Whether you are working on the novel that's been in the back ofyour mind for years or simply facing an increasing demand to writewell at work or school, the fact remains: more and more of us arewriting more often these days-reports, e-mails, faxes, andnewsletters. But despite the increase in written communication,something has been lost-the fundamentals of good writing. Grammarmaven Patricia T. O'Conner comes to the rescue with the mostpainless, practical, and funny writing book ever written. In short,snappy chapters filled with crystal-clear examples, amusingcomparisons, and humorous allegories that cover everything from"Pronoun Pileups" and "Verbs That Zing" to "What to Do When You'reStuck," O'Conner provides simple, straightforward tips to help yousort your thoughts and make sentences that make sense. Push asidethose stuffy old-fashioned rule books, because O'Conner has writtenthe most accessible and enjoyable book yet for today's writer.
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about herlife in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was onlythree when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldierand went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence ofthe past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna,Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor ofGerman history, begins investigating the past and finally unearthsthe dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation oflife during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, ThoseWho Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure tosurvive and the legacy of shame.
Philip Schultz, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry,has been celebrated for his singular vision of the Americanimmigrant experience and Jewish identity, his alternately fierceand tender portrayal of family life, and his rich and riotousevocation of city streets. His poems have found enthusiasticaudiences among readers of Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac,""Slate," "The New Yorker," and other publications. His willingnessto face down the demons of failure and loss, in his previous bookparticularly, make him a poet for our times, a poet who can write"If I have to believe in something, I believe in despair." Yet heremains oddly undaunted: "sometimes, late at night, we, myhappiness and I, reminisce, lifelong antagonists enjoying eachother's company.""The God of Loneliness," a major collection ofSchultz's work, includes poems from his five books ("Like Wings,""Deep Within the Ravine," "The Holy Worm of Praise," "Living in thePast," "Failure") and fourteen new poems. It is a volume tocherish, fro
In The Sackett Brand, Louis L'Amour spins the story of acourageous man who must face overwhelming odds to track down akiller. Tell Sackett and his bride Ange came to Arizona to build ahome and start a family. But on Black Mesa something goes terriblywrong. Tell is ambushed and badly injured. When he finally managesto drag himself back to where he left Ange, she is gone. Desperate,cold, hungry, and with nothing to defend himself, Tell is stalkedlike a wounded animal. Hiding from his attackers, his rage andfrustration mount as he tries to figure out who the men are, whythey are trying to kill him, and what has happened to his wife.Discovering the truth will be risky. And when he finally does, itwill be their turn to run.
Ten superb new stories by one of our most beloved and admired writersthe winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize. In the first story a young wife and mother receives release from the unbearable pain of losing her three children from a most surprising source. In another, a young woman, in the aftermath of an unusual and humiliating seduction, reacts in a clever if less-than-admirable fashion. Other stories uncover the “deep-holes” in a marriage, the unsuspected cruelty of children, and how a boy’s disfigured face provides both the good things in his life and the bad. And in the long title story, we accompany Sophia Kovalevskya late-nineteenth-century Russian émigré and mathematicianon a winter journey that takes her from the Riviera, where she visits her lover, to Paris, Germany, and, Denmark, where she has a fateful meeting with a local doctor, and finally to Sweden, where she teaches at the only university in Europe willing to employ a female mathematician. With clarity an
From David Baldacci--the modern master of the thriller and #1worldwide bestselling novelist-comes a new hero: a lone ArmySpecial Agent taking on the toughest crimes facing thenation. And Zero Day is where it all begins.... John Puller is a combat veteran and the best militaryinvestigator in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division.His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is servinga life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Pullerhas an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find thetruth. Now, Puller is called out on a case in a remote, rural area inWest Virginia coal country far from any military outpost. Someonehas stumbled onto a brutal crime scene, a family slaughtered. Thelocal homicide detective, a headstrong woman with personal demonsof her own, joins forces with Puller in the investigation. AsPuller digs through deception after deception, he realizes thatabsolutely nothing he's seen in this small town, and no one in it,are what th
In this wickedly funny novel, Robert Ludlum combines theexplosive pacing of The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacywith a bitingly witty send-up of everything from governmentbureaucrats and pandering military men to the mob, the law, andorganized religion. War hero and infamous ladies' man, GeneralMacKenzie Hawkins is a living legend. His life story had even beensold to Hollywood. But now he stands accused of defacing a historicmonument in China's Forbidden City. Under house arrest in Peking,with a case against him pending in Washington, it looks like theend of Mac's illustrious career. But he has a plan of his own--andit includes kidnapping the Pope. What's the ransom? Just oneAmerican dollar--"for every Catholic in the world." Add to the mixa slew of shady "investors," Hawkins's four persuasive,well-endowed ex-wives, and a young lawyer and fellow soldier whowants nothing more than to return to private life--and you've gotone relentlessly irreverent page-turner.
