Download or read book Martin Dressler written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The author of Voices in the Night reveals the mesmerizing journey of an American dreamer as he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. “This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” —The New York Times Book Review Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.
Download or read book Martin Dressler written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • The author of Voices in the Night reveals the mesmerizing journey of an American dreamer as he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry. “This wonderful, wonder-full book is a fable and phantasmagoria of the sources of our century.” —The New York Times Book Review Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.
Download or read book Martin Dressler written by Steven Millhauser and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Young Martin Dressler begins his career as an industrious helper in his father's cigar store. In the course of his restless young manhood, he makes a swift and eventful rise to the top, accompanied by two sisters--one a dreamlike shadow, the other a worldly business partner. As the eponymous Martin's vision becomes bolder and bolder he walks a haunted line between fantasy and reality, madness and ambition, art and industry, a sense of doom builds piece-by-hypnotic piece until this mesmerizing journey into the heart of an American dreamer reaches its bitter-sweet conclusion.
Download or read book Edwin Mullhouse written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1996-04-16 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A parody of a literary biography starring a 10-year-old novelist who is mysteriously dead at 11—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler. As a memorial, Edwin Mullhouse's best friend, Jeffrey Cartwright, decides that the life of this great American writer must be told. He follows Edwin's development from his preverbal first noises through his love for comic books to the fulfillment of his literary genius in the remarkable novel, Cartoons.
Download or read book Dangerous Laughter written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-02-12 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler—hailed by The New Yorker as “a virtuoso of waking dreams”—comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. "Remarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient." —The New York Times Book Review In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as “Cat ’n’ Mouse” reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils—a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part one, “Vanishing Acts,” features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend’s troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into “the kingdom of forbidden things.” Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two’s “Impossible Architectures,” where domes enclose whole cities, and a king’s master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, “Heretical Histories” presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. “A Precursor of the Cinema” proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing “The Wizard of West Orange” a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch—but success brings disturbing consequences. Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits—and occasionally beyond.
Download or read book The Night Circus written by Erin Morgenstern and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two starcrossed magicians engage in a deadly game of cunning in the spellbinding novel that captured the world's imagination. • "Part love story, part fable ... defies both genres and expectations." —The Boston Globe The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway: a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them both, this is a game in which only one can be left standing. Despite the high stakes, Celia and Marco soon tumble headfirst into love, setting off a domino effect of dangerous consequences, and leaving the lives of everyone, from the performers to the patrons, hanging in the balance.
Download or read book Little Kingdoms written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler delivers an inventive collection of three novellas that are a magical companion to his acclaimed longer fictions. • "Millhauser makes our world turn amazing!" —The New York Times Book Review Cartoons that draw their creator into another world; demonic paintings that exert a sinister influence on our own. Fairy tales that express the secret losses and anxieties of their tellers. These are the elements that Steven Millhauser employs to such marvelous—and often disquieting—effect in Little Kingdoms. In "The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne," a gentle eccentric constructs an elaborate alternate universe that is all the more appealing for being transparently unreal. "The Princess, the Dwarf, and the Dungeon" is at once a gothic tale of nightmarish jealousy and a meditation on the human need for exaltation and horror. And "Catalogue of the Exhibition" introduces us to the oeuvre of Edmund Moorash, a Romantic painter who might have been imagined by Nabokov or Poe. Exuberantly inventive, as mysterious as dreams, these novellas will delight, mesmerize, and transport anyone who reads them.
Download or read book Voices in the Night written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler: sixteen new stories—“spellbinding, masterly, sublime” (The New York Times Book Review)—that delve into the secret lives and desires of ordinary people, alongside retellings of myths and legends that highlight the aspirations of the human spirit. Beloved for the lens of the strange he places on small town life, Steven Millhauser further reveals in Voices in the Night the darkest parts of our inner selves to brilliant and dazzling effect. Here are stories of wondrously imaginative hyperrealism, stories that pose unforgettably unsettling what-ifs, or that find barely perceivable evils within the safe boundaries of our towns, homes, and even within our bodies. Here, too, are stories culled from religion and fables: Samuel, who hears the voice of God calling him in the night; a young, pre-enlightenment Buddha, who searches for his purpose in life; Rapunzel and her Prince, who struggle to fit the real world to their dream. Heightened by magic, the divine, and the uncanny, shot through with sly and winning humor, Voices in the Night seamlessly combines the whimsy and surprise of the familiar with intoxicating fantasies that take us beyond our daily lives, all done with the hallmark sleight of hand and astonishing virtuosity of one of our greatest contemporary storytellers.
Download or read book A Bell for Adano written by John Hersey and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic novel and winner of the Pulitzer Prize tells the story of an Italian-American major in World War II who wins the love and admiration of the local townspeople when he searches for a replacement for the 700-year-old town bell that had been melted down for bullets by the fascists. Although stituated during one of the most devastating experiences in human history, John Hersey's story speaks with unflinching patriotism and humanity.
Download or read book Enchanted Night written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Martin Dressler comes a stunningly original book set in a Connecticut town over one incredible summer night. • "[A] master of a prose that doesn't merely aspire to the condition of music but actually achieves it." —The Washington Post Book World The delicious cast of characters includes a band of teenage girls who break into homes and simply leave notes reading "We Are Your Daughters," a young woman who meets a phantom lover on the tree swing in her back yard, a beautiful mannequin who steps down from her department store window, and all the dolls "no longer believed in," left abandoned in the attic, who magically come to life. With each new book, Steven Millhauser radically stretches not only the limits of fiction but also of his seemingly limitless abilities. Enchanted Night is a remarkable piece of fiction, a compact tale of loneliness and desire that is as hypnotic and rich as the language Millhauser uses to weave it.
