Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a poundat birth, at twenty-three weeks gestation. During the delivery shebegged the doctors to "let her babies go" she knew all too wellthat at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if theysurvived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities.However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter diedjust four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiplydisabled: blind, nonverbal, and dependent on a feeding tube. ThisLovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of theForman family after the birth of the twins the harrowing medicalinterventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity oflife and death. In the end, the longdelayed first steps of afive-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of atriumph narrative. Formans intelligent voice gives a sensitive,nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventualacceptance in this portrait of a mothers fierce love for herchildren.
The Fortress of Solitude is the story of Dylan Ebdus growingup white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's aneighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along withgames of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a blackteenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows theknitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates anoverwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race andclass, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging,loyalty, and memory. The Fortress of Solitude" "is the first greaturban coming of age novel to appear in years.
胖查理在伦敦过着正常的生活,当他给住在美国、久已疏远的父亲打电话,请他来参加自己的婚礼时,却发现父亲刚刚过世了。胖查理去佛罗里达参加了父亲的葬礼,于是惊心动魄的故事逐一上演…… 因为他发现两件事:,他的父亲是化作人形的蜘蛛神阿纳西,一个来自非洲的骗子之神;第二,他还有个叫“蜘蛛”的兄弟继承了父亲的部分神力。蜘蛛拥有胖查理所没有的一切优点:幸运、快活、充满自信,还有父亲的如簧巧舌和追求女人的天份。他的出现把胖查理有条不紊的生活被蜘蛛搅得天翻地覆,他偷走了胖查理的工作、未婚妻,甚至是家中好的房间,更糟的是,他还害胖查理被警方当作挪用公款和谋杀客户的嫌疑犯…… 胖查理身陷囹圄,只得回到佛罗里达,试图摆脱兄弟的干扰。他借助于魔法,进入了图腾动物神祗们居住的灵魂世界,但故
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comesthis compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed HumanFreakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark,count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways.Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, heworks for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cumdetective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King ofBrooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he setsthem are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatallystabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other twovie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel'sworld is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has troubleeven conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case whiletrying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklynis a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel b
The Spartans is a compelling narrative that explores theculture and civilization of the most famous "warrior people": theSpartans of ancient Greece, by the world's leading expert in thefield. Sparta has often been described as the original Utopia--aremarkably evolved society whose warrior heroes were forbidden anyother trade, profession, or business. As a people, the Spartanswere the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline,the nobility of arms in a cause worth dying for, sacrificing theindividual for the greater good of the community (illustrated bytheir role in the battle of Thermopylae), and the triumph of willover seemingly insuperable obstacles--qualities that today arefrequently believed to signify the ultimate heroism. Paul Cartledgeis the distinguished scholar and historian who has long been seenas the leading international authority on ancient Sparta. He tracesthe evolution of Spartan society--the culture and the people, aswell as the tremendous influence they had on their worl
Four friends come together in a hot contemporary erotic novelfrom the author of Chain Reaction. Meet the friends: Free spirited Jamie is not one to be tieddown—unless it’s in the bedroom. Caleb is Jamie’s sexuallyadventurous lover who has no desire to domesticate her. Mia isJamie’s naive friend whose sexual fulfillment has depended solelyon her first and only lover. Aidan thinks he knows what Mia wants.That’s because he’s the only man she’s ever gone to, to getit. This weekend, four best friends at the crossroads of theirrelationships have decided to do something different. But as sexualpartners shift, Jamie, Caleb, Mia, and Aidan will discover moreabout themselves and each other than they ever imagined.
THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES tells of Craig Childs' own chillingexperiences among the grizzlies of the Arctic, sharks off the coastof British Columbia and in the turquoise waters of Central America,jaguars in the bush of northern Mexico, mountain lions, elk,Bighorn Sheep, and others. More than chilling, however, thesestories are lyrical, enchanting, and reach beyond what one commonlyassumes an "animal story" is or should be. THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES isa book about another world that exists alongside our own, an entirerealm of languages and interactions that humans rarely get thechance to witness.
Two classic plays translated by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poetinto English verse. In The Misanthrope, society itself is indictedand the impurity of its critics motives is exposed. In Tartuffe,the bigoted and prudish Orgon falls completely under the power ofthe wily Tartuffe. Introductions by Richard Wilbur.
Perhaps the most famous of Lawrence's novels, the 1928 LadyChatterley's Lover is no longer distinguished for theonce-shockingly explicit treatment of its subject matter--theadulterous affair between a sexually unfulfilled upper-classmarried woman and the game keeper who works for the estate owned byher wheelchaired husband. Now that we're used to reading about sex,and seeing it in the movies, it's apparent that the novel ismemorable for better reasons: namely, that Lawrence was a masterfuland lyrical writer, whose story takes us bodily into the world ofits characters. --This text refers to an alternate Paperbackedition.
