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.

Norman Mailer: A Double Life


J. Michael Lennon - 2013
    He was a novelist, journalist, biographer, and filmmaker; a provocateur and passionate observer of his times; and a husband, father, and serial philanderer.Perhaps nothing characterized Mailer more than his unbounded ambition. He wanted not merely to be the greatest writer of his generation, but a writer great enough to be compared to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. As Michael Lennon describes, he even had presidential ambitions, although he settled for running for mayor of New York City. He championed personal freedom and civil liberties, calling himself a “left conservative,” and yet he was Enemy #1 of the Women’s Movement. He was as pugnacious in real life as in print, engaging in famous feuds and fights. Although he considered himself first and foremost a novelist, his greatest literary contribution may have been in journalism, where he used his novelistic gifts in tandem with self-revelation to explore the American psyche. In that regard, the subtitle of his Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning Armies of the Night is telling: “History as a Novel, the Novel as History.” He would return to certain subjects obsessively: John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, sex, technology, and the intricate relationship of fame and identity. Michael Lennon’s definitive biography captures Mailer in all his sharp complexities and shows us how he self-consciously invented and reinvented himself throughout his lifetime.Michael Lennon knew Mailer for thirty-five years, and in writing this biography, he has had the cooperation of Mailer’s late widow, Norris Church, his ex-wives, and all of his children, as well as his sister, Barbara. He also had access to Mailer’s vast, unpublished correspondence and papers, and he interviewed dozens of people who knew Mailer. Norman Mailer: A Double Life gives us the man in full, a remarkable and unique figure in the context of his times.

Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction


Charles Baxter - 1997
    By inviting the reader to explore the imagination's grip on daily life and how one lives in the pressure of that grip, Baxter offers his own perspective on reading and writing contemporary fiction.

The Pooh Perplex


Frederick C. Crews - 1963
    Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.

Half of What You Hear


Kristyn Kusek Lewis - 2018
    When Bess Warner arrives in town with her husband Cole and their kids, she thinks she knows what to expect. Sure, moving to Cole’s small hometown means she’ll have to live across the street from her mother-in-law, and yes, there’s going to be a lot to learn as they take over Cole’s family’s inn-keeping business, but Bess believes it will be the perfect escape from Washington. She needs it to be. After losing her White House job under a cloud of scandal, she hardly knows who she is anymore.But Bess quickly discovers that fitting in is easier said than done. Instead of the simpler life she’d banked on, she finds herself preoccupied by barbed questions from gossipy locals and her own worries over how her twins are acclimating at the town’s elite private school. When the opportunity to write an article for the Washington Post’s lifestyle supplement falls into Bess’s lap, she thinks it might finally be her opportunity to find her footing here…even if the subject of the piece is Greyhill’s most notorious resident.Susannah “Cricket” Lane, fruit of the town’s deepest-rooted family tree, is a special sort of outsider, having just returned to Greyhill from New York after a decades-long hiatus. The long absence has always been the subject of suspicion, not that the eccentric Susannah cares what anyone thinks; as a matter of fact, she seems bent on antagonizing as many people as possible. But is Susannah being sincere with Bess—or is she using their strangely intense interview sessions for her to further an agenda that includes peeling back the layers of Greyhill’s darkest secrets?As Bess discovers unsettling truths about Susannah and Greyhill at large, ones that bring her into the secrets of prior generations, she begins to learn how difficult it is to start over in a town that runs on talk, and that sometimes, the best way to find yourself is to uncover what everyone around you is hiding....

The Rhetoric of Fiction


Wayne C. Booth - 1961
    One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon.For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."

While the Auto Waits


O. Henry
    

The Architecture of Snow


David Morrell - 2009
    D. Salinger. In the mid-1960s, the revered creator of The Catcher in the Rye suddenly stopped publishing and withdrew from public life. In David Morrell’s haunting “The Architecture of Snow,” an author similar to Salinger submits a manuscript after a four-decade absence. Why has he abruptly resurfaced? What caused his long-ago disappearance? When editor Tom Neal embarks on a search to a remote New England town, he uncovers the disturbing truth behind a tragic mystery that changes his life in unimaginable ways.

