Book picks similar to
Tradition by Marci Blackman
fiction
english
gender-sex
literature
How It Is
Samuel Beckett - 1961
But I am reasonably certain that a sensitive reader who journeys through How It Is will leave the book convinced that Beckett says more that is relevant to experience in our time than Shakespeare does in Macbeth. It should come as no surprise if a decade or so hence How It Is is appraised as a masterpiece of modern literature. This poetic novel is Beckett at his height.” — Webster Schott“A wonderful book, written in the sparest prose. . . . Beckett is one of the rare creative minds in our times.” — Alan Pryce-Jones“What is novel is the absolute sureness of design. . . built phrase by phrase into a beautifully and tightly wrought structure — a few dozen expressions permuted with deliberate redundancy accumulate meaning even as they are emptied of it, and offer themselves as points of radiation in a strange web of utter illusion.” — Hugh Kenner
The Land of Women
Regina McBride - 2003
She tries to remember her mother's voice and the pitch and treble of it passes through her; the rhythm of it so clear that for a moment they are...connected by frail strings. So begins The Land of Women, and we are swept into Fiona O'Faolain's last summer in Ireland, the season of her burgeoning sexuality. It is a time, too, when mother and daughter step toward friendship among the voluminous gowns they make for local brides. Yet that giddy summer also delivers betrayal. Fiona's journey from the shame that ended her girlhood takes her to Santa Fe and to Carlos Aragon, a restorer of antiquities, whose ancestry is mysteriously linked to hers. As he explores their pasts with the precision of an artisan, Fiona must face her excruciating memory. In The Land of Women the past lives in the present, and physical and emotional geography touch.
Crash
J.G. Ballard - 1973
James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an intentionally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor. A classic work of cutting edge fiction, Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.
The Thorn Birds
Ann Ward
[Penguin Readers Level 6]
Night Swimming
Pete Fromm - 1999
Filled with admiration for his characters and the hope they bring to their day to day dilemmas, Night Swimming has affirmed Pete Fromm's reputation as one of the nation's best writers.
The Zombie Survival Guide Journal
Max Brooks - 2011
This lenticular journal cover sets in motion images of slithering, shuffling zombies from the bestselling graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Filled with lined pages, this all-purpose journal is perfect for jotting down notes, making to-do lists, plotting your own survival strategy, and is just the creepy thing for zombie fans everywhere.
The Client / The Firm
John Grisham - 1994
Children's rights expert, Reggie Love knows the deadly threats hanging over Mark and his family. Together they must take on the might of the FBI and the wiles of a cold blooded killer.The Firm He was a young, hungry law student from Harvard, They were a small but well- respected firm who were prepared to offer him his dreams. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare of secret files, bugs and mysterious disappearances, from which Mitch has only one chance of escape.--front flap
Isle Royale
John Hamilton - 2010
Living in a lighthouse can be murder.SYNOPSIS:The year is 1924. The place: Isle Royale, a remote island on Lake Superior. Clarence MacDougal, keeper of Wolf Point Lighthouse, stands ready to guide sailors through treacherous waters.One storm-tossed night, French-Canadian smugglers arrive. The gang’s leader is Sean LeBeck, a former lover of Collene MacDougal—the lightkeeper’s wife. LeBeck is determined to rescue Collene from her dreary life and rekindle their old passion, even if it means taking her off the island by force.The lightkeeper’s son, Ian, escapes during the storm, only to stumble upon a hidden cove, home of the last remaining members of the Coast Guard cutter "Chippewa." A dark secret forced the crew to banish themselves on the island. Given one last chance at redemption, the ancient mariners set out on stormy Lake Superior in a desperate attempt to save the day."Isle Royale" is approximately 72,000 words.AMAZON READER REVIEW -- 5 STARS"A rip-roaring historical adventure set in the delightfully unusual setting of Lake Superior's Isle Royale. Hamilton's love for the locale comes shining through; Lake Superior at times seems one of the characters in the drama. A carefully-researched Great War flashback is almost a novella within a novel, while providing crucial motivation for the story."ABOUT THE AUTHOR:John Hamilton is a bestselling author and journalist. His work includes books about fantasy & folklore, science fiction, the national parks, and pirates. "Lewis & Clark: Adventures West" (Sparrow Media Group) was a finalist at the 17th Annual Minnesota Book Awards in 2005. He is a two-time Golden Duck Award winner for excellence in children’s science fiction literature. John can be found most summers hiking along Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. He is also an award-winning photojournalist and nature photographer. Connect with John online at: www.johnchamilton.com.
