Download or read book The Amalgamation Polka written by Stephen Wright and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Civil War novel unlike any other: the story of a young man's journey through a nation blasted apart. Born in 1844, Liberty Fish is the descendant of both Carolina slaveholders and New York abolitionists. In hopes of reconciling the warring strands of his heritage, he escapes his home in the North -- first into the cauldron of the Civil War, and then into the even more disturbing bedlam that follows. The Amalgamation Polka showcases not only the brutality of this tragic passage in American history, but also its surprising compassion and hope. In language both true to its time and completely modern, it is revelatory and mesmerizing, a novel that "will bring a smile to your own lips as it sets your brain on fire." (Jason McBride, the Village Voice).
Download or read book Amalgamation polka written by Stephen Wright and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Processed Cheese written by Stephen Wright and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an "astonishing" writer (Toni Morrison), the savagely funny story of a couple who unexpectedly come into some money in a wealth-obsessed America deranged by Mammon. A bag of money drops out of the sky, literally, into the path of a cash-starved citizen named Graveyard. He carries it home to his wife, Ambience, and they embark on the adventure of their lives, finally able to have everything they've always thought they deserved: cars, guns, games, jewels, clothes—and of course sex, travel, and time with friends and family. There is no limit except their imagination and the hours in the day, and even those seem to be subject to their control. Of course, the owner of the bag is searching for it, and will do whatever is necessary to get it back. And, of course, these new riches change everything—and nothing at all. Darkly hilarious, Processed Cheese is both satire and serious as death. It's a road novel, a family story, and a last-girl-standing thriller of once-in-a-generation vitality and inventiveness. With the clarity of a Swift or a Melville, Wright has created a funhouse-mirror drama that puts all the chips on the table and every bullet in the clip, down to the last breathtaking moment.
Download or read book M31 written by Stephen Wright and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "beautiful and terrifying" novel about family, faith, and the search for home (San Francisco Chronicle), set amidst a community of UFO cultists in middlest America. As regular guests on late-night radio shows, Dash and Dot are the world's most in-demand lecturers on the topic of UFOs and alien abduction. They believe that we are all descended from M31, the nearest galaxy to ours, and divide their time between life on the road and a decommissioned church in the Midwest. A radar dish on its steeple and a spaceship in its sanctuary complete the modern nuclear-family setting. When a couple of UFO groupies arrive at the church with their own agenda, everything changes, brought to a head by their strange beliefs and the timeless difficulties of modern life. Dash and Dot set out on their last trip, their ultimate journey, with a destination that no one could foretell. Written with a fevered vividness and immediacy, M31: A Family Romance has been hailed as "a devastatingly forceful accomplishment" from "a star of the first magnitude" (the Washington Post).
Download or read book Going Native written by Stephen Wright and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dutiful husband and father walks out of his life and into a road trip from hell in a novel Toni Morrison calls "astonishing" and Don Delillo proclaims "a slasher classic . . . strange, dark, and funny." Wylie Jones has a happy marriage, beautiful children, and backyard barbecues in his tastefully decorated suburban house. One night he follows a sudden impulse, leaves his wife in bed, and commandeers his neighbor's emerald-green Ford Galaxy 500, driving away without a second look. He sheds all traces of his old life in favor of a new name and a new life and drives from town to town, following his deepest impulses where they lead. By turns scathing and hilarious, Stephen Wright's outrageous rollercoaster of sex and violence probes the nihilistic and savage core of the American identity.
Download or read book Love in the Time of Cholera Illustrated Edition written by Gabriel García Márquez and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautifully packaged edition of one of García Márquez's most beloved novels, with never-before-seen color illustrations by the Chilean artist Luisa Rivera and an interior design created by the author's son, Gonzalo García Barcha. In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs—yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
Download or read book Picture Freedom written by Jasmine Nichole Cobb and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2015-04-03 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Picture Freedom provides a unique and nuanced interpretation of nineteenth-century African American life and culture. Focusing on visuality, print culture, and an examination of the parlor, Cobb has fashioned a book like none other, convincingly demonstrating how whites and blacks reimagined racial identity and belonging in the early republic."--Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City.
