Download or read book The Shrine at Altamira written by John L'Heureux and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel of cultural and emotional divides—and the consequences of obsessive love—from the author of An Honorable Profession, a New York Times Notable Book. The Shrine at Altamira by John L’Heureux has the simple shape and powerful impact of Greek tragedy. When Maria Corazon Alvarez meets Russell Whitaker at a school dance, she sees his blue eyes and solid American name as a ticket out of the ghetto into a better life. They dance, they touch, they tumble into a love so strong and elemental it should last forever. But gradually the balance shifts; he loves her more, she loves him less. When their son is born, Maria gives him all her love and Russell is pushed aside. Wild, obsessed, Russell runs mad and his desperate love becomes a fire that consumes them all. “Mesmerizing . . . A powerful and affecting story about love’s most anguished and disturbing permutations.” —Timothy Hunter, The Plain Dealer

Download or read book The Shrine at Altamira written by John L'Heureux and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Maria meets Russell at a school dance, she sees him as her ticket out of the ghetto, but gradually the balance of their love shifts. He loves her more, while she shoves him aside and devotes her attention to their son.

Download or read book The Miracle written by John L'Heureux and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The author seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants . . . gives a rare human depth to a young priest who wants to become a saint” (San Francisco Chronicle). In a pitch-perfect, deeply satisfying work of fiction selected as a New York Times Notable Book, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, and recipient of the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California, master storyteller L’Heureux enters the world of an unorthodox young priest whose faith is put to the test. Father Paul LeBlanc is young, handsome, and charismatic, but he has dangerous ideas on sex, marriage, and birth control—and he just doesn’t uphold the decorum expected of a young priest. When, for no reason, a miracle occurs—a dead girl is brought back to life before his eyes—Father LeBlanc finds his faith, his vows, his reason, and his life itself called into question, leaving him with nowhere to turn. Witty, profound, and deeply moving, The Miracle explores the way God meddles in our lives and to what end. It is John L’Heureux’s best, most daring novel to date. “Written in swift-moving prose of unaffected simplicity . . . It comes off as neither pat nor preachy but, rather, as a delicately nuanced portrait of recognizable human individuals making what they can of life.” —The New York Times Book Review “L’Heureux brings the priest through his crisis of faith with the same tenderness that makes all his books such a pleasure in read.” —TheLos Angeles Times Book Review “L’Heureux’s snappy, succulent novel of faith and body, starts out sharp and ends with a razor slash.” —The Baltimore Sun

Download or read book Having Everything written by John L'Heureux and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard Dean with a perfect life discovers a dark side he never knew he had—or wanted—in this “sharp, moving, poignant” novel (The Washington Post Book World). Philip Tate is a man who has everything—youthful looks, a beautiful wife and loving family, and a distinguished deanship at Harvard. But a night-time drive will lead Philip to jeopardize everything in a moment’s flirtation with the forbidden. For on that drive he will meet the Kizers: beautiful, troubled Dixie and brilliant, kinky Hal. And by stepping into the Kizers’ house and into the midst of their sad marriage, Philip sets in motion the near ruin—and perhaps the salvation—of his entire world . . . In a “heavily ironic chronicle of professional success, inward misery, and middle-aged sexual guilt,” John L’ Heureux reminds us that sometimes—in both marriage and life—having everything is not enough (Publishers Weekly).

Download or read book An Honorable Profession written by John L'Heureux and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an authoritative and compelling author, "An Honorable Profession" is a "splendid novel" realized "superbly well" ("Newark Star-Ledger") about an ordinary New England school where a young English teacher's life is about to undergo the most serious of tests. A "New York Times" Notable Book.

Download or read book Historical Archaeology in Africa written by Peter Ridgway Schmidt and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2006 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Archaeology in Africa is an inquiry into historical questions that count, proposing different ways of thinking about historical archaeology. Peter Schmidt challenges readers to expand their horizons . Confronting topics of oral traditions, the role of cultural landscapes in social memory, and historical misrepresentations of various cultures, Schmidt calls for a new pathway to an enriched, more nuanced, and more inclusive historical archaeology. Allowing Africa to speak for itself without colonial interpreters, Historical Archaeology in Africa will be of interest not only to historians and archaeologists, but to all concerned with Africa's past and present.

Download or read book The Heart Is a Full Wild Beast written by John L'Heureux and published by Public Space Books. This book was released on 2020-12 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John L'Heureux spent his long, prolific career exploring questions of morality and faith in stories that entertain, surprise, and sometimes disturb; and The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast compiles the enduring stories of a distinctive American writer.