Lightning Rods


Helen DeWitt - 2011
    That’s all I ask.” Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat 126 pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet for his frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brainstorm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top — and to the very heart of corporate insanity — with an outrageous solution to the spectre of sexual harassment in the modern office.An uproarious, hard-boiled modern fable of corporate life, sex, and race in America, Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods brims with the satiric energy of Nathanael West and the philosophic import of an Aristophanic comedy of ideas. Her wild yarn is second cousin to the spirit of Mel Brooks and the hilarious reality-blurring of Being John Malkovich. Dewitt continues to take the novel into new realms of storytelling — as the timeliness of Lightning Rods crosses over into timelessness.

Another Part of the Forest


Lillian Hellman - 1948
    Marcus Hubbard, rich, despotic and despised, made a fortune during the Civil War by running the blockade and worse. In his family life he is equally injurious: one son he bulldozes while the other he holds in contempt for his frailty. By Marcus's side stands his mentally deranged wife and, finally, Regina, the adored daughter amoral, conniving, and beautiful as an evil flower. Marcus, it would seem, has been on the top of the heap long enough and someone must depose him. Turning the tables on a tyrant has always made for high drama, and when Hellman puts her brilliant talents to work on such a theme the result is a play of great theatrical intensity.

Jug of Silver


Truman Capote - 1949
    Each book in the series has been designed with today's young reader in mind. As the words come to life, students will develop a lasting appreciation for great literature.The humor of Mark Twain...the suspense of Edgar Allan Poe...the danger of Jack London...the sensitivity of Katherine Mansfield. Creative Short Stories has it all and will prove to be a welcome addition to any library.

Children's Literature: A Reader's History, from Aesop to Harry Potter


Seth Lerer - 2008
    Children’s Literature charts the makings of the Western literary imagination from Aesop’s fables to Mother Goose, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Peter Pan, from Where the Wild Things Are to Harry Potter.The only single-volume work to capture the rich and diverse history of children’s literature in its full panorama, this extraordinary book reveals why J. R. R. Tolkien, Dr. Seuss, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beatrix Potter, and many others, despite their divergent styles and subject matter, have all resonated with generations of readers. Children’s Literature is an exhilarating quest across centuries, continents, and genres to discover how, and why, we first fall in love with the written word.

The French Prize: A Novel


James L. Nelson - 2015
    Nelson - praised as "a master of both his period and the English language" by Patrick O'Brian - returns to the world of sea and sail in The French Prize, a page-turning historical novel.Jack Biddlecomb has much to live up to, being as he is the eldest son of the esteemed Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, wealthy merchant captain, leading light of the War for American Independence, and newly minted congressman. Jack finds himself off to a promising start, however, when he's given command of the merchant vessel Abigail bound from Philadelphia for Barbados.But even before the dock lines are cast off, the voyage, which should have been routine, begins to look like a stormy passage indeed. Jack is saddled with two passengers, one as unpleasant as he is highborn, the other a confidant of the Abigail's owner who cannot help meddling in the running of the ship. What's more, with the French making prizes of American merchantmen, Abigail's owner has armed the ship and instructed Jack to fight if need be, thrusting the first-time captain and his small crew into a naval war for which they are totally unprepared.What Jack does not know, but soon begins to suspect, is that he is being used as part of a bigger plot, one that will have repercussions on an international scale.

The Great Gatsby


Celia Turvey - 2000
    He is an extremely wealthy man, although no one knows where he or his money have come from. But Gatsby has a purpose: he is following a dream of love. Will his dream come true?

The William Saroyan Reader


William Saroyan - 1958
    This is the most complete and generous sampling of the first half of an indispensable American writer's career.