Download or read book The Vanishing Point written by Elizabeth Brundage and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the "wrenching and exhilarating" All Things Cease to Appear comes a gripping literary thriller about a man reckoning with the mysterious death of his former roommate (Wall Street Journal). Julian Ladd and Rye Adler cross paths as photography students in the exclusive Brodsky Workshop. When Rye needs a roommate, Julian moves in, and a quiet, compulsive envy takes root, assuring, at least in his own mind, that he will never achieve Rye’s certain success. Both men are fascinated with their beautiful and talented classmate, Magda, whose captivating images of her Polish neighborhood set her apart, and each will come to know her intimately – a woman neither can possess and only one can love. Twenty years later, long after their paths diverge, Rye is at the top of his field, famous for his photographs of celebrities and far removed from the downtrodden and disenfranchised subjects who’d secured his reputation as the eye of his generation. When Magda reenters his life, asking for help only he can give, Rye finds himself in a broken landscape of street people and addicts, forcing him to reckon with the artist he once was, until his search for a missing boy becomes his own desperate fight to survive. Months later, when Julian discovers Rye’s obituary, the paper makes it sound like a suicide. Despite himself, Julian attends the funeral, where there is no casket and no body. This sudden reentry into a world he thought he left behind forces Julian to question not only Rye’s death, but the very foundations of his life. In this eerie and evocative novel, Elizabeth Brundage establishes herself as one of the premiere authors of literary fiction at work today.
Download or read book The Girl With Borrowed Wings written by Rinsai Rossetti and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunningly written tale of an isolated girl and the shape-shifting boy who shows her what freedom could be--if only she has the courage to take it Controlled by her father and bound by desert, Frenenqer Paje’s life is tediously the same, until a small act of rebellion explodes her world and she meets a boy, but not just a boy--a Free person, a winged person, a shape-shifter. He has everything Frenenqer doesn’t. No family, no attachments, no rules. At night, he flies them to the far-flung places of their childhoods to retrace their pasts. But when the delicate balance of their friendship threatens to rupture into something more, Frenenqer must confront her isolation, her father, and her very sense of identity, breaking all the rules of her life to become free.
Download or read book Red Earth and Pouring Rain written by Vikram Chandra and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gods of poetry and death descend on a house in India to vie for the soul of a wounded monkey. A bargain is struck: the monkey must tell a story, and if he can keep his audience entertained, he shall live. The result is Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Vikram Chandra's astonishing, vibrant novel. Interweaving tales of nineteenth-century India with modern America, it stands in the tradition of The Thousand and One Nights, a work of vivid imagination and a celebration of the power of storytelling itself. 'A dazzling first novel written with such originality and intensity as to be not merely drawing on myth but making it.' Sunday Times
Download or read book Polka King written by Jimmy Sturr and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguably the most important polka practitioner of his generation, reedist/vocalist Jimmy Sturr has won an eye-popping 18 Grammy Awards, and when you hear his exuberant brand of the music that is his heart and soul, you'll understand why. Blending the timeless elements of traditional polka music with hints of country, Cajun, and rock and roll, Sturr's unique sound has taken polka to new heights of accessibility and popularity, and his modernized renditions of polka standards and renditions of rock classics have captured the imagination (and feet) of listeners throughout the world. In his memoir Polka King, you'll meet the man behind the beer barrel. In his lively, oftentimes hilarious literary debut, Jimmy chronicles how a small-town boy from tiny Florida, N.Y., made good, ultimately becoming a respected bandleader, entrepreneur, and Grammy winner with guest appearances on Saturday Night Live. He'll take you into the recording studio and onto the stage, where he's shared the microphone with the likes of Willie Nelson, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Charlie Daniels. Featuring forewords by Willie Nelson, Bobby Vinton, and “Whispering" Bill Anderson, Polka King will introduce the world to a one-of-a-kind artist who has taken one of the world's most beloved musical genres and made it his own.
Download or read book A Hedonist in the Cellar written by Jay McInerney and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________ 'McInerney's wine judgements are sound, his anecdotes witty, and his literary references impeccable. Not many wine books are good reads; this one is' - New York Times 'A cracking read' - Daily Telegraph 'Personal, enlightening, and above all fun to read' - Michael Broadbent, Master of Wine of Christie's 'Brilliant, witty, comical and often shamelessly candid and provocative' - Robert M. Parker Jr, The Wine Advocate _______________ WINNER OF THE BEST WINE LITERATURE AWARD, GOURMAND WORLD COOKBOOK AWARDS Jay McInerney, internationally celebrated author of Bright Lights, Big City, turns his hand here to his lifelong love affair with wine. Peals of wisdom are offered on the subjects of the best wine for romantics, the parallels between Californian wines and floundering Hollywood stars, the choice of wine for the author's own debauched forty-eighth birthday party, the 'high-testosterone grape' that is Colin Farrell, absinthe, 'the wild green fairy', and what wine is best drunk with chocolate. At the same time McInerney is a genuine connoisseur, taking the reader on a tour through the wine regions of the world and imparting tried and tested advice on grapes and vintages, bouquets, noses and finishes.
