Download or read book We Live in Water written by Jess Walter and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019 From the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter—a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him a bookseller and reader favorite These twelve stories—published over the last five years in Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Playboy, and other publications—veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive conmen, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing. We Live in Water is a darkly comic, heartfelt collection of stories from a “ridiculously talented writer” (New York Times), “one of the freshest voices in American literature” (Dallas Morning News).
Download or read book Beautiful Ruins written by Jess Walter and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Why mince words? Beautiful Ruins is an absolute masterpiece.” — Richard Russo The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet: the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 . . . and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later. The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, deep in daydreams, looks out over the waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an American starlet, he soon learns, and she is dying. And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier. What unfolds is a dazzling roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow. Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
Download or read book A Long Walk to Water written by Linda Sue Park and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2010 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, 11-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan. By a Newbery Medal-winning author.
Download or read book The Water Is Wide written by Pat Conroy and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “miraculous” (Newsweek) human drama, based on a true story, from the renowned author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini The island is nearly deserted, haunting, beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. For years the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe. Waste from industry threatens their very existence unless, somehow, they can learn a new way. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher—until one man gives a year of his life to the island and its people. Praise for The Water Is Wide “Miraculous . . . an experience of joy.”—Newsweek “A powerfully moving book . . . You will laugh, you will weep, you will be proud and you will rail . . . and you will learn to love the man.”—Charleston News and Courier “A hell of a good story.”—The New York Times “Few novelists write as well, and none as beautifully.”—Lexington Herald-Leader “[Pat] Conroy cuts through his experiences with a sharp edge of irony. . . . He brings emotion, writing talent and anger to his story.”—Baltimore Sun
Download or read book Citizen Vince written by Jess Walter and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the highly acclaimed new crime novelist: a story of witness protection, petty thievery, local politics, and murder—set against the turbulent backdrop of the 1980 presidential election It’s the fall of 1980, the last week before the presidential election that pits the downtrodden Jimmy Carter against the suspiciously sunny Ronald Reagan. In a seedy suburban house in Spokane, a small-time crook formerly from New York, Vince Camden, pockets his weekly allotment of stolen credit cards and heads off to his witness-protection job at a donut shop. A the shop he takes a shine to a regular named Kelly, who works for a local politician. Somehow he finds himself and the politician in a parking lot at three in the morning, giving the slip to a couple of menacing thugs. And then he crosses the path of a young detective—and discovers his credit-scam partner, lying dead in his passport-photo office with a Cheerio-size bullet-hole in his head. No one writing crime novels today tells a story or sketches a character with more freshness or elan than Jess Walter. Citizen Vince is his funniest and grittiest book yet.
Download or read book The Cold Millions written by Jess Walter and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most captivating novels of the year.” – Washington Post NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: Bloomberg | Boston Globe | Chicago Public Library | Chicago Tribune | Esquire | Kirkus | New York Public Library | New York Times Book Review (Historical Fiction) | NPR's Fresh Air | O Magazine | Washington Post | Publishers Weekly | Seattle Times | USA Today A Library Reads Pick | An Indie Next Pick From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century. An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war? Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).
Download or read book The Angel of Rome written by Jess Walter and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes—for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous—as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In this riveting collection of stories from acclaimed author Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A son must repeatedly come out to his senile father while looking for a place to care for the old man. A famous actor in recovery has a one-night stand with the world's most surprising film critic. And in the romantic title story, a shy twenty-one-year-old studying Latin in Rome during “the year of my reinvention” finds himself face-to-face with the Italian actress of his adolescent dreams. Funny, poignant, and redemptive, this collection of short fiction offers a dazzling range of voices, backdrops, and situations. With his signature wit and bighearted approach to the darkest parts of humanity, Walter tackles the modern condition with a timeless touch, once again “solidifying his place in the contemporary canon as one of our most gifted builders of fictional worlds” (Esquire).
Download or read book We Are Taking Only What We Need written by Stephanie Powell Watts and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these powerfully rendered, prizewinning stories, working-class African Americans across the South strive for meaning and search for direction in lives shaped by forces beyond their control The ten stories in this resonant collection deal with both the ties that bind and the gulf that separates generations, from children confronting the fallibility of their own parents for the first time to adults finding themselves forced to start over again and again. In “Highway 18”a young Jehovah’s Witness going door to door with an expert field-service partner from up north is at a crossroads: will she go to college or continue to serve the church? “If You Hit Randall County, You’ve Gone Too Far”tells ofa family trying to make it through a tense celebratory dinner for a son just out on bail. And in the collection’s title story, a young girl experiences loss for the first time in the fallout from her father’s relationship with her babysitter. Startling, intimate, and prescient on their own, these stories build to a kaleidoscopic understanding of both the individual and the collective black experience over the last fifty years in the American South. With We Are Taking Only What We Need, Stephanie Powell Watts has crafted an incredibly assured and emotionally affecting meditation on everything from the large institutional forces to the small interpersonal moments that impress upon us and direct our lives.
