Download or read book The Dress Lodger written by Sheri Holman and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book from the author of A Stolen Tongue: A tale of crime and survival in nineteenth-century England “as unsettling as it is brilliant” (The Washington Post Book World). In Sunderland, England, a city quarantined by the cholera epidemic of 1831, a defiant, fifteen-year-old beauty in an elegant blue dress sells her body to feed her only love: a fragile baby boy. When the surgeon Henry Chiver offers Gustine a different kind of work, she hopes to finally change her terrible circumstances. But Chiver was recently implicated in the famous case of Burke and Hare, who murdered beggars and sold their corpses for medical research. And soon, Gustine’s own efforts to secure cadavers for Chiver’s anatomy school will threaten the very things she’s working so hard to protect . . . “Reminiscent of Wuthering Heights . . . or the novels of Dickens . . . An even better book than Holman’s first, with prose that’s more limber and vivid—and with, appropriately, even more heart.” —The New York Times Book Review “As unsettling as it is brilliant. Holman attempts Herculean feats of plot and character, and the resulting novel is seamlessly crafted.” —The Washington Post Book World “Holman seduces you. Her prose, tart, racy and somber, will sing in your soul a long while.” —Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes “Holman’s style is risky and direct . . . with unflinching emotional precision. This dazzlingly researched epic is an uncommon read.” —Publisher Weekly, starred review
Download or read book The Mammoth Cheese written by Sheri Holman and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. “A panoramic social novel with a needle-sharp point of view sends up both small-town America and politics” (People). Acclaimed bestselling author Sheri Holman’s third novel, The Mammoth Cheese, has been hailed as “stunning . . . a Great American Novel par excellence” by Newsday and by The New York Times Book Review as “lovely, disarming . . . tough, sad and surprisingly sweet.” Three Chimneys, Virginia resident Margaret Pricket, a single mother and specialty cheese maker, is in danger of losing all she holds dear. Her century-old family dairy farm is falling deeper into debt. Her thirteen-year-old daughter Polly, whom Margaret has tried to shelter from the modern world, is becoming perilously drawn towards her charismatic, subversive history teacher. Her loyal farmhand August, a Thomas Jefferson impersonator by night, is secretly in love with her. And she’s been convinced by the town’s pastor to recreate the original Thomas Jefferson-era, 1,235-pound “Mammoth Cheese,” as a gift for the President elect. Soon the entire town is wrapped up in the endeavor, and Margaret finds herself torn between her principles and her passions. An American pastoral like no other, The Mammoth Cheese is a delicious and satisfying tour de force. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book A Publishers Weekly Book of the Year A Book Sense 76 Selection “Holman has fashioned a tale that is poignant and powerful and, like an award-winning cheese, surprisingly complex.”—The Washington Post Book World “A capacious book. Huge and amazing things happen within it.”—The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
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 A Stolen Tongue written by Sheri Holman and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1483, Father Felix Fabri embarks on a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of the martyr Saint Katherine of Alexandria, only to find himself caught up in a mystery when parts of the saint's body begin to turn up missing. 35,000 first printing.
Download or read book Witches on the Road Tonight written by Sheri Holman and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This richly layered novel” from the acclaimed author of The Dress Lodger explores Americana, witchcraft, love, and betrayal (People, starred review). As a child growing up in Depression-era rural Virginia, Eddie Alley’s quiet life is rooted in the rumors of his mother’s witchcraft. But when an outsider violently disrupts the spell of his mother’s unorthodox life, Eddie is inspired to pursue a future beyond the confines of his dead-end town. He leaves for New York and becomes a television horror-movie presenter beloved for his kitschy comedy. When he opens his family’s door to a homeless teenager working as an intern at the TV station, the boy’s presence not only awakens something in Eddie, but also in his twelve-year-old daughter, Wallis, who has begun to feel a strange kinship to her notorious grandmother. As the ghost stories of one generation infiltrate the next, Wallis and Eddie grapple with the sins of the past in this gripping novel that “explores the dark vein of magic that runs just beneath our real lives” (The New York Times Book Review). “Holman is a master of the miniature. She uses tiny, achingly accurate details to bring each moment to life on the page; her sentences sing . . . [her] most ambitious and successful yet.” —People, starred review “Holman has an imagination that is both capacious and meticulous, and by turns somber and antic . . . Witches on the Road Tonight is a path into her work that beckons, with strange lights and mysterious apparitions.” —Jane Smiley, Los Angeles Review of Books “Mysterious, beautiful, and immediately engrossing . . . A tour de force of meticulous research brought urgently to life by headlong, transporting prose.” —Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach and A Visit From the Goon Squad
Download or read book The People s Act Of Love written by James Meek and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2008-11-20 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1919, Siberia . . . Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours a secret of its own . . .