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine - 2004
I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life cannot matter.The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric, the essay, and the visual in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America. With wit and intelligence, Rankine strives toward an unprecedented clarity-of thought, imagination, and sentence-making-while arguing that recognition of others is the only salvation for ourselves, our art, and our government.Don't Let Me Be Lonely is an important new confrontation with our culture, with a voice at its heart bewildered by its inadequacy in the face of race riots, terrorist attacks, medicated depression, and the antagonism of the television that won't leave us alone.
Omensetter's Luck
William H. Gass - 1966
Set in a small Ohio town in the 1890s, it chronicles - through the voices of various participants and observers - the confrontation between Brackett Omensetter, a man of preternatural goodness, and the Reverend Jethro Furber, a preacher crazed with a propensity for violent thoughts. Omensetter's Luck meticulously brings to life a specific time and place as it illuminates timeless questions about life, love, good and evil.
Pitch Dark
Renata Adler - 1983
After a nine-year affair with Jake, a married man, Kate Ennis decides to escape. She takes off, looking for something beautiful and quiet by the sea, but finds herself in a pitch dark and driving rain on a lonely Irish road. It is only months later that she learns that she may have committed a crime, but by then she is home, once more negotiating with Jake for time, for attention, and for love."
The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Arthur Conan Doyle - 1894
Volume 2. Introduction / by Loren D. Estleman --The hound of the Baskervilles --The valley of fear --His last bow : The adventure of Wisteria Lodge : The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles ; The tiger of San Pedro ; The adventure of the cardboard box ; The adventure of the red circle ; The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans ; The adventure of the dying detective ; The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ; The adventure of the devil's foot ; His last bow --The case-book of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the illustrious client ; The adventure of the blanched soldier ; The adventure of the Mazarin stone ; The adventure of the three gables ; The adventure of the Sussex vampire ; The adventure of the three Garridebs ; The problem of Thor Bridge ; The adventure of the creeping man ; The adventure of the lion's mane ; The adventure of the veiled lodger ; The adventure of Shoscombe old place ; The adventure of the retired colourman.
Sam's Story
Elmo Jayawardena - 2001
Essentially, this novel is about Sri Lanka and its people. This story is narrated by Sam, an illiterate houseboy born in a village too remote for maps. He travels to the nearby city to work in a river house as a domestic servant. Sam finds momentary happiness in a life muddied by difficult days and painful moments. It is about the tears he shed and the days he wished he could forget, of the people he loved and the others he loved to hate. Reaching across Sri Lanka, this is a story of a country gasping for fresh air in the midst of an unending civil war and the chronic trauma it creates in its people, afflicting every life in every race, leaving none untouched. When it was published, Sam's Story was awarded the prestigious Gratiaen Award in 2001 for the best literary work in English in Sri Lanka. This award is given by the Gratiaen Trust, set up on the initiative of best-selling writer Michael Ondaatje who received the Booker Prize for The English Patient which was later made into an award-winning film.
July's People
Nadine Gordimer - 1981
The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and relationships—gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.Nadine Gordimer was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
The Whispering Bell
Brian Sellars - 2012
When he is lost in battle she loses everything, even their children. Her fight to win them back recalls the terror of the shield wall, the harsh lives of convict slaves, and the enormous difficulties a lone woman must face in a male dominated heroic age."This is a really excellent read, a page turner that gives a vivid, convincing picture of 7th century Mercian England." The Historical Novels Review