Download or read book We are All Completely Beside Ourselves written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Jane Austen Book Club," the story of an American family, ordinary in every way but one--their close family relative was a chimpanzee.
Download or read book Becoming Beside Ourselves written by Brian Rotman and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVTheoretical study of the relationship between technoscience and the human body that examines the ways in which bodies and machines "speak" not just through language but also through gesture, numbers, and other non-alphabetic systems of expressio/div
Download or read book The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary written by Andrew Westoll and published by HMH. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “moving” true story of a woman fighting to give a group of chimpanzees a second chance at life (People). In 1997, Gloria Grow started a sanctuary for chimps retired from biomedical research on her farm outside Montreal. For the indomitable Gloria, caring for thirteen great apes is like presiding over a maximum-security prison, a Zen sanctuary, an old folks’ home, and a New York deli during the lunchtime rush all rolled into one. But she is first and foremost creating a refuge for her troubled charges, a place where they can recover and begin to trust humans again. Hoping to win some of this trust, journalist Andrew Westoll spent months at Fauna Farm as a volunteer, and in this “incisive [and] affecting” book, he vividly recounts his time in the chimp house and the histories of its residents (Kirkus Reviews). He arrives with dreams of striking up an immediate friendship with the legendary Tom, the wise face of the Great Ape Protection Act, but Tom seems all too content to ignore him. Gradually, though, old man Tommie and the rest of the “troop” begin to warm toward Westoll as he learns the routines of life at the farm and realizes just how far the chimps have come. Seemingly simple things like grooming, establishing friendships and alliances, and playing games with the garden hose are all poignant testament to the capacity of these animals to heal. Brimming with empathy and entertaining stories of Gloria and her charges, The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is an absorbing, bighearted book that grapples with questions of just what we owe to the animals who are our nearest genetic relations. “A powerful look at how we treat our closest relatives.” —The Plain Dealer “I knew the prison-like conditions of the medical research facility from which Gloria rescued these chimpanzees; when I visited them at their new sanctuary I was moved to tears. . . . Andrew Westoll is a born storyteller: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, written with empathy and skill, tenderness and humour, involves us in a world few understand. And leaves us marveling at the ways in which chimpanzees are so like us, and why they deserve our help and are entitled to our respect.” —Dr. Jane Goodall “This book will make you think deeply about our relationship with great apes. It amazed me to discover the behaviors and feelings of the chimpanzees.” —Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation
Download or read book Booth written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-02-07 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best Book of the Year Real Simple • AARP • USA Today • NPR • Virginia Living Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize From the Man Booker finalist and bestselling author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves comes an epic and intimate novel about the family behind one of the most infamous figures in American history: John Wilkes Booth. In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth—breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one—is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country’s leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy. Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.
Download or read book Jerningham written by Christina Sanders and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Edward Jerningham Wakefield was the wild-child of the Wakefield family that set up the New Zealand Company to bring the first settlers to this country. His story is told through the eyes of bookkeeper Arthur Lugg, who is tasked by Colonel William Wakefield to keep tabs on his brilliant but unstable nephew. As trouble brews between settlers, government, missionaries and Māori over land and souls and rights, Jerningham is at the heart of it, blurring the line between friendship and exploitation and spinning the hapless Lugg in his wake. Alive with historical detail, Jerningham tells a vivid story of Wellington's colonial beginnings and of a charismatic young man's rise and inevitable fall"--Back cover.
Download or read book Walk Beside Me written by Christine Handy and published by Morgan James Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After relentless suffering, a woman decides to end her life—until a few real-life angels start showing up . . . A model-turned-wife-and-mother, Willow Adair lives with her husband and kids in Bexley, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Columbus, Ohio. On the outside, she has everything. On the inside, she struggles with her self worth. Spurned by her neglectful husband and defied by her rebellious teen daughter, Willow never feels she’s good enough, and fears everyone she loves will leave. Piece by piece, the cornerstones of Willow’s life begin to crumble. A routine operation goes horribly wrong, requiring a long recovery. A yoga injury leads to pain, surgeries, and misdiagnoses, ending in a permanent loss of motion in her arm. Then, as if she hasn’t suffered enough, Willow is diagnosed with breast cancer. Convinced no one will stand by her for one more day of sickness and depression, she prepares to end her life. But Willow’s friends go with her to chemo. They sleep over at her house. They lift her spirits when she’s sad, and weep with her when she’s hurting. They walk beside her literally, on sidewalks from Cleveland to Miami. And they walk beside her spiritually and emotionally, soothing her heartache, healing her self-esteem, and reminding her that every single minute of her life is abundantly worth living. Walk Beside Me is a tale of sickness and triumph, of being comfortable in your own skin, of valuing the things that have true value, and of learning to fight for yourself and what you truly want. It’s the story of a woman who peels away the layers to find her inner warrior, a woman who faces insurmountable odds and—thanks to her earthly Angels—learns to treasure the gift of God’s infinite light and love.
Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Download or read book Beside Ourselves written by Naomi L. Quenk and published by Davies-Black Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates the hidden side of personality revealed in out of character responses. how these illuminate personality.
Download or read book Wit s End written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “delightful and eccentric new tale”(The Boston Globe) from the bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club subverts the whodunit and gives us a thoroughly modern meta-mystery with wit, warmth, and heart. At loose ends and weary from her recent losses—the deaths of an inventive if at times irritating father and her beloved brother—Rima Lansill comes to Wit's End, the home of her legendary godmother, bestselling mystery writer Addison Early, to regroup...and in search of answers. For starters, why did Addison name one of her characters—a murderer—after Rima's father? But Addison is secretive and feisty, so consumed with protecting her famous fictional detective, Maxwell Lane, from the vagaries of the Internet rumor that she has writer's block. As one woman searches for truth, the other struggles to control the reality of her fiction. Rima soon becomes enmeshed in Addison's household of eccentrics: a formerly alcoholic cook and her irksome son, two quirky dog-walkers, a mysterious stalker, the tiny characters that populate Addison's dollhouse crime-scene replicas, and even Maxwell Lane himself. But, wrapped up in a mystery that may or may not be of her own creation, Rima discovers to her surprise that the ultimate solution to this puzzle is the new family she has found at the house called Wit's End. Here, Karen Joy Fowler delivers top-notch storytelling—creating characters both oddball and endearing in a voice that is utterly and memorably her own—in this clever, playful novel about finally allowing oneself to grow up-with a dash of mystery thrown in.
Download or read book The Excellent Lombards written by Jane Hamilton and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new classic from the author of Oprah's Book Club picks A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth. "This is the book Jane Hamilton was born to write... [it is] magnificent." —Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth Mary Frances "Frankie" Lombard is fiercely in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. Content to spend her days planning capers with her brother William, competing with her brainy cousin Amanda, and expertly tending the orchard with her father, Frankie desires nothing more than for the rhythm of life to continue undisturbed. But she cannot help being haunted by the historical fact that some family members end up staying on the farm and others must leave. Change is inevitable, and threats of urbanization, disinheritance, and college applications shake the foundation of Frankie's roots. As Frankie is forced to shed her childhood fantasies and face the possibility of losing the idyllic future she had envisioned for her family, she must decide whether loving something means clinging tightly or letting go. "Everything you could ask for in a coming-of-age novel-- funny, insightful, observant, saturated with hope and melancholy." —Tom Perotta, author ofLittle Childrenand The Leftovers "Tender, eccentric, wickedly funny and sage...gives full voice to Jane Hamilton's storytelling gifts." - Nancy Horan, author of Loving Frank and Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Download or read book Sarah Canary written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two unlikely people form an unexpected bond in bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler’s captivating historical novel—a New York Times Notable Book. When black cloaked Sarah Canary wanders into a Chinese labor camp in the Washington territories in 1873, Chin Ah Kin is ordered by his uncle to escort “the ugliest woman he could imagine” away. Far away. But Chin soon becomes the follower. In the first of many such instances, they are separated, both resurfacing some days later at an insane asylum. Chin has run afoul of the law and Sarah has been committed for observation. Their escape from the asylum in the company of another inmate sets into motion a series of adventures and misadventures that are at once hilarious, deeply moving, and downright terrifying. “Powerfully imagined...Drop everything and follow Sarah Canary....Humor and horror, history and myth dance cheek to cheek in this Jack London meets L. Frank Baum world....Here is a work that manages to be at the same time (and often in the same sentence) dark and deep and fun.”—The Washington Post Book World
Download or read book Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art written by Cristina Albu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the interconnections between art, phenomenology, and cognitive studies. Contributors question the binary oppositions generally drawn between visuality and agency, sensing and thinking, phenomenal art and politics, phenomenology and structuralism, and subjective involvement and social belonging. Instead, they foreground the many ways that artists ask us to consider how we sense, think, and act in relation to a work of art.