Download or read book The Lodger written by Marie Belloc Lowndes and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed by The New York Times as "one of the best suspense novels ever written," this novel recounts an English couple's doubts about their boarder, whom they suspect of being a serial killer.
Download or read book The Devil s Teeth written by Susan Casey and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist's obsession brings her to a remote island off the California coast, home to the world's most mysterious and fearsome predators--and the strange band of surfer-scientists who follow them Susan Casey was in her living room when she first saw the great white sharks of the Farallon Islands, their dark fins swirling around a small motorboat in a documentary. These sharks were the alphas among alphas, some longer than twenty feet, and there were too many to count; even more incredible, this congregation was taking place just twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. In a matter of months, Casey was being hoisted out of the early-winter swells on a crane, up a cliff face to the barren surface of Southeast Farallon Island-dubbed by sailors in the 1850s the "devil's teeth." There she joined Scot Anderson and Peter Pyle, the two biologists who bunk down during shark season each fall in the island's one habitable building, a haunted, 135-year-old house spackled with lichen and gull guano. Two days later, she got her first glimpse of the famous, terrifying jaws up close and she was instantly hooked; her fascination soon yielded to obsession-and an invitation to return for a full season. But as Casey readied herself for the eight-week stint, she had no way of preparing for what she would find among the dangerous, forgotten islands that have banished every campaign for civilization in the past two hundred years. The Devil's Teeth is a vivid dispatch from an otherworldly outpost, a story of crossing the boundary between society and an untamed place where humans are neither wanted nor needed.
Download or read book Broken for You written by Stephanie Kallos and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A dazzling mosaic of intersecting lives and fates . . . Comparisons to John Irving and Tennessee Williams would not be amiss in this show-stopping debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). The national bestseller and Today Show Book Club selection, Broken for You is the story of two women in self-imposed exile whose lives are transformed when their paths intersect . . . When we meet septuagenarian Margaret Hughes, she is living alone in a mansion in Seattle with only a massive collection of valuable antiques for company. Enter Wanda Schultz, a young woman with a broken heart who has come west to search for her wayward boyfriend. Both women are guarding dark secrets and have spent many years building up protective armor against the outside world. As their tentative friendship evolves, the armor begins to fall away and Margaret opens her house to the younger woman. This launches a series of unanticipated events, leading Margaret to discover a way to redeem her cursed past, and Wanda to learn the true purpose of her cross-country journey. “I absolutely fell in love with this book. . . . There is a message here about creating family in the most unusual places. . . . A wonderful, engaging story.” —Sue Monk Kidd, New York Times–bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees “Well-crafted plotting and crackling wit make this debut novel by Seattle author Kallos a delight to read and a memory to savor . . . Book groups will enjoy discussing the layers of meaning, the stylistic nuances, and the powerful message of hope secreted in these pages.” —Booklist (starred review)
Download or read book Accidents of Providence written by Stacia M. Brown and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an unmarried tradeswoman in London during the Puritan Revolution (1649–1650) whose passionate love affair leads to a trial for murder.
Download or read book Freud s Mistress written by Karen Mack and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A thrilling story of seduction, betrayal, and loss, Freud’s Mistress will titillate fans of Memoirs of a Geisha and The Other Boleyn Girl.”—Booklist In fin-de-siècle Vienna, it was not easy for a woman to find fulfillment both intellectually and sexually. But many believe that Minna Bernays was able to find both with one man—her brother-in-law, Sigmund Freud. At once a portrait of two sisters—the rebellious, independent Minna and her inhibited sister, Martha—and of the compelling and controversial doctor who would be revered as one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, Freud’s Mistress is a novel rich with passion and historical detail and “a portrait of forbidden desire [with] a thought-provoking central question: How far are you willing to go to be happy?”* *Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Leaving Mother Lake written by Yang Erche Namu and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2007-09-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The haunting memoir of a girl growing up in the Moso country in the Himalayas -- a unique matrilineal society. But even in this land of women, familial tension is eternal. Namu is a strong-willed daughter, and conflicts between her and her rebellious mother lead her to break the taboo that holds the Moso world together -- she leaves her mother's house.
