Download or read book Magnificence A Novel written by Lydia Millet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel introduces Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death. Suddenly gifted her great uncle's Pasadena mansion, Susan decides to restore his extensive collection of preserved animals, tending to the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails. Meanwhile, a menagerie of uniquely damaged humans - including a cheating husband and a chorus of eccentric elderly women - joins her in residence.
Download or read book How the Dead Dream written by Lydia Millet and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2024-10-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions finds his orderly, upwardly mobile life thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of his nutty mother, who's been deserted by T.'s now out–of–the–closet father After his mother's suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon he's living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conrad–esque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millet's devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.
Download or read book Oh Pure and Radiant Heart written by Lydia Millet and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2024-10-22 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transported to the 21st century, Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi grapple with the legacy of the atom bomb in this “shattering and beautiful” time travel novel (Entertainment Weekly). Oh Pure and Radiant Heart plucks the three scientists who were key to the invention of the atom bomb—J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi—as they watch history’s first mushroom cloud rise over the desert on July 16th, 1945 . . . and places them down in modern-day Santa Fe. One by one, the scientists are spotted by a shy librarian who becomes convinced of their authenticity. Entranced, bewildered, overwhelmed by their significance as historical markers on the one hand, and their peculiar personalities on the other, she, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. Soon the scientists acquire a sugar daddy—a young pothead millionaire from Tokyo who bankrolls them. Heroes to some, lunatics or con artists to others, the scientists finally become messianic religious figureheads to fanatics, who believe Oppenheimer to be the Second Coming. As the ever-growing convoy traverses the country in a fleet of RV’s on a pilgrimage to the UN, the scientists wrestle with the legacy of their invention and their growing celebrity, while Ann and her husband struggle with the strain on their marriage, a personal journey married to a history of thermonuclear weapons. “Possesses the nervy irreverence of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller . . . Can only be described as, well, genius.” —Vanity Fair
Download or read book Ghost Lights written by Lydia Millet and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound." —San Francisco Chronicle Ghost Lights stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal—a man baffled by his wife’s obsession with her missing employer. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find the man, embroiling himself in a surreal tropical adventure (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman). Ghost Lights is Lydia Millet at her best—beautifully written, engaging, full of insight into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior.
Download or read book In Search of Magnificence A Collection of Poems written by Babru Bahan Samal and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2015-09-23 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When readers relate to the emotions and incidents expressed in a poem as their own, the personal experience of a poet becomes universal expression of human feelings, happiness and suffering. The poems in the book 'In Search of Magnificence' are the outcome of such creation. According to Dr. Adyasha Das, a distinguished poet on her own right, "In Search of Magnificence is a unique concoction of scientific dilemmas, social sensibilities and the wanderings of the psyche. Most poems deal with contemporary issues and refrain from becoming sentimental avalanche. There is an astounding sensitivity in unravelling the magnificence in mundane and uniquenes in ordinary in the entire collection of poems. The common themes of the poems often belie the existential shades. A must-read! Here are some comments from few other distinguished readers of the first edition of this collection of poems. "Dr. Samal is a poet with a difference. His poems are a brilliant interplay of words, thoughts, images, symbols, science and culture. From surrealist conflict to tender sensuality, his unpretentious style of writing truly makes this collection a cruise from the mundane to magnificence." Dr. Pratibha Ray, Jnanapitha Awardee, India, 2011 "Babru Samal is a scientist working with the function of genes that prospect into God's most secluded private chamber of creation. He must have peeped into that chamber through a secret pinhole, wittingly or unwittingly that had jolted up the modern day scientist in him to a post modern poet, relevant to the twenty first century. The amazing sensibility behind the vision of this scientist that works like a touch stone capable of turning dross into gold, ordinary to extraordinary and prosaic into poetic is the magic of the creation: 'In Search of magnificence." Dr. Santanu Acharya, a scientist and an established novelist. "The poems in the 'In Search of Magnificence' are deep, broad in scope and very imaginative. The poet has skil
Download or read book Love in Infant Monkeys written by Lydia Millet and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer. Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants—all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in a wildly inventive collection of stories that “evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits” (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millet's ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millet’s spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness yet curiously vulnerable, as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales. “These incredibly crafted stories, with their rare intelligence, humor, and empathy, describe the furious collision of nature and science, man and animal, everyday citizen and celebrity, fact and fiction. Lydia Millet’s writing sparkles with urgent brilliance.” —Joe Meno
Download or read book This Magnificent Desolation written by Thomas O'Malley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Duncan's entire world is the orphanage where he lives, a solitary outpost on the open plains of northern Minnesota. Aged ten in 1980, he has no memories of his life before now, but he has stories that he recites like prayers: the story of how his mother brought him here during the worst blizzard of the century; the story of how God spoke to him at his birth and gave him a special purpose. Duncan is sure that his mother is dead until the day she turns up to claim him. Maggie Bright, a soprano who was once the talent of her generation, now sings in a San Francisco bar through a haze of whisky cut with sharp regret. She often finishes up in the arms of Joshua McGreevey, a Vietnam vet who earns his living as part of a tunneling crew seventy feet beneath the Bay. He smells of sea silt and loam, as if he has been dredged from the deep bottom of the world - and his wounds run deep too. Thrown into this mysterious adult world, Duncan finds comfort in an ancient radio, from which tumble the voices of Apollo mission astronauts who never came home, and dreams of finding his real father. A heart-breaking, staggering, soaring novel, This Magnificent Desolation allows a child's perspective to illuminate a dark world, and explores the creeping devastation of war, the many facets of loneliness, the redemptive power of the imagination, and the possibility of a kind of grace.
