She thought she could even pinpoint the exact moment at which Iris had made up her mind to go, leaving her only child behind. Neither of them could have guessed then that they would never live together again.Spanning the second half of the last century, ‘My Former Heart’, Cressida Connolly’s mesmerising first novel, charts the lives of three generations of Iris’s family. Ruth will be deserted again, many years later, by a husband she loves, but not before she has had two children by him. She leaves London to live with her uncle, where she creates a new life for herself with another woman. And we follow the lives of her two children, trying to make a place for themselves in the world in the shadow of the family that precedes them.With its large cast of fascinating characters, this is an outstanding novel about families and their ability to adapt. It surely marks the beginning of a long career as a novelist for Cressida Connolly.

    He explores the relationship between the two, and examines how they impact achievement, productivity and creativity. Written in Arabic by Sheikh Mohammed’s own hand, this insightful book includes both personal stories and an international perspective to emphasize the pivotal role that happiness and positivity play in forming leadership strategies and fostering relationships among team members.

    Kennedy Jr., from The Atlantic Monthly “Watching the Detectives” by Jay Kirk, from Harper’s Magazine “For the Love of God” by Jon Krakauer, from GQ “Chief Bratton Takes on LA” by Heather Mac Donald, from City Journal “Not Guilty by Reason of Afghanistan” by John H. Richardson, from Esquire “Megan’s Law and Me” by Brendan Riley, from Details “Unfortunate Con” by Mark Schone, from The Oxford American “To Kill or Not to Kill” by Scott Turow, from The New Yorker

    But it's also true, as Sebastian Faulks argues in this remarkable book, that the novel helped invent the British: for the first time we had stories that reflected the experiences of ordinary people, with characters in which we could find our reality, our understanding and our escape.In Faulks on Fiction, Faulks examines many of these enduring fictional characters from over the centuries -- Heroes from Tom Jones to John Self, Lovers from Mr Darcy to Lady Chatterly, Villains from Fagin to Barbara Covett, and Snobs from Emma Woodhouse to James Bond -- and shows us how they mapped and inspired the British psyche, and continue to do so.Published to coincide with a major BBC series, Faulks on Fiction is an engaging and opinionated look at the psychology of the British through their literature, and a unique social history of Britain from one of our most respected writers.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Having uprooted herself from a promising career in publishing in her adopted Brooklyn, Palmer embarks on a quest to determine the fate of her lost homes—and of a community that has been erased by unchecked Southern progress. Palmer's journey takes her from the ruins of kudzu-covered, airport-owned ghost towns to carefully preserved cemeteries wedged between the runways; into awkward confrontations with airport planners, developers, and even her own parents. Along the way, Palmer becomes an amateur detective, an urban historian, and a mother. Lyrically chronicling the overlooked devastation and beauty along the airport’s fringe communities in the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Leslie Jamison, Palmer unearths the startling narratives about race, power, and place that continue to shape American cities. Part memoir, part urban history, Flight Path: A Search for My Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport is a riveting account of one young mother's attempt at making a home where there’s little home left.

    R. R. Tolkien in 1931, given at a conference. Some twenty years later, Tolkien revised the manuscript for a second presentation.It deals with constructed languages in general, and the relation of a mythology to its language. Tolkien contrasts international auxiliary languages with artistic languages constructed for aesthetic pleasure. Tolkien also discusses phonaesthetics, citing Greek, Finnish, and Welsh as examples of "languages which have a very characteristic and in their different ways beautiful word-form".Tolkien's opinion of the relation of mythology and language is reflected in examples cited in Quenya and Noldorin, the predecessors of Quenya and Sindarin. The essay contains three Quenya poems, Oilima Markirya ("The Last Ark"), Nieninque, and Earendel, as well as an eight-line passage in Noldorin.From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secre...

    It looked like something out of a movie--and, in a way, it was. The ship was the Bounty, a replica of a British merchant vessel of the same name whose crew famously mutinied in 1789. She had been built for a Marlon Brando film in the 1960s--and now she was sinking, her sixteen-person crew fleeing into the sea amid the splintered wood and torn canvas. Was the Bounty's sinking--which left her captain missing and one of her crew members dead--an unavoidable tragedy? Or was it the fault of a captain who was willing to risk everything to save the ship he loved? Drawing on exclusive interviews with Bounty survivors and Coast Guard rescuers, journalist Matthew Shaer reconstructs the ship's final voyage and the Coast Guard investigation into her sinking that followed, uncovering a riveting story of heroism and hubris in the eye of a hurricane. Praise for The Sinking of the Bounty:"Matthew Shaer masterfully recreates the last voyage and final doom of the Bounty, an iconic ship that collided with an historic storm off the Carolina coast. Shaer pulls you off the page and onto the Bounty itself--and then into the roiling sea--to relive a long night of terror, heroism and desperate quests for survival. The Sinking of the Bounty is a classic of the genre, beautifully told and riveting to read."—Sean Flynn, GQ correspondent and author of 3000 Degrees: The True Story of a Deadly Fire and the Men Who Fought It"Few images of Hurricane Sandy's destruction were as indelible, or as surreal, as the shattered wreck of the Bounty sinking beneath the waves of the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic.' Matthew Shaer's The Sinking of the Bounty is a powerful and riveting account of the disaster: the fateful decision to set sail before the storm, the crew's epic struggle to save the ship and then themselves, and the heroic rescue launched by the Coast Guard in the middle of the largest storm the Atlantic has ever seen. In the tradition of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, this is fast-paced and deeply reported storytelling."—Matthew Power, contributing editor, Harper's

