Download or read book The Great Offshore Grounds written by Vanessa Veselka and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE • A wildly original, cross-country novel that subverts a long tradition of family narratives and casts new light on the mythologies—national, individual, and collective—that drive and define us. On the day of their estranged father’s wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It’s been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of personal and professional dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of fishing off the coast of Alaska. But the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what’s theirs. Except, instead of money, what their father gives them is information—a name—which forces them to come to grips with a long-held family secret. In the face of their new reality, the sisters and their adopted brother each set out on journeys that will test their faith in one another, as well as their definitions of freedom. Moving from Seattle’s underground to the docks of the Far North, from the hideaways of the southern swamps to the storied reaches of the Great Offshore Grounds, Vanessa Veselka spins a tale with boundless verve, linguistic vitality, and undeniable tenderness.

Download or read book The Great Offshore Grounds written by Vanessa Veselka and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE OREGON BOOK AWARDS' KEN KESEY AWARD FOR FICTION A wildly original, cross-country novel that subverts a long tradition of family narratives and casts new light on the mythologies—national, individual, and collective—that drive and define us. On the day of their estranged father’s wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It’s been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of personal and professional dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of fishing off the coast of Alaska. But the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what’s theirs. Except, instead of money, what their father gives them is information—a name—which forces them to come to grips with a long-held family secret. In the face of their new reality, the sisters and their adopted brother each set out on journeys that will test their faith in one another, as well as their definitions of freedom. Moving from Seattle’s underground to the docks of the Far North, from the hideaways of the southern swamps to the storied reaches of the Great Offshore Grounds, Vanessa Veselka spins a tale with boundless verve, linguistic vitality, and undeniable tenderness.

Download or read book The Great Offshore Grounds written by Vanessa Veselka and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A magnificent beast of a novel' Roxane Gay 'It blew me away' Emma Donoghue 'Large in scope and heart' Patrick deWitt 'Unforgettable' Nathan Hill 'A blast' Karen Russell On the day of their estranged father's wedding, half-sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It's been years since the two have seen each other - Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle after a failed marriage, Livy works refinishing boats - but the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what's theirs. Except: instead of money, their father gives them information - a name - that reveals a stunning family secret. In the face of their new reality, the sisters each set out on journeys that will test their faith in each other, as well as their definitions of freedom. Moving from Seattle's underground to the docks of the Far North, from the hideaways of the southern swamps to the storied reaches of the Great Offshore Grounds, this is an epic tale told with boundless verve, linguistic vitality and undeniable tenderness - a book that fearlessly reimagines what the 'great American novel' can do. A deeply moving picaresque... Veselka is a remarkable writer, able to break through the surfaces of her narrative to reveal the animal chaos underneath' Los Angeles Times 'This is a novel that feels like hitchhiking: the route is unpredictable but fated and exciting, with an air of treachery... Thrilling' Vulture 'Vivid, realistic and devastating . . . Veselka is a talented writer, with sensual imagery and an unflinching ability to stick with troubled and troublesome characters' Seattle Times

Download or read book Zazen written by Vanessa Veselka and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the National Book Award longlisted epic The Great Offshore Grounds, here is the debut novel that launched her career—a story of activism, police violence, and white guilt in a not so distant dystopian America. “An ambitious encapsulation of our modern times, Zazen tackles counterculture hipsters, geology, Buddhism, consumerism, terrorism, veganism, family drama, and, above all, love." —Judges' Citation, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize The world is on fire, and Della doesn’t know what, if anything, she should do about it. The country is poised on the brink of war. Curfews and other restrictions give the police an excuse for violence. Customers at the vaguely vegan cafe where Della is working after dropping out of grad school debate which foreign countries are the best to flee to: Costa Rica? Bali? Della’s parents—former revolutionaries—are more excited at the idea of her brother and his Black wife giving them biracial grandbabies than in engaging in any new actions; her nominally activist coworkers are mostly devoted to planning a massive sex party. Della floats between them, lost and numb. Then a bomb goes off: some shallow place of capitalistic worship demolished. Inspired, for reasons not entirely clear to herself, Della calls in a second—fake—bomb threat. But a bomb goes off there, too, and soon Della finds herself pulled in by a group of people who, for once, are promising to actually do something. No matter the consequences. Prescient when it was first published, Vanessa Veselka’s debut novel is even more revolutionary now. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.