Download or read book The Medici Boy written by John L'Heureux and published by House of Stratus. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While creating his famous bronze of David and Goliath, Donatello’s passion for his beautiful model and part time rent boy, Agnolo, ignites a dangerous jealousy that ultimately leads to murder. Luca, the complex and conflicted assistant, will sacrifice all to save Donatello, even his master’s friend--the great patron of art, Cosimo de’ Medici.

Download or read book Acts of Faith and Imagination written by Brent Little and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acts of Faith and Imagination wagers that fiction written by Catholic authors assists readers to reflect critically on the question: "what is faith?" To speak of a person's "faith-life" is to speak of change and development. As a narrative form, literature can illustrate the dynamics of faith, which remains in flux over the course of one's life. Because human beings must possess faith in something (whether religious or not), it inevitably has a narrative structure?faith ebbs and flows, flourishes and decays, develops and stagnates. Through an exploration of more than a dozen Catholic authors' novels and short stories, Brent Little argues that Catholic fiction encourages the reader to reflect upon their faith holistically, that is, the way faith informs one's affections, and how a person conceives and interacts with the world as embodied beings. Amidst the diverse stories of modern and contemporary fiction, a consistent pattern emerges: Catholic fiction portrays faith?at its most fundamental, often unconscious, level?as an act of the imagination. Faith is the way one imagines themselves, others, and creation. A person's primary faith conditions how they live in the world, regardless of the level of conscious reflection, and regardless of whether this is a "religious" faith. Acts of Faith and Imagination investigates the creative depth and vitality of the Catholic literary imagination by bringing late modern Catholic authors into dialogue with more contemporary ones. Readers will then consider well-known works, such as those by Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, and Muriel Spark in the fresh light of contemporary stories by Toni Morrison, Alice McDermott, Uwem Akpan, and several others.

Download or read book The Beggar s Pawn written by John L'Heureux and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The final book by the noted novelist, short story writer, and teacher John L'Heureux: the story of an affable stranger whose appeals for money gradually upend the lives of an academic's family After a decades-long career as a critically acclaimed writer (including several novels with Viking and Penguin in the late '80s and early '90s) John L'Heureux had a late flowering in his career. In the year before his death in April of 2019, The New Yorker published three of his stories, and a collection of his short stories will be published by A Public Space in December 2019. His final novel, The Beggar's Pawn, is the story of a family whose chance meeting with a stranger while dog walking slowly becomes an ominous invasion of their domestic lives. David and Maggie Holliss are an ordinary married couple about to ease into a comfortable, well-earned retirement while tending to three middle-aged children with whom they share an edgy relationship of love and resentment. Reginald Parker enters their lives when he saves their dog from being run over by a truck, and when asked how they can possibly thank him, he replies with a request for the loan of two hundred dollars. They lend it to him, gladly, and thus begins what will become for them and their family a nightmare that moves from comic resignation to stark tragedy. In The Beggar's Pawn, John L'Heureux explores the strains of marriage, the nature of trust, the limits of love, and the inevitability of fate.

Download or read book The Living Way written by 忠明·黒住 and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These stories about Kurozumi Munetada (1780-1850) show us a spirituality for everyday living. He was a Japanese priest, poet and healer who looked to the needs of all humankind. We see in them Shinto affirmation of life, for he was a healer of both spirit and body. He was a teacher, showing people of all walks of life the Confucian emphasis on sincerity as the principle of true life. The key to both sincerity and health is overcoming egoistic attachment, a basic teaching of the Buddhist side of Japanese culture. Making it all possible is devotion to Amaterasu the Kami of the sun, who entered his life in a moment of ecstatic unity and who may be realized in each moment of anyone's life as the source of happiness and vigor. His ability to show how that is so drew thousands to his side in his lifetime, sparking a movement that continues to this day in the Kurozumikyo Shinto denomination.

Download or read book Suicide Blonde written by Darcey Steinke and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesse is a twenty-nine year old adrift in San Francisco's demimonde of sexually ambiguous, drug-taking outsiders, desperately trying to sustain a connection with her bisexual boyfriend. She becomes caretaker and confidante to Madame Pig, a grotesque, besotted recluse. Jesse also meets Madison, Pig's daughter or lover or both, who uses others' desires for her own purposes, and who leads Jesse into a world beyond all boundaries. As startling, original and vital as it was when first published, Suicide Blonde is an intensely erotic story of one young woman's sexual and psychological odyssey and a modern cult classic.

