The Lonesome Gods


Louis L'Amour - 1983
    Johannes Verne was soon to be rescued by outlaws, but no one could save him from the lasting memory of his grandfather’s eyes, full of impenetrable hatred. Raised in part by Indians, then befriended by a mysterious woman, Johannes grew up to become a rugged adventurer and an educated man. But even now, strengthened by the love of a golden-haired girl and well on his way to making a fortune in bustling early-day Los Angeles, the past may rise up to threaten his future once more. And this time only the ancient gods of the desert can save him.

I'd Die for You and Other Lost Stories


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 2017
    Scott Fitzgerald, the iconic American writer of The Great Gatsby who is more widely read today than ever.I’d Die For You is a collection of the last remaining unpublished and uncollected short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Anne Margaret Daniel. Fitzgerald did not design the stories in I’d Die For You as a collection. Most were submitted individually to major magazines during the 1930s and accepted for publication during Fitzgerald’s lifetime, but were never printed. Some were written as movie scenarios and sent to studios or producers, but not filmed. Others are stories that could not be sold because their subject matter or style departed from what editors expected of Fitzgerald. They date from the earliest days of Fitzgerald’s career to the last. They come from various sources, from libraries to private collections, including those of Fitzgerald’s family. Readers will experience Fitzgerald writing about controversial topics, depicting young men and women who actually spoke and thought more as young men and women did, without censorship. Rather than permit changes and sanitizing by his contemporary editors, Fitzgerald preferred to let his work remain unpublished, even at a time when he was in great need of money and review attention. “I’d Die For You,” the collection’s title story, is drawn from Fitzgerald’s stays in the mountains of North Carolina when his health, and that of his wife Zelda, was falling apart. With the addition of a Hollywood star and film crew to the Smoky Mountain lakes and pines, Fitzgerald brings in the cinematic world in which he would soon be living. Most of the stories printed here come from this time period, during the middle and late1930s, though the collection spans Fitzgerald’s career from 1920 to the end of his life. The book is subtitled And Other Lost Stories in recognition of an absence until now. Some of the eighteen stories were physically lost, coming to light only in the past few years. All were lost, in one sense or another: lost in the painful shuffle of the difficulties of Fitzgerald’s life in the middle 1930s; lost to readers because contemporary editors did not understand or accept what he was trying to write; lost because archives are like that, and good things can wait patiently in libraries for many centuries sometimes. I’d Die For You And Other Lost Stories echoes as well the nostalgia and elegy in Gertrude Stein’s famous phrase “a lost generation,” that generation for whom Fitzgerald was a leading figure. Written in his characteristically beautiful, sharp, and surprising language, exploring themes both familiar and fresh, these stories provide new insight into the bold and uncompromising arc of Fitzgerald’s career. I’d Die For You is a revealing, intimate look at Fitzgerald’s creative process that shows him to be a writer working at the fore of modern literature—in all its developing complexities.

Raven Stole the Moon


Garth Stein - 1998
    When a grieving mother returns to the remote Alaskan town where her young son drowned, she discovers that the truth about her son's death is shrouded in legend— and buried in a terrifying wrinkle between life and death. When Jenna Rosen abandons her comfortable Seattle life to return to Wrangell, Alaska, it's a wrenching return to her past. Long ago the home of her Native American grandmother, Wrangell is located near the Thunder Bay resort, where Jenna's young son, Bobby, disappeared two years before. His body was never recovered, and Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mystery of his death. But the spectacular town provides little comfort beyond the steady and tender affections of Eddie, a local fisherman. And then whispers of ancient legends begin to suggest a frightening new possibility about Bobby's fate. Soon, Jenna must sift through the beliefs of her ancestors, the Tlingit— who still tell of powerful, menacing forces at work in the Alaskan wilderness.There beliefs are shared by Dr. David Livingstone, a practicing shaman who had been hired to "cleanse" Thunder Bay of its restless spirits. The experience almost cost him his life, and he warns Jenna about the danger of disturbing the legendary kushtaka— soul-stealing predators that stalk a netherworld between land and sea, the living and the dead. But Jenna is desperate for answers, and she appeals to both Livingstone and Eddie to help her sort fact from myth, and face the unthinkable possibilities head-on. Armed with nothing but a mother's ferocious protective instincts, Jenna's quest for the truth about her son— and the strength of her beliefs— is about to pull her into a terrifying and life-changing abyss...Coloring powerful legend with universal emotions, Garth Stein masterfully evokes our most primal dreams and fears. Remarkably vivid and relentlessly suspenseful, "Raven Stole the Moon" marks the arrival of a stunningly imaginative new talent.

Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Book Summary in 1,000 Words


Read Less Know More - 2013
    “Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Book Summary in 1,000 Words” is exactly what it suggests – a 1,000-word summary of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. This download will give you a first-person view into the story of this book. It will give you better insight into whether this is something that you want to read and even better, you can do it all within 15 minutes or less. It’s literally the twitter of the e-book world. What makes Salinger - Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude - Book Summary in 1,000 Words different from other books is that we have combined the essence of book summary and our love for books, creating a way for readers to pre-read books before buying them. If you’ve ever wasted your time reading a book that wasn’t interesting, you know how big of a difference this could make. Knowing exactly what you’re about to read without getting too many spoilers will help readers make better decisions about the books they download. Now, you’ll be able to get the gist of any story in 1,000 words or less. If you would like to read more book summaries in 1,000-word (all the most famous books - best classics of all times) – please search for book summaries published by 'Read Less Know More'. A lot of people buy e-books without having this useful insight and this sometimes leads to disappointment. Now, you can minimize this probability with our innovative form of e-book publishing using 1,000-word Book Summaries.