Download or read book Thus Bad Begins written by Javier Marías and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2016 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times** From the internationally acclaimed author of The Infatuations comes the mesmerizing story of a couple living in the shadow of a mysterious, unhappy history--a novel about the cruel, tender punishments we exact on those we love. Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost; and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate. As Juan draws closer to the truth, he uncovers only more questions. What is at the root of Muriel's hostility toward his wife? How did Beatriz meet Van Vechten? What happened during the war? Marías leads us deep into the intrigues of these characters, through a daring exploration of rancor, suspicion, loyalty, trust, and the infinitely permeable boundaries between the deceptions perpetrated on us by others and those we inflict upon ourselves.

Download or read book Ghost Wave written by Chris Dixon and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2011-10-21 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Takes us to a place of almost mythic power and tells a story that unfolds like a long ride on a killer wave . . . compellingly written.” —Sebastian Junger, New York Times–bestselling author Rising from the depths of the North Pacific lies a fabled island, now submerged just fifteen feet below the surface of the ocean. Rumors and warnings about Cortes Bank abound, but among big wave surfers, this legendary rock is famous for one simple (and massive) reason: this is the home of the biggest rideable wave on the face of the earth. In this dramatic work of narrative nonfiction, journalist Chris Dixon unlocks the secrets of Cortes Bank and pulls readers into the harrowing world of big wave surfing and high seas adventure above the most enigmatic and dangerous rock in the sea. The true story of this Everest of the sea will thrill anyone with an abiding curiosity of and respect for mother ocean. “A terrific, deeply researched tale about a truly wild place. You couldn’t make up Cortes Bank, or the characters who’ve tried to make it theirs.” —William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life “A first-rate account of an amazing phenomenon and the people who tried to conquer and exploit it. A great read.” —Winston Groom, New York Times–bestselling author of Forrest Gump “After reading Chris’ most excellent account of the monstrous waves of the mysterious Cortes Bank—the Bermuda Triangle of the Pacific—I never thought I would ever consider riding a wave like this. But after surviving a five-foot, head-first fall from the stage earlier this year, I think I might be ready.” —Jimmy Buffett

Download or read book Sea Wife written by Amity Gaige and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “Brilliantly breathes life not only into the perils of living at sea, but also into the hidden dangers of domesticity, parenthood, and marriage. What a smart, swift, and thrilling novel.” —Lauren Groff, author of Florida Juliet is failing to juggle motherhood and her stalled-out dissertation on confessional poetry when her husband, Michael, informs her that he wants to leave his job and buy a sailboat. With their two kids—Sybil, age seven, and George, age two—Juliet and Michael set off for Panama, where their forty-four foot sailboat awaits them. The initial result is transformative; the marriage is given a gust of energy, Juliet emerges from her depression, and the children quickly embrace the joys of being at sea. The vast horizons and isolated islands offer Juliet and Michael reprieve – until they are tested by the unforeseen. A transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of unprecedented turmoil, Sea Wife is unforgettable in its power and astonishingly perceptive in its portrayal of optimism, disillusionment, and survival.

Download or read book Flying Freestyle written by Jerry Pook and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A British Royal Air Force pilot recounts his 25-year career in the cockpit during the Cold War in this military memoir. During a twenty-five-year flying career in the RAF, Jerry Pook has flown Hunter Fighter/Ground Attack aircraft in the Gulf, Harriers in West Germany, the supersonic Starfighter with the Dutch Air Force, the Harrier in Belize, Central America and the Tornado bomber at the Tri-national Tornado Training Establishment where he trained German and Italian pilots and navigators. Jerry had a long relationship with the Harrier Fighter/Ground Attack vertical take-off aircraft. This he flew in West Germany at the height of the Cold War operating from Wildenrath and off-base operations with Field Wing operations based in the fields and woods of the German countryside. Jerry saw action during the Falklands War when based on HMS Hermes and flying one of the few RAF Harriers in the Ground Attack role in support of the troops fighting ashore. He then enjoyed flying the American-built Starfighter RF 104G during a three-year exchange tour with the Dutch Air Force—he describes the Starfighter as “beautiful to fly, smooth and sophisticated, supremely fast and powerful—if you took liberties with it you knew it would kill you in an instant.” After three years with No 1 (Fighter) Squadron and again flying the Harrier, he moved to the then new Tornado, flying in its bomber role. This he continued to fly operationally and in the instructional role for thirteen years until grounded from military flying for medical reasons.