Download or read book The Memory Room written by Mary Rakow and published by Counterpoint Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stuck in an elevator, Barbara Harris suddenly remembers years of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her bipolar Catholic parents and suffers a breakdown, her slow recovery from which, aided by a skilled psychologist, the Psalms, and the poetry of Paul Celan, brings about a strengthening of her faith.

Download or read book A Theology of Criticism written by Michael P. Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-09 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A number of critics and scholars argue for the notion of a distinctly Catholic variety of imagination, not as a matter of doctrine or even of belief, but rather as an artistic sensibility. They figure the blend of intellectual, emotional, spiritual and ethical assumptions that proceed from Catholic belief constitutes a vision of reality that necessarily informs the artist's imaginative expression. The notion of a Catholic imagination, however, has lacked thematic and theological coherence. To articulate this intuition is to cross the problematic interdisciplinary borders between theology and literature; and, although scholars have developed useful methods for undertaking such interdisciplinary "border-crossings," relatively few have been devoted to a serious examination of the theological aesthetic upon which these other aesthetics might hinge. In A Theology of Criticism, Michael Patrick Murphy proposes a new framework to better define the concept of a Catholic imagination. He explores the many ways in which the theological work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) can provide the model, content, and optic for distinguishing this type of imagination from others. Since Balthasar views art and literature precisely as theologies, Murphy surveys a broad array of poetry, drama, fiction, and film and sets it against central aspects of Balthasar's theological program. In doing so, Murphy seeks to develop a theology of criticism. This interdisciplinary work recovers the legitimate place of a distinct "theological imagination" in critical theory, showing that Balthasar's voice both challenges and complements contemporary developments. Murphy also contends that postmodern interpretive methodology, with its careful critique of entrenched philosophical assumptions and reiterated codes of meaning, is not the threat to theological meaning that many fear. On the contrary, by juxtaposing postmodern critical methodologies against Balthasar's visionary theological range, a space is made available for literary critics and theologians alike. More important, the critic is provided with the tools to assess, challenge, and celebrate the theological imagination as it is depicted today.

Download or read book A Woman Run Mad written by John L'Heureux and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Passions, the edge of madness, forbidden obsessions, runaway libidos and dangerous desires . . . a thinking man’s Fatal Attraction” (Chicago Sun-Times). In A Woman Run Mad, John L’Heureux delivers a novel that is part comedy of manners and part psychosexual thriller. Blocked writer, accidental scholar, inattentive husband, all J.J. Quinn wants is peace, and he has gone to buy his wife an expensive handbag to accomplish it. As the bag in question walks out the door under the arm of a beautiful, aristocratic shoplifter, though, Quinn’s curiosity leads him deep into mystery and danger. The shoplifter is Sarah Slade, a Boston Brahmin attempting to ditch a past as bloody as Medea’s. Compared to Quinn’s hypercompetent, Euripides-scholar wife, Claire, the unhinged Sarah is an alluring breath of fresh air—but, of course, Quinn has no idea of the Pandora’s box he’s opened. Acclaimed by Newsweek as “witty and literate . . . Grand Guignol for grown-ups,” A Woman Run Mad is an unsettling, deeply satisfying novel. A New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. “A superior suspense story . . . that might well have appealed to a writer like Patricia Highsmith, a drama of interlocking obsessions.” —The New York Times “What a wonderfully hideous, gruesome, grueling horror-marathon of a book! A cross between a Henry James novel and the Texas chain saw massacre. I loved it.” —Carolyn See, author of Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America “Normality—as our time understands the word—and monstrosity are L’Heureux’s poles, and he joins them with extraordinary dexterity . . . The ending is not to be revealed.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Download or read book An Echo of Heaven written by Kenzaburō Ōe and published by Kodansha Amer Incorporated. This book was released on 2000 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of a mother's grief. Her divorced husband has died ofancer and her sons have taken their own lives. To escape her sorrow anduilt, she leaves Japan and travels to Mexico where she settles in a remoteillage.

Download or read book A Literary Cavalcade IV written by Robert A. Parker and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert A. Parker has long evaluated each novel he reads. His comments are informed by an independent critical view that balances a moral and literary sensibility. In this fourth of six volumes, authors covered range from Jean Lacouture to Montherlant. The commentaries are listed alphabetically by author, and the books by the date of publication. The writers here represent a broad range of writing styles, cultural influences, and moral philosophies. And all are rated on their literary achievement.