Harry Bernstein started chronicling his life at the age ofninety-four, after the death of his beloved wife, Ruby. In hisfirst book, The Invisible Wall , he told a haunting story offorbidden love in World War I-era England. Then Bernstein wrote The Dream , the touching tale of his family’s immigrantexperience in Depression-era Chicago and New York. Now Bernsteincompletes the saga with The Golden Willow , a heart-liftingmemoir of his life with Ruby, a romance that lasted nearly seventyyears. They met at a dance at New York’s legendary Webster Hall, fellinstantly and madly in love, and embarked on a rich and rewardinglife together. From their first tiny rented room on the Upper WestSide to their years in Greenwich Village, immersed in the artscene, surrounded by dancers, musicians, and writers, to their lifein the newly burgeoning suburbs, Harry and Ruby pursued theAmerican dream with gusto, much as Harry’s late mother would havewanted. Together, through a depression, a world war, and the McCarthy era
An epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon. King says he wanted to know what happened to Danny Torrance, the boy at the heart of The Shining , after his terrible experience in the Overlook Hotel. The instantly riveting Doctor Sleep picks up the story of the now middle-aged Dan, working at a hospice in rural New Hampshire, and the very special twelve-year old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals. On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the 'steam' that children with the 'shining' produce when they are slowly tortured to death. Haunted by the inhabitants of the Over
Kevin Bradley and his partners are uniquely qualified tohandle cases involving the occult-he and Evan Davis are far morethan the mere mortals they appear to be. Kevin is a powerful daemonlord, and Evan is his half-daemon, half-human son. Solving mortalcrimes should be a cinch for them. But somehow, they never get theeasy, open-and-shut cases.
Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010: "The awful thing about life is this:" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. "Everyone has his reasons." That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with creating merely likeable characters than ones who are fully alive, in all their self-justifying complexity. Freedom is his fourth novel, and, yes, his first in nine years since The Corrections. Happy to say, it's very much a match for that great book, a wrenching, funny, and forgiving portrait of a Midwestern family (from St. Paul this time, rather than the fictional St. Jude). Patty and Walter Berglund find each other early: a pretty jock, focused on the court and a little lost off it, and a stolid budding lawyer, besotted with her and almost burdened by his integrity. They make a family and a life together, and, over time, slowly lose track of each other. Their stories align at times with Big Issues--among them mountaintop removal, war pro
'One of the most profoundly affecting books I've read in along time' JOHN BOYNE, author of THE BOY INTHE STRIPEDPYJAMAS 'This book will break your heart' IrishTimes 'A triumph' Daily Telegraph 'Affecting and uplifting' EveningStandard 'Haunting and compelling' Woman Home 'Utterly gripping' Mirror Book of the Week**** 'Heart-burstingly, gut-wrenchinglycompassionate' Daily Mail 'Beautifully nuanced' SundayTelegraph 'Totally unique and intriguing'Cosmopolitan 'Absorbing, truthful and beautiful'Observer
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill,Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from therest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into itand fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand issevered as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands inthe neighboring town are divided from their families, and carsexplode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where itcame from, and when -- or if -- it will go away. Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, findshimself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper ownerJulia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, aselect-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big JimRennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- tohold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horriblesecret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Domeitself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.
Scott Schuman just wanted to take photographs of people that he met on the streets of New York who he felt looked great. His now-famous and much-loved blog, thesartorialist.com, is his showcase for the wonderful and varied sartorial tastes of real people across the globe. This book is a beautiful anthology of Scott ’s favorite images, accompanied by his insightful commentary. It includes photographs of well-known fashion figures alongside people encountered on the street whose personal style and taste demand a closer look. From the streets of New York to the parks of Florence, from Stockholm to Paris, from London to Moscow and Milan, these are the men and women who have inspired Scott and the many diverse and fashionable readers of his blog. After fifteen years in the fashion business, Scott Schuman felt a growing disconnect between what he saw on the runways and in magazines, and what real people were wearing. The Sartorialist was his attempt to redress the balance. Since its beginning, the b
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautifulyoung woman is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The victim makesheadlines as the Black Dahlia-and so begins the greatest manhunt inCalifornia history.Caught up in the investigation are BuckyBleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, andrivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with theDahlia-driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, tocapture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their questwill take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly ofpostwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life,past the extremes of their own psyches-into a region of totalmadness.
This remarkable and beautiful book documents the period ofexploration and enlightenment when the Old World began to open itsmind to the wonders and mysteries of the New World. Five centuriesof eyewitness accounts, drawings, and notes, taken straight fromthe log books of such famous explorers as Christopher Columbus,Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco de Gama, James Cook, and many others whonames have been lost, appear in these glowing pages. For the sakeof gold and God, these explorers ventured into the Sea of Darknessfeared for centuries; the detailed documents they compiled are aremarkable testament to their journeys and discoveries. Fran?ois Bellec, a world famous expert in the field of maritimeexploration and history, has assembled a unique document filledwith extraordinary maps drawn by the explorers and theircartographers; fabulous depictions of newly encountered plants,animals, and native people; and detailed illustrations of theadventurers' own vessels and instruments, as well as the boats andinstr
