Ayn Rand and the World She Made


Anne C. Heller - 2009
    Altogether, more than 12 million copies of the two novels have been sold in the United States. The books have attracted three generations of readers, shaped the foundation of the Libertarian movement, and influenced White House economic policies throughout the Reagan years and beyond. A passionate advocate of laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights, Rand remains a powerful force in the political perceptions of Americans today. Yet twenty-five years after her death, her readers know little about her life.In this seminal biography, Anne C. Heller traces the controversial author’s life from her childhood in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to her years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that formed around her in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout, Heller reveals previously unknown facts about Rand’s history and looks at Rand with new research and a fresh perspective. Based on original research in Russia, dozens of interviews with Rand’s acquaintances and former acolytes, and previously unexamined archives of tapes and letters, AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE is a comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century.

Go Set a Watchman


Harper Lee - 2015
    Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch—"Scout"—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.

Remember Me


Derek Hansen - 2007
    A twelve-year-old boy writes an essay which inadvertently uncovers a secret from World War II: a secret of a boat adrift on a moonless night, and a treacherous act of kindness. His discovery unleashes a chain of events that rips a close community apart, turning neighbour against neighbour, friend against friend.The boy′s corner of the world has been spared the destruction that ravaged Europe and Asia, but beneath the surface bitter memories and old enmities run deep. The war is over but, as the boy discovers, it is far from done with.Remember Me compellingly evokes the hopes and hardships of the post-war world, and examines what can happen in a close, cosy community when the world comes knocking at the door ... and how redemption may lie in the most unlikely hands.

All the Little Live Things


Wallace Stegner - 1967
    Scarred by the senseless death of their son and baffled by the engulfing chaos of the 1960s, Allston and his wife, Ruth, have left the coast for a California retreat.

The Virgin Blue


Tracy Chevalier - 1997
    When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own. Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family’s French ancestry. As the novel unfolds—alternating between Ella’s story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier—a common thread emerges that unexpectedly links the two women. Part detective story, part historical fiction, The Virgin Blue is a novel of passion and intrigue that compels readers to the very last page.

Monkeys


Susan Minot - 1986
    As they grow older, they meet with the perplexing lives of adults. Susan Minot writes with delicacy and a tremendous gift for the details that decorate domestic life, and when tragedy strikes she beautifully mines the children's tenderness for each other, and their aching guardianship of what they have.

The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot


T.S. Eliot - 1986
    Eliot’s work, all with an active Table of Contents for easy navigation! The collection is formatted for optimal viewing on the Nook! The collection includes:PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS, which contains:• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock• Portrait of a Lady• Preludes• Rhapsody on a Windy Night• Morning at the Window• The Boston Evening Transcript• Aunt Helen• Cousin Nancy• Mr. Apollinax• Hysteria• Conversation Galante• La Figlia Che PiangePOEMS, containing:• Gerontion• Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar• Sweeney Erect• A Cooking Egg• Le Directeur• Mélange adultère de tout• Lune de Miel• The Hippopotamus• Dans le Restaurant• Whispers of Immortality• Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service• Sweeney Among the NightingalesTHE WASTE LANDEELDROP AND APPLEPEX (short story)THE SACRED WOOD: ESSAYS ON POETRY AND CRICTICISM, containing:• The Perfect Critic• Imperfect Critics• Tradition and the Individual Talent• The Possibility of a Poetic Drama• Euripides and Professor Murray• "Rhetoric" and Poetic Drama• Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe• Hamlet and His Problems• Ben Jonson• Philip Massinger• Swinburne As Poet• Blake• DanteEZRA POUND: HIS METRIC AND POETRY

The Guys of Rangoon


Khet Zaw - 2020
    

A Disturbance in One Place


Binnie Kirshenbaum - 1994
    Rootless, bouncing from bed to bed, she knows she is pure of heart. If only she could find where her heart got lost. Irreverent and achingly honest, she points to the small but infinitely deep cracks in our masks, drawing the reader into her world of misadventure -- erotic, comic, and deeply unsettling. Juggling four men -- her husband, "the hit man," "the multimedia artist," and "the love of her life" -- she can't decide whether she is out to prove or disprove the Talmudic wisdom: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

The Dharma Bums


Jack Kerouac - 1958
    Published just a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums is sparked by Kerouac's expansiveness, humor, and a contagious zest for life.

