Download or read book The Ballantine Reader s Circle Reader written by and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction excerpts from eighteen acclaimed authors whose works appeared as Ballantine Reader's Circle titles in 1999; with a personal introduction to each author from their editor on what delights them about their authors' fiction.
Download or read book Schmidt Delivered written by Louis Begley and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1996 novel, "About Schmidt", retired New York lawyer Albert Schmidt was almost down for the count after suffering personal tragedies. Now, Begley's best-loved anti-hero is triumphantly back from the brink, forming alliances with a mysterious Egyptian billionaire.
Download or read book The Interpreter written by Suzanne Glass and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Interpreter is Dominique, a genius with language who, despite her professional brilliance, has not yet found her own voice. When she overhears a whispered conversation about the suppression of AIDS breakthrough, the interpreter’s mantra rings in her ears: ‘Confidentiality. Your vow is as solemn as the Hippocratic Oath. As sacred as a nun’s marriage to Jesus.’ But Dominique’s best friend Mischa is HIV positive. Drawn into a passionate love affair with Nicholas Manzini, an Italian doctor, Dominique slowly beings to discover her own voice. But her dilemma remains—and will test both her strength of character and the depth of her love for Nicholas.
Download or read book Southern Living written by Ad Hudler and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the utterly eccentric world of Selby, Georgia, where the folks sprinkle three things liberally over their daily lives: sugar, religion, and the wicked fun of Southern living. Margaret Pinaldi is the quiet daughter of a hell-raising abortion-rights advocate who recently died—bequeathing Margaret a house in Georgia. Finally free from her mother’s demanding presence, this transplanted Yankee is finding herself for the first time, courtesy of the Deep South. And, much to her surprise, she likes it. A former International Dogwood Festival Queen, Donna Kabel once had cute male suitors chase her like hounds to the fox. But all that changed after a car accident left her with a huge facial scar. Now Donna works in the produce section of Kroger. But it seems that the scar that could have cost Donna her inner strength has actually spurred her to reinvent herself. Thirty-four-year-old Suzanne Parley, the chardonnay-alcoholic wife of a fifth-generation Selby neurosurgeon named Boone, longs to have the most exquisitely decorated house in the affluent Red Hill Plantation community. Childless and directionless, Suzanne suddenly comes up with a bold plan to make her bored husband love her again: she’ll simply fake a pregnancy. On the eve of this year’s all-important Dogwood Festival, the disparate lives of these three women will converge in a brilliant comedy of Southern manners like none other. With this funny and poignant novel, Ad Hudler joins Fannie Flagg and Adriana Trigiani as one of our best chroniclers of Southern life. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Download or read book Carolina Moon written by Jill McCorkle and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2012-04-21 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the course of this wide-ranging, richly detailed novel, every kind of human problem finds its way to the doorstep of Quee Purdy, a tireless entrepreneur for whom love and sex are the "hot commodities" in which she deals. McCorkle's extraordinary storytelling skills allow her to juggle at least six parallel stories in a novel about playing God. And she does it divinely.
Download or read book Black Glass written by Karen Joy Fowler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An early work from PEN/Faulkner Award winner and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy Fowler, reissued and beautifully repackaged for new fans and old. First published in 1998 to high praise, and now reissued with the addition of a prefatory essay, Black Glass showcases the extraordinary talents of this prizewinning author. In fifteen gemlike tales, Fowler lets her wit and vision roam freely, turning accepted norms inside out and fairy tales upside down—pushing us to reconsider our unquestioned verities and proving once again that she is among our most subversive writers. So, then: Here is Carry Nation loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, radicalizing women as she preaches clean living to men more intent on babes and booze. And here is Mrs. Gulliver, her patience with her long-voyaging Lemuel worn thin: Money is short and the kids can’t even remember what their dad looks like. And what of Tonto, the ever-faithful companion, turning forty without so much as a birthday phone call from that masked man? It is a book full of great themes and terrific stories—but it is the way in which Fowler tells the tale, develops plot and character, plays with time, chance, and reality that makes these pieces so original.
