fogIt's been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It's the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy," except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dodgy dentists.In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .hang on. . .what

    In his earlier novels, he has written about conspiracy theory, the Cold War and global terrorism. Now, in Point Omega, he looks into the mind and heart of a "defense intellectual", one of the men involved in the management of the country's war machine. Richard Elster was a scholar—an outsider—when he was called to a meeting with government war planners, asked to apply "ideas and principles to such matters as troop deployment and counterinsurgency". We see Elster at the end of his service. He has retreated to the desert, "somewhere south of nowhere", in search of space and geologic time. There he is joined by a filmmaker, Jim Finley, intent on documenting his experience. Finley wants to persuade Elster to make a one-take film, Elster its single character—"Just a man and a wall."Weeks later, Elster's daughter Jessica visits—an "otherworldly" woman from New York, who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. The three of them talk, train their binoculars on the landscape, and build an odd, tender intimacy, something like a family. Then a devastating event throws everything into question. In this compact and powerful novel, it is finally a lingering human mystery that haunts the landscape of desert and mind.

    None of them has been used as the ultimate ogre in countless children's stories and off-color jokes, and none of them has been found guilty of as many unspeakable atrocities as Ed Gein.Ed Gein--Psycho! is his story. This is his legend.

    A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.

    Now, in her first novel, she builds on that early promise.Mona Gray was ten when her father contracted a mysterious illness and she became a quitter, abandoning each of her talents just as pleasure became intense. The only thing she can’t stop doing is math: She knocks on wood, adds her steps, and multiplies people in the park against one another. When Mona begins teaching math to second-graders, she finds a ready audience. But the difficult and wonderful facts of life keep intruding. She finds herself drawn to the new science teacher, who has an unnerving way of seeing through her intricately built façade. Bender brilliantly directs her characters, giving them unexpected emotional depth and setting them in a calamitous world, both fancifully surreal and startlingly familiar.

    Born mute to a drunken mother and a demented father, tortured Euchrid Eucrow finds more compassion in the family mule than in his fellow men. But he alone will grasp the cruel fate of Cosey Mo, the beautiful young prostitute in the pink caravan on Hooper’s Hill. And it is Euchrid, spiraling ever deeper into his mad angelic vision, who will ultimately redeem both the town and its people. “Surprising, remarkable.” — The Atlanta Journal

    Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

    Bound to each other by blood and necessity, they aim to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam; but soon lust, betrayal, and murder will make them mortal enemies. In their struggle to survive in the New World, Lucas and Sally make choices that will burden their descendants with a legacy of secrets and retribution, and create a heritage that sets cousin against cousin, physician against surgeon, and, ultimately, patriot against Tory. In what will be the greatest city in the New World, the fortunes of these two families are inextricably entwined by blood and fire in an unforgettable American saga of pride and ambition, love and hate, and the becoming of the dream that is New York City.

    With this exposé, the Boston Globe presents the single most comprehensive account of the cover-ups, hush money and manipulation used by the Catholic Church to keep its history of sexual abuse secret.

    The pieces that comprise Non-Fiction prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Encounters with alternative culture heroes Marilyn Manson and Juliette Lewis; the peculiar wages of fame attendant on the big budget film production of the movie Fight Club; life as an assembly-line drive train installer by day, hospice volunteer driver by night; the really peculiar lives of submariners; the really violent world of college wrestlers; the underground world of anabolic steroid gobblers; the harrowing circumstances of his father's murder and the trial of his killer - each essay or vignette offers a unique facet of existence as lived in and/or observed by one of America's most flagrantly daring and original literary talents.

    Carter the Great—is a young master performer whose skill as an illusionist exceeds even that of the great Houdini. But nothing in his career has prepared Carter for the greatest stunt of all, which stars none other than President Warren G. Harding and which could end up costing Carter the reputation he has worked so hard to create. Filled with historical references that evoke the excesses and exuberance of Roaring Twenties, pre-Depression America, Carter Beats the Devil is a complex and illuminating story of one man's journey through a magical—and sometimes dangerous—world, where illusion is everything.

    Bill, aging and sick but still able to best any man in a fair gunfight, just wants to be left alone to drink and play cards. But in this town of played-out miners, bounty hunters, upstairs girls, Chinese immigrants, and various other entrepeneurs and miscreants, he finds himself pursued by a vicious sheriff, a perverse whore man bent on revenge, and a besotted Calamity Jane. Fueled by liquor, sex, and violence, this is the real wild west, unlike anything portrayed in the dime novels that first told its story.

    Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas, and concrete. To understand world events, news organizations and other authorities often focus on people, ideas, and political movements, but without geography, we never have the full picture. Now, in the relevant and timely Prisoners of Geography, seasoned journalist Tim Marshall examines Russia, China, the USA, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Japan and Korea, and Greenland and the Arctic—their weather, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, and borders—to provide a context often missing from our political reportage: how the physical characteristics of these countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.In ten, up-to-date maps of each region, Marshall explains in clear and engaging prose the complex geo-political strategies of these key parts of the globe. What does it mean that Russia must have a navy, but also has frozen ports six months a year? How does this affect Putin’s treatment of Ukraine? How is China’s future constrained by its geography? Why will Europe never be united? Why will America never be invaded? Shining a light on the unavoidable physical realities that shape all of our aspirations and endeavors, Prisoners of Geography is the critical guide to one of the major (and most often overlooked) determining factors in world history.

    Intelligent and heartfelt, Faith and Feminism offers a perceptive look at the lives of five spirited and spiritual women of history, women who combined their undying faith with feminist beliefs and who made the world a better place by doing so. • St. Teresa of Ávila, a woman whose bravery in confronting her shadows gave her the strength to connect with the world and live a life of divine action. • Lucretia Mott, a Quaker minister, who rose from her quiet upbringing to become a passionate speaker and activist working tirelessly on behalf of justice and peace. • Sojourner Truth, a Christian slave, who spoke out with unwavering courage to claim her God-given rightful place as an African American and a woman. • Emily Dickinson , an extraordinary poet, who touched the world with her ability to capture and transform the experience of suffering. • Dorothy Day, a radical journalist, who lived a life of voluntary poverty as a way of expressing her passion for the Christian faith and care for those in need. A remarkable book that focuses on the idea that spirituality and feminism are really different expressions of the same impulse to make life more whole, Faith and Feminism offers a powerful catalyst for reflecting on our sense of self -- and for living and loving according to our deepest values.