Download or read book We Others written by Steven Millhauser and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magnificent collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author: stories from across three decades that showcase his indomitable imagination. Steven Millhauser's fiction has consistently, and to dazzling effect, dissolved the boundaries between reality and fantasy, waking life and dreams, the past and the future, darkness and light, love and lust. The stories gathered here unfurl in settings as disparate as nineteenth-century Vienna, a contemporary Connecticut town, the corridors of a monstrous museum, and Thomas Edison's laboratory, and they are inhabited by a wide-ranging cast of characters, including a knife thrower and teenage boys, ghosts and a cartoon cat and mouse. But all of the stories are united in their unfailing power to surprise and enchant. From the earliest to the stunning, previously unpublished novella-length title story-in which a man who is dead, but not quite gone, reaches out to two lonely women-Millhauser "makes our world turn amazing" (The New York Times Book Review). With this collection, Steven Millhauser carves out ever more deeply his wondrous place in the American literary canon. Praise for Steven Millhauser's Dangerous Laughter "There is a ferocious restlessness in [these] stories, a mingling of desire and dread...mesmerizing" - Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine "Tales fuelled by curiosity and wonder, from a master...dazzling" - Jeff Turrentine, Washington Post Book World "Beautiful and profound...Millhauser's work is among the most thought-provoking I've ever encountered" - David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Millhauser is a marvel...Dangerous Laughter shimmers with eccentric research, sinuous explorations of the mysteries of artistic creation, and his preternatural sensitivity to the inner lives of children and adolescents...an experience that leaves [us] dazzles, enchanted" - Daniel Dyer, Cleveland Plain Dealer "Absorbing, impeccably imagined...the best [stories] linger strangely, like ghostly taps on your shoulder" - Gregory Kirschling, Entertainment Weekly "Prose wizardry...of such melodic wit and finesse that it's more akin to musicmaking than story telling" - Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times "Millhauser's lifelong loves-of cartoons, magic, board games, mechanical marvels of the 19th century and the quiet moments of daily life-shine through, and his taste for language and grasp of storytelling are flawless. Truly amazing stories." - Stewart O'Nan
Download or read book The Wizard of West Orange written by Steven Millhauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-05-02 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The Wizard, the greatest inventor in history, can make anything. His machines capture light, motion, and sound. So what’s going on in The Box, the most secret, most mysterious room in the Wizard’s bustling labs? When the staff librarian decides to find out, he stumbles upon a new realm of invention and sensation that will leave the world irreparably changed. “The Wizard of West Orange” is Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser’s incantatory reimagining of Thomas Edison’s work, from the dazzling collection Dangerous Laughter. An eBook short.
Download or read book The King in the Tree written by Steven Millhauser and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2003 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author ofEdwin Mullhouseand the Pulitzer Prize–winningMartin Dressler: three dazzling novellas about the many shapes of love. “Revenge” is a tour de force about erotic love and betrayal, told through the voice of a woman showing her home to a stranger with a disturbing secret. As the once-happy wife moves from living room to bedroom, she insinuates herself into her guest’s (and the reader’s) mind—and we witness the gradual unfolding of a carefully meditated scheme of revenge. “An Adventure of Don Juan” and the title novella transform classic fables into immediate, wholly original tales of romance. The first puts the famous lover on a country estate in England, where he attempts to perpetrate a brilliant seduction only to discover something surprising about the human heart. In the mesmerizing “The King in the Tree,” Millhauser explores devotion and denial, casting the tragedy of Tristan and Ysolt as an engrossing tale of a king’s infatuation with his beautiful wife—and the agony of her betrayal with his own nephew. Full of passion, trysting, and fatal pleasures, these three brilliant novellas are rich with the many gifts of our most persistently imaginative romancer.
Download or read book Portrait of a Romantic written by Steven Millhauser and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1978 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Some Great Thing written by Colin McAdam and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A powerful, poetic, bawdily funny, and tenderly sad novel about class, about love, about drink, about poetics, about land, and about money—a few of the salient things that life and history are made of.” —O, The Oprah Magazine In his highly acclaimed debut novel, Colin McAdam depicts the struggle between two men involved in building a city’s future: developer Jerry McGuinty, blue collar, selfmade, a master craftsman, and Simon Struthers, a civil servant from a prominent, wealthy background who shapes land-use policy. Jerry has a blind spot for his alcoholic wife, and Simon moves between women, consumed by a frantic emptiness. When their two stories begin to intertwine, their lives and ambitions are set on a collision course. A richly observed story of family, class, love and the individual contributions we make to the bigness of the world, Some Great Thing is a powerful work from one of the most exciting voices of his generation.
Download or read book We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live written by Joan Didion and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 1196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book In the Penny Arcade written by Steven Millhauser and published by Orion Publishing Company. This book was released on 1999 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser¿s gifts, from ¿August Eschenburg¿, the story of a clockmaker¿s son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to ¿Cathay¿, a kingdom whose wonders include landscape paintings executed on the bodies of court ladies.