Download or read book The Center of Things written by Jenny McPhee and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Every story is a love story.”–Nora Mars,Evil Love, (1962) Nora Mars–glamour girl, star of stage and screen, B-movie goddess–has slowly aged out of mainstream popularity and quickly slipped into a coma. Known as much for her astonishing looks, her five husbands, and her way with words (“I’m all for love at first sight. It saves a lot of time”) as for her movie career, Nora Mars has been a tabloid’s dream diva. Marie Brown, the heroine of Jenny McPhee’s debut novelThe Center of Things, is everything that Nora is not: too tall, too plain, too unmarried, and always too early. But she also happens to be Nora’s number-one fan and knows enough to use the star’s untimely near-death to advance her own career at theGotham City Starby insisting on writing her obit. Along the way she meets the charismatic Rex Mars, Nora Mars’s husband number-three, and struggles between reportorial integrity and plain old lust. But Marie also has a secret life: She spends every free moment at the library, pursuing her fascination with physics. Here she meets the strange, intriguing Marco Trentadue, a “freelance intellectual” who bears a striking resemblance to Peter Lorre. While Marie is drawn more and more to Rex, she gradually finds Marco to be the stranger attractor. Interweaving vignettes from Marie’s past, movie lore and lines, and metaphorical physics, Jenny McPhee limns the randomness of everyday life, the conflicting pulls of libido and intellect, and the choices–conscious or not–that shape the search for true love.
Download or read book In Dark Water written by Mermer Blakeslee and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1958, in a small town in upstate New York, the Buell family is falling apart. The sudden death of David, the only son, forever changes the bonds that connect them to one another and to the world. As her mother sinks into depression, eleven-year-old Dorrie Buell, full of an unusual mix of grit and delicacy, sets out on her own. Armed with the imagined identity of a cowboy drifter, Dorrie finds kinship and refuge in the hilltop farm of the eccentric Tappen family. Yet the deep currents of Dorrie's life keep pulling her back toward her mother, toward the past that binds them, toward common ground. Luminous and alive with the secret knowledge of childhood, In Dark Water is a stunning novel of one family's trial and redemption.
Download or read book The Mommy Club written by Sarah Bird and published by Doubleday Books. This book was released on 1991 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young surrogate mother attempts to make an ordered world for her child as she wanders through the maze of trendy yuppiedom to the treacherous waters of her relations with her old love, Sinclair.
Download or read book The Hero s Walk written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-09-28 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Mem, it was evident a promising new talent had joined the Canadian literary community. Her dazzling literary follow-up is The Hero's Walk, a novel teeming with the author's trademark tumble of the haphazard beauty, wreckage and folly of ordinary lives. Set in the dusty seaside town of Toturpuram on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk traces the terrain of family and forgiveness through the lives of an exuberant cast of characters bewildered by the rapid pace of change in today's India. Each member of the Rao family pits his or her chance at personal fulfillment against the conventions of a crumbling caste and class system. Anita Rau Badami explains that "The Hero's Walk is a novel about so many things: loss, disappointment, choices and the importance of coming to terms with yourself and the circumstances of your life without losing the dignity embedded in all of us. At one level it is about heroism - not the hero of the classic epic, those enormous god-sized heroes - but my fascination with the day-to-day heroes and the heroism that's needed to survive all the unexpected disasters and pitfalls of life."
