year, but despite your best efforts, that R&D isn’t driving growth. If you’re like 95% of firms, you aren’t investing the right amount, and the productivity of your R&D has fallen dramatically over the past several years. That’s because there hasn’t been a universal, uniform, and reliable measure of R&D—until now. First introduced in Anne Marie Knott’s influential Harvard Business Review article, RQTM (Research Quotient) is a revolutionary new tool that measures a company’s R&D capability—its ability to convert investment in R&D into products and services people want to buy or to reduce the cost of producing these. RQ not only tells companies how “smart” they are, it provides a guide for how much they should invest in R&D to ensure that investment will increase revenues, profits, and market value. Armed with insights from her experience as an R&D project manager, 20 years of academic research, and two National Science Foundation grants, Knott devised RQ and used the measure to test common innovation prescriptions across the full spectrum of U.S. companies engaged in R&D. The results are nothing short of game-changing. In this essential guide, you will learn: • how to use RQ to determine which R&D investments are most likely to drive growth—using the hard data you already have to better utilize the innovation tools you’re already using • the 7 misconceptions about innovation trends—and how to avoid the ones that don’t work • how investors can achieve 9x returns in the market and help companies in the process • why corporate—and GDP—growth has stalled and how to restore it without R&D tax credits This book promises to do for innovation and R&D what TQM did for manufacturing and what Sabremetrics did for baseball. It’ll show you How Innovation Really Works—with measurable results you can count on.