Download or read book As Hot as It Was You Ought to Thank Me written by Nanci Kincaid and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2008-12-14 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a place where you don't have to run away to find yourself, this novel's young heroine, Berry, joins the ranks of other memorable and spirited girl narrators such as Bone in "Bastard Out of Carolina," Kaye Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees, and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Download or read book The Angel of Losses written by Stephanie Feldman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tiger’s Wife meets A History of Love in this inventive, lushly imagined debut novel that explores the intersections of family secrets, Jewish myths, the legacy of war and history, and the bonds between sisters. When Eli Burke dies, he leaves behind a mysterious notebook full of stories about a magical figure named The White Rebbe, a miracle worker in league with the enigmatic Angel of Losses, protector of things gone astray, and guardian of the lost letter of the alphabet, which completes the secret name of God. When his granddaughter, Marjorie, discovers Eli’s notebook, everything she thought she knew about her grandfather—and her family—comes undone. To find the truth about Eli’s origins and unlock the secrets he kept, she embarks on an odyssey that takes her deep into the past, from 18th century Europe to Nazi-occupied Lithuania, and back to the present, to New York City and her estranged sister Holly, whom she must save from the consequences of Eli’s past. Interweaving history, theology, and both real and imagined Jewish folktales, The Angel of Losses is a family story of what lasts, and of what we can—and cannot—escape.
Download or read book The Beaten Territory written by Randi Samuelson-Brown and published by Wheeler Publishing, Incorporated. This book was released on 2018-10-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annie Ryan is running a second-rate brothel in 1890s Denver with an eye toward expansion -- until murder stalks the good-time girls. This rollicking tale of blurred lines, flowing booze, played-out miners and upstairs girls delivers a compelling look at the Wild West, where women were enterprising and a price was paid for justice.
Download or read book The Invisible Wall written by Harry Bernstein and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wonderfully charming memoir, written when the author was 93, vibrantly brings to life an all-but-forgotten time and place. It is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love. “There are places that I have never forgotten. A little cobbled street in a smoky mill town in the North of England has haunted me for the greater part of my life. It was inevitable that I should write about it and the people who lived on both sides of its ‘Invisible Wall.’ ” The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up, in a small English mill town, was seemingly unremarkable. It was identical to countless other streets in countless other working-class neighborhoods of the early 1900s, except for the “invisible wall” that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, it they were miles apart. On the eve of World War I, Harry’s family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams: new shoes that might secure Harry’s admission to a fancy school; that her daughter might marry the local rabbi; that the entire family might one day be whisked off to the paradise of America. Then Harry’s older sister, Lily, does the unthinkable: She falls in love with Arthur, a Christian boy from across the street. When Harry unwittingly discovers their secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.
Download or read book City of Glory written by Beverly Swerling and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the dramatic backdrop of America’s during the War of 1812, Beverly Swerling’s gripping and intricately plotted sequel to the much-loved City of Dreams plunges deep into the crowded streets of old New York. Poised between the Manhattan woods and the sea that is her gateway to the world, the city of 1812 is vibrant but raw, a cauldron where the French accents of Creole pirates mingle with the brogues of Irish seamen, and shipments of rare teas and silks from Canton are sold at raucous Pearl Street auctions. Allegiances are more changeable than the tides, love and lust often indistinguishable, the bonds of country weak compared to the temptation of fabulous riches from the East, and only a few farseeing patriots recognize the need not only to protect the city from the redcoats, but to preserve the fragile Constitutional union forged in 1787. Joyful Patrick Turner, dashing war hero and brilliant surgeon, loses his hand to a British shell, retreats to private life, and hopes to make his fortune in the China trade. To succeed he must run the British blockade; if he fails, he will lose not only a livelihood, but the beautiful Manon, daughter of a Huguenot jeweler who will not accept a pauper as a son-in-law. When stories of a lost treasure and a mysterious diamond draw him into a treacherous maze of deceit and double-cross, and the British set Washington ablaze, Joyful realizes that more than his personal future is at stake. His adversary, Gornt Blakeman, has a lust for power that will not be sated until he claims Joyful’s fiancée as his wife and half a nation as his personal fiefdom. Like the Turners before him, Joyful must choose: his dreams or his country. Swerling’s vividly drawn characters illuminate every aspect of the teeming metropolis: John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America, brings the city’s first Chinese to staff his palatial Broadway mansion; Lucretia Carter, wife of a respectable craftsman, makes ends meet as an abortionist serving New York’s brothels; Thumbless Wu, a mysterious Cantonese stowaway, slinks about on a secret mission; and the bewitching Delight Higgins, proprietress of the town’s finest gambling club, lives in terror of the blackbirding gangs who prey on runaway slaves. They are all here, the butchers and shipwrights, the doctors and scriv-eners, the slum dwellers of Five Points and the money men of the infant stock exchange...conspiring by day and carousing by night, while the women must hide their loyalties and ambitions, their very wills, behind pretty sighs and silken skirts.