Download or read book Oceana written by Ted Danson and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people know Ted Danson as the affable bartender Sam Malone in the long-running television series Cheers. But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries. In Oceana, Danson details his journey from joining a modest local protest in the mid-1980s to oppose offshore oil drilling near his Southern California neighborhood to his current status as one of the world's most influential oceanic environmental activists, testifying before congressional committees in Washington, D.C.; addressing the World Trade Organization in Zurich, Switzerland; and helping found Oceana, the largest organization in the world focused solely on ocean conservation. In his incisive, conversational voice, Danson describes what has happened to our oceans in just the past half-century, ranging from the ravages of overfishing and habitat destruction to the devastating effects of ocean acidification and the wasteful horrors of fish farms. Danson also shares the stage of Oceana with some of the world's most respected authorities in the fields of marine science, commercial fishing, and environmental law, as well as with other influential activists. Combining vivid, personal prose with an array of stunning graphics, charts, and photographs, Ocean powerfully illustrates the impending crises and offers solutions that may allow us to avert them, showing you the specific courses of action you can take to become active, responsible stewards of our planet's most precious resource—its oceans.

Download or read book Zeitgeist written by Bruce Sterling and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2011-06-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It’s 1999, and in the Turkish half of Cyprus, the ever-enterprising Leggy Starlitz has alighted — pausing on his mission to storm the Third World with the G-7 girls, the cheapest, phoniest all-girl rock group ever to wear Wonderbras and spandex. His market is staring him in the face: millions of teenagers trapped in a world of mullahs and mosques, all ready to blow their pocket change on G-7’s massive merchandising campaign — and to wildly anticipate music the band will never release. Leggy’s brilliant plan means doing business with some of the world’s most dangerous people. Among these thieves, schemers, and killers, he must act quickly and decisively. Y2K is just around the corner — and the only rule to live by is that the whole scheme stops before the year 2000. But Leggy’s G-7 Zeitgeist is in serious jeopardy, for in Istanbul his former partners are getting restless — and the G-7 girls are beginning to die.... From the Paperback edition.

Download or read book The Good Girls written by Sonia Faleiro and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a summer night in 2014, Padma and Lalli went missing from Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in western Uttar Pradesh. Hours later they were found hanging in the orchard behind their home. Who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the people left behind. Slipping deftly behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honor in a village in northern India, The Good Girls returns to the scene of their short lives and shameful deaths, and dares to ask: What is the human cost of shame?

Download or read book Art Is Everything written by Yxta Maya Murray and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her funny, idiosyncratic, and propulsive new novel, Art Is Everything, Yxta Maya Murray offers us a portrait of a Chicana artist as a woman on the margins. L.A. native Amanda Ruiz is a successful performance artist who is madly in love with her girlfriend, a wealthy and pragmatic actuary named Xōchitl. Everything seems under control: Amanda’s grumpy father is living peacefully in Koreatown; Amanda is about to enjoy a residency at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and, once she gets her NEA, she’s going to film a groundbreaking autocritical documentary in Mexico. But then everything starts to fall apart when Xōchitl’s biological clock begins beeping, Amanda’s father dies, and she endures a sexual assault. What happens to an artist when her emotional support vanishes along with her feelings of safety and her finances? Written as a series of web posts, Instagram essays, Snapchat freakouts, rejected Yelp reviews, Facebook screeds, and SmugMug streams-of-consciousness that merge volcanic confession with eagle-eyed art criticism, Art Is Everything shows us the painful but joyous development of a mid-career artist whose world implodes just as she has a breakthrough.