Download or read book Secret Language written by Monica Wood and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SECRET LANGUAGE by Monica Wood is a moving and compelling tale of two sisters as they reconnect, not to be missed by readers of Anne Tyler, Joanna Cannon and Sue Monk Kidd. 'Fiercely lyrical... [Wood] writes with sensitivity and intuitive insight about relationships coming apart and the walls people erect to keep others out' Publishers Weekly As children, dragged around the country by semi-famous actor parents who could barely take care of themselves, sisters Faith and Constance had to rely on one another. As adults, though, they have drifted apart: Faith has children and a grounded domestic life - but hasn't necessarily found unconditional love; whereas Constance, a flight attendant, is always searching for her true place in life. Then Isadora, the half-sister they never knew existed, makes her dramatic entrance into their lives. This crisis forces Faith and Constance into their long-forgotten childhood habits, and they begin to make their way back to one another and find a new way to be a family. What readers are saying about SECRET LANGUAGE: 'So glad I discovered Monica Wood. Her language is gorgeous, her characters compelling, and she delicately describes the pain and joy of human relationships in a way we can all identify with' 'Extremely well written and thought-provoking with outstanding character development' 'A rare and affecting book that can create such heartfelt turmoil. Highly recommend for readers who love realistic stories about family life'
Download or read book Leaving Eden written by Ann Chamberlin and published by Forge Books. This book was released on 2000-06-10 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leaving Eden brilliantly brings to life that watershed moment in our history when man -- and woman -- turned their backs on the most ancient of laws in order to strike out in independence. Told from the point of view young Na'amah, Adam's daughter by his first wife, Lilith, it tells of the passing of the ancient Goddess and the birth of the new God. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Clay s Quilt written by Silas House and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband. She packs her things, and with three-year-old Clay in tow, they inch their way toward her hometown along the treacherous mountain roads. That journey ends in the death of Clay's mother. It's a day that comes to haunt her only son, who's left without a family and a history. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love with his town but unsure of his place within it, finds a family to call his own. And it's the story of the people who become part of the life he shapes: Aunt Easter, always filled with a sense of foreboding and bound to her faith above all; Uncle Paul, quietly producing quilt after quilt; Dreama, beautiful and flighty; Evangeline, the untameable daughter of a famous gospel singer; and Alma, the fiddler whose song wends its way into Clay's heart. Together, they all help Clay to fashion a quilt of a life from what treasured pieces are around him. Authentic and moving, Clay's Quilt is both the story of a young man's journey and of Appalachian people struggling to hold on to their heritage.
Download or read book The Ladies of Garrison Gardens written by Louise Shaffer and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Valley’s legendary dowagers, the three Miss Margarets, have lost one of their own: Peggy Garrison, who married into a huge fortune but was constantly overshadowed by the legacy her husband’s first wife, the great Myrtis Garrison. When Peggy’s will is read, the news of who will take over the Garrison fortune shakes the town to its core. To everyone’s shock, Peggy has left all of the Garrison holdings–the world-famous botanical gardens, the massive resort, and the lovely Garrison “Cottage,” where FDR once visited–to the town’s down-and-out wild child, Laurel Selene McCready. Laurel was like a daughter to Miss Peggy, but the last thing she wants to do is step into Miss Peggy’s shoes as the wealthiest, most powerful person in town, especially since the Garrison fortune never bought Peggy any happiness. On top of that, when Laurel reluctantly explores her hew home, the storied Garrison Cottage, she discovers that mysteries abound when it comes to the great Miss Myrtis. What clues are hidden in an old suitcase containing a child’s dress and sheet music dating back to the Southern Vaudeville circuit? Who is the elderly woman outside Atlanta who has been keeping track of the Garrison estate’s every development via the Charles Valley Gazette? And how will Laurel avoid the fate of her two predecessors whose secrets have far greater implications than Laurel could ever have imagined? Culminating in an unforgettable sleight of hand, proving that behind every great fortune there is a great crime, The Ladies of Garrison Gardens is as page-turning and irresistible as its predecessor.
Download or read book Gone for Good written by Mark Childress and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 1999-07-06 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time Newsweek dubs thirty-four-year-old Ben (Superman) Willis "The New Super-Poet of Pop," he has millions of adoring fans, piles of money, a beautiful family--and a secret desire to chuck it all and disappear forever. He gets his wish after a violent storm, some wicked Mexican weed, and a faulty compass cause his precious plane to crash on a remote tropical island. When he hears Marilyn Monroe's breathless voice saying he's "kind of cute," Superman thinks he has woken up dead. Amelia Earhart is there too, noting the worst landing she has ever seen, while Jimmy Hoffa cooks up some fine chicken barbecue. They never died, you see. They just came here to escape their celebrity--invited guests, living out their lives in total privacy, all expenses paid, every need fulfilled. To Superman, it is heaven on earth. Until he discovers the one little catch: he can never leave. . . .