Download or read book How to Be You written by Jeffrey Marsh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too short. Too weird. Too quiet. Not true. Let Internet superstar Jeffrey Marsh help you end those negative thoughts and discover how wonderful you are. An interactive experience, How to Be You invites you to make the book your own through activities such as coloring in charts, answering questions about how you do the things you do, and discovering patterns in your life that may be holding you back. Through Jeffrey's own story of "growing up fabulous in a small farming town"--along with the stories of hero/ines who have transcended the stereotypes of race, age, and gender--you will discover that you are not alone. Learn to deepen your relationship with yourself, boost your self-esteem and self-worth, and find the courage to take a leap that will change your life.
Download or read book The Last Good Paradise written by Tatjana Soli and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Tatjana Soli, the bestselling author of The Lotus Eaters and The Forgetting Tree, comes a black comedy set on an island resort, where guests attempting to flee their troubles realize they can't escape who they are. On a small, unnamed coral atoll in the South Pacific, a group of troubled dreamers must face the possibility that the hopes they've labored after so single-mindedly might not lead them to the happiness they feel they were promised. Ann and Richard, an aspiring, Los Angeles power couple, are already sensing the cracks in their version of the American dream when their life unexpectedly implodes, leading them to brashly run away from home to a Robinson Crusoe idyll. Dex Cooper, lead singer of the rock band, Prospero, is facing his own slide from greatness, experimenting with artistic asceticism while accompanied by his sexy, young, and increasingly entrepreneurial muse, Wende. Loren, the French owner of the resort sauvage, has made his own Gauguin-like retreat from the world years before, only to find that the modern world has become impossible to disconnect from. Titi, descendent of Tahitian royalty, worker, and eventual inheritor of the resort, must fashion a vision of the island's future that includes its indigenous people, while her partner, Cooked, is torn between anarchy and lust. By turns funny and tragic, The Last Good Paradise explores our modern, complex and often, self-contradictory discontents, crafting an exhilarating and darkly satirical story about our need to connect in an increasingly networked but isolating world.
Download or read book Atlas of Unknowns written by Tania James and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When seventeen-year-old Anju wins an all-expenses-paid scholarship to study in New York for a year, she jumps at the chance to leave her home town in Kerala and embrace all that America has to offer. But there are bittersweet consequences ahead, not only for Anju, but also for the father and older sister she has left behind. For when the lie behnd Anju's scholarship is suddenly revealed she is left without a visa and, too proud to confess to her family, goes into hiding. She accepts a job in a suburban beauty salon and the offer of a roof over her head from the kindly Bird, who strangely seems to know more about Anju's past than Anju herself has told her. Meanwhile, Anju's family are on a mission to find her, trying not to contemplate the possibility that they might never see her again… Atlas of Unknownsis vibrant, moving and breathtakingly told -- the debut of an irresistible and utterly original new voice in fiction.
Download or read book The Tomo written by Mary-Anne Scott and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Phil, and his father's beloved heading dog, Blue, have to spend the Christmas break working on a sheep station while Phil's dad undergoes out-of-town, cancer treatment. The station manager, Chopper, isn't happy having a teenager in his care and certainly not a sheepdog that doesn't understand his signals. Things start to improve for Phil when Chopper's step-daughter, Emara arrives back from holiday, but a wayward ram and a poor decision plummets both boy and dog into danger. Phil will need all the strength he's got to get out alive"--Back cover of print version.
Download or read book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club introduces a middle-class American family that is ordinary in every way but one in this novel that won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “I was raised with a chimpanzee,” she explains. “I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren’t thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern’s expulsion...she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her as a sister.” As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence. In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences. “A gripping, big-hearted book...through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler has a lot to say about family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being.”—Khaled Hosseini