Download or read book Life as We Knew it written by Susan Beth Pfeffer and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open. High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, like "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all--hope--in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut Susan Beth Pfeffer has written several companion novels to Life As We Knew It, including The Dead and the Gone, This World We Live In, and The Shade of the Moon.
Download or read book The Financial Lives of the Poets written by Jess Walter and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-08-05 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small-time finance journalist Matthew Prior gave up his day-job and gambled everything on setting up a website offering financial advice ... in witty blank verse. Then he woke up one day in the middle of the worst crisis since the 30s with no business, a shedload of debt, a lot of guilt and a great deal of suspicion about his wife who spends her time flirting online with her childhood sweetheart - a real guy with a real, man's job. So when Matt's offered some high-grade dope, and finds he can sell a little bit of it on, he thinks that maybe this is where the future lies... As Matt battles to save his marriage, his children's future and his sanity too, The Financial Lives of the Poets becomes a hugely funny but heartfelt novel about how we can reach the edge of ruin - and pull back.
Download or read book Memory of Water written by Emmi Itäranta and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An amazing, award-winning speculative fiction debut novel by a major new talent, in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin. Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village. But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town—and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship. Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.
Download or read book Our Wives Under the Sea written by Julia Armfield and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, The Telegraph, Goodreads, Tor.com, them, and more) “A deeply strange and haunting novel in the best possible way...An impressive and exciting debut novel that may leave you thinking about your own relationships in a new light.” —NPR “Shocking...Achingly poetic...Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps...Armfield exercises an exquisite—even sadistic—sense of suspense." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp. By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.
Download or read book Texas Aquatic Science written by Rudolph A. Rosen and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-29 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classroom resource provides clear, concise scientific information in an understandable and enjoyable way about water and aquatic life. Spanning the hydrologic cycle from rain to watersheds, aquifers to springs, rivers to estuaries, ample illustrations promote understanding of important concepts and clarify major ideas. Aquatic science is covered comprehensively, with relevant principles of chemistry, physics, geology, geography, ecology, and biology included throughout the text. Emphasizing water sustainability and conservation, the book tells us what we can do personally to conserve for the future and presents job and volunteer opportunities in the hope that some students will pursue careers in aquatic science. Texas Aquatic Science, originally developed as part of a multi-faceted education project for middle and high school students, can also be used at the college level for non-science majors, in the home-school environment, and by anyone who educates kids about nature and water. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.
Download or read book The Zero written by Jess Walter and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this National Book Award Finalist, a cop navigates unexplained memory gaps, a mysterious new assignment, and a world gone mad in the wake of 9/11. Officer Brian Remy has no idea how he got here. It’s been only five days since terrorists attacked his city, and Remy is experiencing gaps in his life—as if he were a stone being skipped across water. He has a self-inflicted gunshot wound that he doesn’t remember inflicting. He has a beautiful new girlfriend whose name he doesn’t know. His son insists on mourning him, despite his being alive. And his old partner now appears on a box of First Responder cereal. While smoke still hangs over the city, Remy is recruited by a shadowy government agency assigned to gather all of the paper that was scattered in the attacks. As Remy stumbles across a dangerous plot, he realizes he must track down the most elusive target of all—himself. And the only way to do that is to return to that place where everything started falling apart.
Download or read book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes written by Dan Egan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award "Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh water and provide sustenance, work, and recreation for tens of millions of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading across the continent. The Death and Life of the Great Lakes is prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe happening right before our eyes, blending the epic story of the lakes with an examination of the perils they face and the ways we can restore and preserve them for generations to come.
Download or read book How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water written by Angie Cruz and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE · A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK · REVIEWED ON THE FRONT COVER From GMA BOOK CLUB PICK and WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana, an electrifying new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story “Will have you LAUGHING line after line...Cruz AIMS FOR THE HEART, and fires.” —Los Angeles Times "An endearing portrait of a FIERCE, FUNNY woman." —The Washington Post Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification and loss, and, eventually, what really happened between her and her estranged son, Fernando. As Cara confronts her darkest secrets and regrets, we see a woman buffeted by life but still full of fight. Structurally inventive and emotionally kaleidoscopic, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is Angie Cruz’s most ambitious and moving novel yet, and Cara is a heroine for the ages.
Download or read book The Water Walker written by Joanne Robertson and published by Second Story Press. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a determined Ojibwe Grandmother (Nokomis) Josephine-ba Mandamin and her great love for Nibi (water). Nokomis walks to raise awareness of our need to protect Nibi for future generations, and for all life on the planet. She, along with other women, men, and youth, have walked around all the Great Lakes from the four salt waters, or oceans, to Lake Superior. The walks are full of challenges, and by her example Josephine-ba invites us all to take up our responsibility to protect our water, the giver of life, and to protect our planet for all generations.