Download or read book L I E written by David Hollander and published by Villard. This book was released on 2001-01-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At once mordantly funny and achingly sad, L.I.E. is a soul map for modern suburbia." --Sheri Holman, author of The Dress Lodger Long Island, New York, 1987: Harlan Kessler--raised in Medford, a product of blue-collar Suffolk County, of housing developments and concrete strip malls--graduates from high school. He hangs out, he parties, he plays guitar for the Dayglow Crazies (the local rock-and-roll phenomenon), and he struggles diligently to lose his virginity. He doesn't think about the future much. The Long Island Expressway (L.I.E.) cleaves the landscape, permitting passage west, to the tonier climes of Nassau County and New York City, but to Harlan, this seems like an impossible journey, something beyond his Long Island birthright. And what's worse, evidence is accumulating that Harlan may not exist at all, that he may merely be a character in someone else's story, a fleeting thought in the mind of God. L.I.E. follows Harlan, his family, and his friends through two years of love, sex, death, betrayal, salvation, and enlightenment. In ten intimately interwoven stories, in prose that swings fluidly from gritty realism to heightened metafiction, David Hollander maps an American landscape that is at once vividly familiar and highly exotic, creating an unforgettable portrait of the passage to adult-hood and the search for identity, certain to resonate with legions of readers. By turns dark, funny, raw, and elegant, L.I.E. is the striking debut of a singular voice. The last wisps of afternoon streak and evaporate into blue-gray dusk, submersing Long Island in twilight. Harlan and Rik Giannati sit on the curb outside Rik's house, precisely 211 yards northeast of Harlan's house, the distance punctuated by no fewer than fourteen subtly distinct houses of three ilks: the square, steeple-roofed Granada; the split-level LaSalle; the two-story, three-bedroom Monte Carlo. This last model was the choice of Kessler and Giannati alike some ten years ago when they, too, were assimilated in the mass exodus from Queens to Suffolk County that had gripped the hearts and genitals of so many. The streetlamps began to glow along Rustic Avenue, a cold blue flicker spaced at even intervals, like isolated members of the same species, each shivering in its cage of frosted glass. --From L.I.E.
Download or read book Remembering Blue written by Connie May Fowler and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotionally neglected by her mother, abandoned by her father, Mattie O’Rourke spent her childhood starved for the one thing she thought she’d never find: love. When her mother dies and, at twenty-two, she finds herself completely without ties of any kind, Mattie takes a chance at ending her loneliness and moves to a tiny coastal Florida town. At the Suwannee Swifty convenience store, a sea change envelops her. Mattie O’Rourke sees Proteus Nicholas Blue and their fate is sealed after only a few shy, stolen glances. Nick walks into Mattie’s life having fled his own. A lifelong fisherman from a remote island off the coast, Nick is haunted by the certain knowledge that the sea will be the death of him (as it has been for all the Blue men) and he has resolved to leave it behind. But as Nick and Mattie settle into an intimacy that both comforts and surprises them, Nick feels the inextricable pull of the waxing moon’s tide and the siren’s call of the dolphins that, Blue legend has it, are his brethren. And so it is that Mattie, who only months before felt that happiness would never find her, returns with Nick to the island home that nurtured him and finds herself embraced by a large and loving family and an alluring and sensual landscape. Life on Lethe is transforming for Mattie. But Nick always knew that the sea would claim him, and all of Mattie’s love cannot prevent the tragedy that is their destiny. Moving and enchanting, Remembering Blue is a lush story of love, loss, and the mythic power of the ocean, told in an elegant and passionate voice that could only come from Connie May Fowler. From the Trade Paperback edition.