Set in Cairo around the end of World War I, as Egypt, a Britishprotectorate, clamors for independence, 1988 Nobel Prize-winnerMahfouz's epic family drama explores deep fissures in thepatriarchal structure of one household. Prosperous merchant AhmadAbd al-Jawad, a tyrant at home, roams Cairo's tawdry entertainmentdistrict by night seeking illicit pleasures. His submissive wifeAmina is chained to the house; he throws her out on the streetafter she commits the sin of going outdoors for a walk. His twodaughters constantly bicker, and his three sons are beyond hiscontrol: Yasin commits sexual assaults on servants; Fahmy becomesan activist in the nationalist movement, while Kamal befriendsBritish soldiers. The first volume in Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy(1956-57), this dense novel charts an Egypt lurching into themodern age. Mahfouz is a master at building up dramatic scenes andat portraying complex characters in depth. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This textrefers to an out of print or unavailable
二十一岁的巴特与十八岁的新兵莫菲,於美国出兵伊拉克前夕于军中相识,两人一见如故,巴特答应莫菲母亲,会平安带著她儿子归来,但二○○五年,只剩巴特独自一人退伍返国。莫菲在伊拉克战场上因饱受死亡威胁,精神崩溃逃出军营,巴特与士官长施大林发现他时,莫菲已遭不明人士虐杀,全身赤裸,不仅眼睛被挖出,耳朵、鼻子被割掉,生殖器也几乎被切断,两人在怕事的心态下将莫菲丢入河中佯装失踪,巴特事后假扮莫菲写了封信给莫菲之母。然而等到巴特退伍回国后,莫菲的尸体浮现在底格里斯河与幼发拉底河的汇流处…… A novel written by a veteran of the war in Iraq, The YellowBirds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stayalive. "The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins thispowerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq,twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighte
GBF Discussion; Guide online Introduction by CynthiaOzick.
In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a smallinheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the onlybookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a successof a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of thetown's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge herneighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne.Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop isapparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect thetruth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wantsone.
Of Galbraith's classic examination of the 1929 financialcollapse, the Atlantic Monthly said: "Economic writings are seldomnotable for their entertainment value, but this book is.Galbraith's prose has grace and wit, and he distills a good deal ofsardonic fun from the whopping errors of the nation's oracles andthe wondrous antics of the financial community." Originallypublished in 1955, Galbraith's book has risen once again asAmericans look for perspective on the current global financialcrisis. This new edition will be published on the 80th anniversaryof the Great Crash with a new introduction by the author's son,economist, James K. Galbraith. He is the author of "The PredatorState: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why LiberalsShould Too."
About to depart on his first vacation inyears, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent tohelp one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. Histask is to search their library stacks for a precious medievalcodex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for manyreasons. Enlisting the help of passionate medievalist MargaretNapier, Edward is determined to solve the mystery of the codex-tounderstand its significance to his wealthy clients, and to decipherthe seeming parallels between the legend of the codex and anobsessive role-playing computer game that has absorbed him in thedark hours of the night. The chilling resolution brings together the medieval and themodern aspects of the plot in a twist worthy of earning comparisonsto novels by William Gibson and Dan Brown, not to mention those byA. S. Byatt and Umberto Eco. Lev Grossman's Codex is a thriller ofthe highest order. When hotshot young investment banker Edward Wozny is called tothe home of an important and
Taking his title from the wounded cry of the once great MaxBialystock in The Producers -- "Look at me now Look at me now I'mwearing a cardboard belt " -- the charming essayist Joseph Epsteingives us his largest and most adventurous collection to date. Withhis signature gifts of sparkling humor and penetratingintelligence, he issues forth as a memoirist, polemicist, literarycritic, and amused observer of contemporary culture. In deeplyconsidered examinations of writers from Paul Valery to TrumanCapote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh-bahs as HaroldBloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing essays abouthis father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkablecollection from one of America's best essayists is a book to besavored.
The first three books in von Ziegesar's Gossip Girls series are packaged together in this paperback boxed set. Includes "Gossip Girl, You Know You Love Me," and "All I Want Is Everything."
In eight new stories, a master of the form extends and magnifies her great themes--the vagaries of love, the passion that leads down unexpected paths, the chaos hovering just under the surface of things, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart. Time stretches out in some of the stories: a man and a woman look back forty years to the summer they met--the summer, as it turns out, that the true nature of their lives was revealed. In others time is telescoped: a young girl finds in the course of an evening that the mother she adores, and whose fluttery sexuality she hopes to emulate, will not sustain her--she must count on herself. Some choices are made--in a will, in a decision to leave home--with irrevocable and surprising consequences. At other times disaster is courted or barely skirted: when a mother has a startling dream about her baby; when a woman, driving her grandchildren to visit the lakeside haunts of her youth, starts a game that could have dangerous consequences.
The Door, Margaret Atwood's first book of poetry since Morningin the Burned House, is a magnificent achievement. Here inpaperback for the first time, these fifty lucid, urgent poems rangein tone from lyric to ironic to mediative to prophetic, and insubject from the personal to the political, viewed in its broadestsense. They investigate the mysterious writing of poetry itself, aswell as the passage of time and our shared sense of mortality.Brave and compassionate, The Door interrogates the certainties thatwe build our lives on, and reminds us once again of MargaretAtwood's unique accomplishments as one of the finest and mostcelebrated writers of our time.