Download or read book Post traumatic written by Chantal V. Johnson and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “deeply original” (Elif Batuman) and “violently funny” (Myriam Gurba) story, a young lawyer finally confronts her dark past so she can live in a more peaceful future. To the outside observer, Vivian is a success story—a dedicated lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a New York City psychiatric hospital. Privately, Vivian contends with the memories and aftereffects of her bad childhood—compounded by the everyday stresses of being a Black Latinx woman in America. She lives in a constant state of hypervigilant awareness that makes even a simple subway ride into a heart-pounding drama. For years, Vivian has self-medicated with a mix of dating, dieting, dark humor and smoking weed with her BFF, Jane. But after a family reunion prompts Vivian to take a bold step, she finds herself alone in new and terrifying ways, without even Jane to confide in, and she starts to unravel. Will she find a way to repair what matters most to her? A debut from a stunning talent, Post-traumatic is a new kind of survivor narrative, featuring a complex heroine who is blazingly, indelibly alive. With razor-sharp prose and mordant wit, Chantal V. Johnson performs an extraordinary feat, delivering a psychologically astute story about the aftermath of trauma that somehow manages to brim with warmth, laughter, and hope.

Download or read book Land of Love and Drowning written by Tiphanie Yanique and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critically acclaimed debut from an award-winning writer—an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands. In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them. Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic, set against the emergence of Saint Thomas into the modern world. Uniquely imagined, with echoes of Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and the author’s own Caribbean family history, the story is told in a language and rhythm that evoke an entire world and way of life and love. Following the Bradshaw family through sixty years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, love affairs, curses, magical gifts, loyalties, births, deaths, and triumphs, Land of Love and Drowning is a gorgeous, vibrant debut by an exciting, prizewinning young writer.

Download or read book RUIN written by Cara Hoffman and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A little girl who disguises herself as an old man, an addict who collects dollhouse furniture, a crime reporter confronted by a talking dog, a painter trying to prove the non-existence of god, and lovers in a penal colony who communicate through technical drawings—these are just a few of the characters who live among the ruins. RUIN is both bracingly timely and eerily timeless in its examination of an American state in free-fall, unsparing in its disregard for broken institutions, while shining with compassion for all who are left in their wake. Cara Hoffman’s short fictions are brutal, surreal, hilarious, and transgressive, celebrating the sharp beauty of outsiders and the infinitely creative ways humans muster psychic resistance under oppressive conditions. The ultimate effect of these ten interconnected stories is one of invigoration and a sense of possibilities—hope for a new world extracted from the rubble of the old.

Download or read book No Friend but the Mountains written by Behrouz Boochani and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison. Composed entirely by text message, this work represents the harrowing experience of stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. In 2013, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island, a refugee detention centre off the coast of Australia. He has been there ever since. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait of five years of incarceration and exile. Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, No Friend but the Mountains is an extraordinary account — one that is disturbingly representative of the experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world. “Our government jailed his body, but his soul remained that of a free man.” — From the Foreword by Man Booker Prize–winning author Richard Flanagan

Download or read book Golden Age written by Jane Smiley and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize: the much-anticipated final volume, following Some Luck and Early Warning, of her acclaimed American trilogy—a richly absorbing new novel that brings the remarkable Langdon family into our present times and beyond A lot can happen in one hundred years, as Jane Smiley shows to dazzling effect in her Last Hundred Years trilogy. But as Golden Age, its final installment, opens in 1987, the next generation of Langdons face economic, social, political—and personal—challenges unlike anything their ancestors have encountered before. Michael and Richie, the rivalrous twin sons of World War II hero Frank, work in the high-stakes world of government and finance in Washington and New York, but they soon realize that one’s fiercest enemies can be closest to home; Charlie, the charming, recently found scion, struggles with whether he wishes to make a mark on the world; and Guthrie, once poised to take over the Langdons’ Iowa farm, is instead deployed to Iraq, leaving the land—ever the heart of this compelling saga—in the capable hands of his younger sister. Determined to evade disaster, for the planet and her family, Felicity worries that the farm’s once-bountiful soil may be permanently imperiled, by more than the extremes of climate change. And as they enter deeper into the twenty-first century, all the Langdon women—wives, mothers, daughters—find themselves charged with carrying their storied past into an uncertain future. Combining intimate drama, emotional suspense, and a full command of history, Golden Age brings to a magnificent conclusion the century-spanning portrait of this unforgettable family—and the dynamic times in which they’ve loved, lived, and died: a crowning literary achievement from a beloved master of American storytelling.