    ducked into his classroom at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in September of 1965, his jokes drew only weak laughter and a few rolled eyes. But workshop student Loree Rackstraw was quietly impressed by this “great bear of a man” and his down-to-earth sensibilities about writing.That fall, an impossible romance began between the then-unknown author and his student—a brief affair that matured into a joyful, lifelong friendship. Rackstraw distills four decades of memories and Vonnegut’s letters to her into an affectionate memoir that crackles with the creative energy of one of America’s most beloved writers.Rackstraw’s unique perspective on Vonnegut’s life and how it shaped his famous works portrays a deeply humane man who looked for the humor and absurdity in life in order to survive. And then there are Vonnegut’s own letters: Whether energetic about new projects or frustrated with the “game” of writing and selling “a gazoolian copies,” Vonnegut writes with the playful imagination and generous, accessible brilliance that have always been his trademarks.

    “Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats” is a fun, inspiring and humorous read you'll enjoy from cover to cover, full of useful and encouraging words of wisdom from 27 women who made the move and couldn’t be happier. In inspiring words straight from the heart, the contributors share their plans and preparations, hardships and challenges, joys and satisfactions as their new lives in Mexico unfold.

    A. S. Byatt does, and her case is persuasive. In a series of essays on the complicated relations between reading, writing, and remembering, the gifted novelist and critic sorts the modish from the merely interesting and the truly good to arrive at a new view of British writing in our time.Whether writing about the renaissance of the historical novel, discussing her own translation of historical fact into fiction, or exploring the recent European revival of interest in myth, folklore, and fairytale, Byatt's abiding concern here is with the interplay of fiction and history. Her essays amount to an eloquent and often moving meditation on the commitment to historical narrative and storytelling that she shares with many of her British and European contemporaries. With copious illustration and abundant insights into writers from Elizabeth Bowen and Henry Green to Anthony Burgess, William Golding, Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald, Julian Barnes, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, and Pat Barker, On Histories and Stories is an oblique defense of the art Byatt practices and a map of the complex affiliations of British and European narrative since 1945.

    From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and enough infectious enthusiasm to make a passionate reader out of anybody.

    Containing over 80 slice-of-life stories by a bestselling outdoor humorist, this collection brings together for the first time three works by McManus: A Fine and Pleasant Misery, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, and They Shoot Canoes, Don't They?.

    And yet at the same time, like another masterpiece of fiction, James Joyce's Ulysses, it's been deemed endlessly complex and filled with impenetrable mysteries. Now, however, in the first book-length investigation of Wolfe's literary puzzlebox, Robert Borski takes you inside the twisting corridors of the tetralogy and along the way reveals his solutions to many of the novel's conundrums and riddles, such as who really is Severian's lost twin sister (almost certainly not who you think) and why he believes the novel's main character may not even be the torturer Severian. Furthermore, and in essay after essay, Borski demonstrates how a single master key will unlock many of the book's secret relationships--all in the attempt to guide you through the labyrinth that is Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN.

    She shows us that this most intellectual of poets is in fact the most personal of poets; that his words are not devoted to epistemological questions alone but are also "words chosen out of desire."

    The entries explore all aspects of literature from around the world: biographies of poets and playwrights, novelists and belle trists; plot synopses and character sketches from important works; historical data on literary schools, movements, terms and awards; myths and legends; and more.Completely revised and updated, this fourth edition captures the diversity of today's canon, with greater attention to African-American, Eastern, Middle Eastern, African, South American, Eastern European and women's literature.For nearly 50 years, this unique single-volume encyclopedia of world literature has been hailed as the best available. Here are over 10,000 informative entries, covering everything a reader could wish to know:Biographies of poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists and belle trists from around the world and through the ages, from Aristophanes to Toni Morrison, from Chuang Tzu to Juan Rulfo.Plot summaries of important literary works, ranging from Beowulf to Wuthering Heights to Things Fall Apart.Sketches of principal characters from literature, from Salome to Leopold Bloom.Myth, legend and folklore, covering everything from Isis to the Midgard Serpentto to the paladins.Biographies of artists, musicians, philosophers and other historical personages ranging from Roman emperors to U.S. presidents who figure prominently in literature.Accounts of significant schools and movements in literature, such as the Bloomsbury Group and the Beat writers.Original titles, as well as the most familiar English titles, for works in languages other than English.Recipients of major literary awards, including Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners.And more...For nearly 50 years, William Rose Benet and the editors who succeeded him have upheld the level of quality that distinguished the original Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Like its predecessors, this new edition will teach and delight, illuminate and expound, and enrich the pleasure of reading in countless ways.