Download or read book Eat the Document written by Dana Spiotta and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book My Beloved Brontosaurus written by Brian Switek and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Hudson Booksellers Staff Pick for the Best Books of 2013 One of Publishers Weekly's Top Ten Spring Science Books A Bookshop Santa Cruz Staff Pick Dinosaurs, with their awe-inspiring size, terrifying claws and teeth, and otherworldly abilities, occupy a sacred place in our childhoods. They loom over museum halls, thunder through movies, and are a fundamental part of our collective imagination. In My Beloved Brontosaurus, the dinosaur fanatic Brian Switek enriches the childlike sense of wonder these amazing creatures instill in us. Investigating the latest discoveries in paleontology, he breathes new life into old bones. Switek reunites us with these mysterious creatures as he visits desolate excavation sites and hallowed museum vaults, exploring everything from the sex life of Apatosaurus and T. rex's feather-laden body to just why dinosaurs vanished. (And of course, on his journey, he celebrates the book's titular hero, "Brontosaurus"—who suffered a second extinction when we learned he never existed at all—as a symbol of scientific progress.) With infectious enthusiasm, Switek questions what we've long held to be true about these beasts, weaving in stories from his obsession with dinosaurs, which started when he was just knee-high to a Stegosaurus. Endearing, surprising, and essential to our understanding of our own evolution and our place on Earth, My Beloved Brontosaurus is a book that dinosaur fans and anyone interested in scientific progress will cherish for years to come.
Download or read book Wounded written by Percival Everett and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time Out Chicago, Top 10 Book of 2005 Winner of the 2006 PEN USA Literary Award for Fiction Training horses is dangerous—a head-to-head confrontation with 1,000 pounds of muscle and little sense takes courage, but more important, patience and smarts. It is these same qualities that allow John and his uncle Gus to live in the beautiful high desert of Wyoming. A black horse trainer is a curiosity, at the very least, but a familiar curiosity in these parts. It is the brutal murder of a young gay man, however, that pushes this small community to the teetering edge of intolerance. Highly praised for his storytelling and ability to address the toughest issues of our time with humor, grace, and originality, Wounded by Percival Everett offers a brilliant novel that explores the alarming consequences of hatred in a divided America.
Download or read book Hyperbole and a Half written by Allie Brosh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller “Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations. FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices. This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and her astonishing, “Adventures in Depression,” and “Depression Part Two,” which have been hailed as some of the most insightful meditations on the disease ever written. Brosh’s debut marks the launch of a major new American humorist who will surely make even the biggest scrooge or snob laugh. We dare you not to. FROM THE AUTHOR: This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative—like maybe someone who isn’t me wrote it—but I soon discovered that I’m not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book: Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness* *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!
Download or read book Yayoi Kusama written by Yayoi Kusama and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As articulated by art critic and poet Akira Tatehata in his accompanying catalogue essay, "the genius that generates [Kusama's] fertile artistic world, a paean to life, is driven by obsessive thoughts"--and her extraordinary and highly influential career encompasses works in various mediums that unfailingly conjure both microscopic and macroscopic universes at once. Kusama's critically acclaimed inaugural 2013 exhibition at David Zwirner in New York presented a selection of the artist's large-scale square-format acrylic on canvas paintings. This vibrant publication-- printed with multiple inks at the highest quality to fully capture the dazzling glow of Kusama's colorful canvases--opens with a selection of these works, which anchored the gallery presentation. Kusama's practice recurrently integrates motifs that evoke the cosmic and the primordial, from the ethereal to earthly, and embodies the unique amalgamation of representational and non-representational subject matter. Also featured are stills of the video installation SONG OF A MANHATTAN SUICIDE ADDICT, as well as stunning panoramic views of the exhibition's two infinity rooms, including INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM - THE SOULS OF MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY, which was hailed by The New York Times as encouraging "the ultimate selfie." The other room, LOVE IS CALLING, stands out as among the artist's most immersive environments to date: a darkened, mirrored room illuminated by inflatable, tentacle-like forms covered in her signature polka dots, extending from floor to ceiling and slowly shifting color. Concluding the publication, an original poem written by Kusama herself, After the Battle, I Want to Die at the End of the Universe, contextualizes her practice: "Having always been distressed over how to live," she writes, "I have kept carrying the banner for pursuit of art."