Download or read book Mermaids in Paradise A Novel written by Lydia Millet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hilariously funny…Lydia Millet’s novels raise the bar for boldness." —Rene Steinke, New York Times Book Review In this “comic masterpiece” (Salon), honeymooners Deb and Chip—our opinionated, skeptical narrator and her cheerful jock husband—befriend a marine biologist who discovers mermaids in a coral reef. As a resort chain swoops in to exploit the shy creatures, the newlyweds unite with other adventurous vacationers to stop the company from turning the reef into a theme park. Mermaids in Paradise is Lydia Millet’s most fun book yet, tempering the sharp satire of her early career with the empathy and subtlety of her more recent novels and short stories.
Download or read book Sweet Lamb of Heaven A Novel written by Lydia Millet and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband. Lydia Millet’s previous work has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Likewise greeted with rapturous praise, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a first-person account of a young mother, Anna, fleeing her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined. A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.
Download or read book Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnificence in Antwerp s Golden Age written by Alastair Hamilton and published by Arcadian Library. This book was released on 2001-12-06 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theme of this richly-illustrated book is the impact and image of the Maghrib and of the Levant on European learning and culture during the Renaissance and the Golden Age, with special reference to Antwerp's pivotal position as a great trading and printing city. Publication of the English language edition is timed to coincide with an exhibition of rare books and manuscripts at the Plantin-Moretus Museum of Printing History, taking place in Antwerp 30 November 2001 - 3 March 2002. It includes an extended introduction by Alastair Hamilton accompanied by notes, catalogue list, bibliography, and index.
Download or read book Manila Noir written by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Manila is not for the faint of heart. Population: over ten million and growing by the minute. Climate: hot, humid and prone to torrential monsoon rains of biblical proportions. The ultimate femme fatale, she's complicated and mysterious, with a tainted, painful past. The perfect, torrid setting for noir. Edited by Dogeaters (Penguin, 1991) author and National Book Award Nominee Jessica Hagedorn, and featuring original stories from a stunning group of multi-award-winning authors.
Download or read book A History of Jewellery 1100 1870 written by Joan Evans and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superb sourcebook of rare ornamentation includes meticulously detailed narrative and 400 illustrations depicting priceless brooches, necklaces, clasps, gold padlock, reliquary pendants, much more.
Download or read book The Incarnations written by Susan Barker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Originally published in Great Britain in 2014 by Doubleday."
Download or read book Dying to Be Me written by Anita Moorjani and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! "I had the choice to come back ... or not. I chose to return when I realized that 'heaven' is a state, not a place" In this truly inspirational memoir, Anita Moorjani relates how, after fighting cancer for almost four years, her body began shutting down—overwhelmed by the malignant cells spreading throughout her system. As her organs failed, she entered into an extraordinary near-death experience where she realized her inherent worth . . . and the actual cause of her disease. Upon regaining consciousness, Anita found that her condition had improved so rapidly that she was released from the hospital within weeks—without a trace of cancer in her body! Within this enhanced e-book, Anita recounts—in words and on video—stories of her childhood in Hong Kong, her challenge to establish her career and find true love, as well as how she eventually ended up in that hospital bed where she defied all medical knowledge. In "Dying to Be Me," Anita Freely shares all she has learned about illness, healing, fear, "being love," and the true magnificence of each and every human being!
Download or read book The Arabian Nights written by Padraic Colum and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selections from the over 600 stories which, according to legend, Shaharazad told a mighty king as a way to save the lives of the girls of her land. Includes stories of the voyages of Es-Sindibad, the magic horse, the wonderful lamp, and Ali Baba and the thieves.
Download or read book Worldly Goods written by Lisa Jardine and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Worldly Goods' provides a radical interpretation of the Golden Age of European culture. During the Renaissance, Jardine argues, vicious commercial battles were being fought over silks and spices, and who should control international trade.
Download or read book Venice Noir written by Maxim Jakubowski and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drifter" by Emily Mandel was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2013, edited by Otto Penzler and Lisa Scottoline Original stories by: Peter James, Emily St. John Mandel, Barbara Baraldi, Mike Hodges, Mary Hoffman, Maria Tronca, Matteo Righetto, Tony Cartano, Francesco Ferracin, Isabella Santacroce, Michelle Lovric, Francesca Mazzucato, Maxim Jakubowski, and Michael Gregorio. "Forget the magnificence of Venice's art, architecture, and music, and delve into this tour of the City of Water's murky depths...visions of a Venice not seen in tourist brochures." --Publishers Weekly "Editor Jakubowski does an excellent job of selecting a variety of stories that represent all strata of Venetian life, from tourists visiting for Carnevale to criminals running illegal operations in the bay...A must-read for lovers of Venice...the presence of a new and intriguing voices, many of them Italian, will pique the interest of international-mystery readers." --Booklist "Sex, food and real estate inspire 14 hot-blooded new takes on crime in the magical city of Venice...Rather than crimes of passion, this collection focuses on the passion of crime, painting its noir in robust tones rather than gritty gray." --Kirkus Reviews "Venice Noir, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, aims to shred through our preconceptions of this remarkable city. The 14 writers featured in this anthology of short stories take our travel brochure images of Venice and scatter them like confetti." --NY Journal of Books Maxim Jakubowski is a British editor and writer. Following a long career in book publishing, during which he was responsible for several major crime imprints, he opened London's mystery bookshop Murder One. He reviews crime fiction for the Guardian, runs London's Crime Scene Festival, and is an advisor to Italy's annual Courmayeur Noir in Festival. His latest crime novel is Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer, and he edits the annual Best British Mysteries series.