Headless


Benjamin Weissman - 2004
    . . an alphabet soup of -delight in language. Eat up."—Alice Sebold"Brilliant. Wildly inventive, profane, and hilarious."—Bret Easton EllisThe author of the acclaimed cult classic Dear Dead Person ("refreshing, nauseating, hilarious"—Kirkus) returns with this long-awaited collection of brilliantly written and outrageously imaginative short stories.Benjamin Weissman is the author of Dear Dead Person (High Risk/Serpent’s Tail, 1995). He is a contributing editor to Bomb Magazine and writes regularly for the contemporary art magazines Parkett and Artforum. A painter and a professor at Art Center College of Design and Otis College of the Arts, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Telegraph Avenue


Michael Chabon - 2012
    Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland. When ex–NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of fifteen-year-old Julius Jaffe's life. An intimate epic, a NorCal Middlemarch set to the funky beat of classic vinyl soul-jazz and pulsing with a virtuosic, pyrotechnical style all its own, Telegraph Avenue is the great American novel we've been waiting for. Generous, imaginative, funny, moving, thrilling, humane, triumphant, it is Michael Chabon's most dazzling book yet.

True North


Kimberly Kafka - 2000
    She is the only white woman in a land owned by the local Ingalik tribe; her closest neighbor is a fellow bush pilot and activist named Kash. Bailey and Kash are drawn to each other, but their fiercely independent natures keep them apart. When two Easterners hire Bailey to pilot them into the bush, a series of events is set in motion that will upset the delicate racial balance of the land and lead to violence. As the truth behind the couple's arrival becomes apparent, the refuge Bailey has created for herself shatters. Forced to face the demons of her unresolved past, she is given a chance to free herself at last from the secret that haunts her.  Marked by spare, resonant prose and imbued with an indelible sense of place, True North tells a powerful story of adventure and survival. It is a welcome debut by a gifted new voice in literary fiction.

The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way: Poems


Ethan Coen - 2001
    In his screenplays and short stories, Ethan Coen surprises and delights us with a rich brew of ideas, observations, and perceptions. In his first collection of poems he does much the same. The range of his poems is remarkable–funny, ribald, provocative, sometimes raw, and often touching and profound.In these poems Coen writes of his childhood, his hopes and dreams, his disappointments, his career in Hollywood, his physically demanding love affair with Mamie Eisenhower, and his decade-long battle with amphetamines that produced some of the lengthier poems in the collection. You will chuckle, nodding with recognition as you turn the pages, perhaps even stopping occasionally to read a poem. Handsomely and durably bound between hard covers, this is a book that will stand up to most readers’ attempts to destroy it.

The Imperfectionists


Tom Rachman - 2010
    Fifty years and many changes have ensued since the paper was founded by an enigmatic millionaire, and now, amid the stained carpeting and dingy office furniture, the staff’s personal dramas seem far more important than the daily headlines. Kathleen, the imperious editor in chief, is smarting from a betrayal in her open marriage; Arthur, the lazy obituary writer, is transformed by a personal tragedy; Abby, the embattled financial officer, discovers that her job cuts and her love life are intertwined in a most unexpected way. Out in the field, a veteran Paris freelancer goes to desperate lengths for his next byline, while the new Cairo stringer is mercilessly manipulated by an outrageous war correspondent with an outsize ego. And in the shadows is the isolated young publisher who pays more attention to his prized basset hound, Schopenhauer, than to the fate of his family’s quirky newspaper. As the era of print news gives way to the Internet age and this imperfect crew stumbles toward an uncertain future, the paper’s rich history is revealed, including the surprising truth about its founder’s intentions. Spirited, moving, and highly original, The Imperfectionists will establish Tom Rachman as one of our most perceptive, assured literary talents.