Nathan Coulter


Wendell Berry - 1960
    Nathan Coulter begins Wendell Berry's sequence of novels about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky- a setting that is taking its place alongside Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, and Winesburg, Ohio, as one of our most distinctive and recognizable literary locales.

Peace


Gene Wolfe - 1975
    For Weer's imagination has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality, transcending even death itself.

The Penultimate Truth


Philip K. Dick - 1964
    For fifteen years, subterranean humanity has been fed on daily broadcasts of a never-ending nuclear destruction, sustained by a belief in the all powerful Protector. But up on Earth's surface, a different kind of reality reigns. East and West are at peace. Across the planet, an elite corps of expert hoaxers preserve the lie.Cover Illustration: Chris Moore

Katherine


Anya Seton - 1954
    Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

Glorious Nemesis


Ladislav Klíma - 1932
    of what Ladislav Klíma wrote and stood for.—Bohumil HrabalKlima's intense inner life and complex mental state are reflected in his peculiar writings. The eccentricity of style and occasional violence found in his prose were intended to convey the deep conflicts attending his thought processes, and this is perhaps best exemplified in the novella Glorious Nemesis, a balladic ghost story that explores the metaphysics of love and death, crime and reincarnation. Sider, a man of twenty-eight, is confronted in the Tyrol by a giant mountain named Stag's Head and an ancient hovel standing under a high, black cliff. Out one day on a hike, he encounters two women who will mark his fate: the elder Errata, dressed in red, and the younger Orea, dressed in blue (the two colors of the Virgin Mary). From this point on Sider is on a quest for the All, the Absolute, and to achieve eternity by atoning for the misdeeds of a past life. Willing to risk his entire fortune and sanity, he succumbs to his dreams and hallucinations as Orea, or her doppelgänger, becomes for him the apotheosis of the Feminine, a representation of the goddess Nemesis who initiates him into the mysteries of life and death through her attribute of divine retribution. Published posthumously in 1932, this is the first English translation.

Don't Point that Thing at Me


Kyril Bonfiglioli - 1972
    He's not one to pass up a drink - or too many - and he prides himself on being stylishly dressed for whatever occasion may present itself, no matter how debauched. Don't miss this brilliant mixture of comedy, crime, and suspense.

The Music of Chance


Paul Auster - 1990
    For Jim Nashe, it all started when he came into a small inheritance and left Boston in pusuit of "a life of freedom." Careening back and forth across the United States, waiting for the money to run out, Nashe met Jack Pozzi, a young man with a temper and a plan. With Nashe's last funds, they entered a poker game against two rich eccentrics, "risking everything on the single turn of a card." In Paul Auster's world of fiendish bargains and punitive whims, where chance is a shifting and powerful force, there is redemption, nonetheless, in Nashe's resolute quest for justice and his capacity for love.

Tsotsi


Athol Fugard - 1979
    One of the world's pre-eminent playwrights, who could be a primary candidate for either the Nobel Prize in Literature or the Nobel Peace Prize (Mel Gussow, The New Yorker), Athol Fugard is renowned for his relentless explorations of personal and political survival in apartheid South Africa - which include his now classic plays Master Harold . . . and the Boys and The Blood Knot. Fugard has written a single novel, Tsotsi, which director Gavin Hood has made into a feature film that The Times (London) calls a remarkable achievement and is South Africa s official entry for the 2006 Academy Awards. Set amid the sprawling Johannesburg township of Soweto, where survival is the primary objective, Tsotsi traces six days in the life of a ruthless young gang leader. When we meet Tsotsi, he is a man without a name (tsotsi is Afrikaans for hoodlum ) who has repressed his past and now exists only to stage and execute vicious crimes. When he inadvertently kidnaps a baby, Tsotsi is confronted with memories of his own painful childhood, and this angry young man begins to rediscover his own humanity, dignity, and capacity to love.

Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse


Nâzım Hikmet - 1938
    This 17,000-line verse-novel is made up of a traveler's vivid encounters with Turkish men and women from all walks of life. In colloquial language, Hikmet stages their private hopes and griefs, and through these many human dramas, he documents Turkey's historic transformation into a secular republic. Human Landscapes from My Country is "lively . . . cinematographic . . . [able] to capture the least scholarly reader" (Denise Levertov).Human Landscapes from My Country was published in a abridged English-language version by Persea Books twenty years ago. This new edition marks a major event in contemporary world literature.

Tales from Two Pockets


Karel Čapek - 1929
    His unique approaches to the mysteries of justice and truth are full of the ordinary and the extraordinary, humor and humanism.

The American Clock


Arthur Miller - 1981
    The central figures are the Baums, a wealthy family whose fortune has vanished in the stock market crash, but their story is amplified and illuminated by brief glimpses of other lives; a farmer who has lost all in the dust bowl; a prostitute who exchanges her favors for dental work; a white Southern sheriff in thrall to a black short-order cook; a young man who dreams of success on Tin Pan Alley, etc. Moving deftly from scene to scene, some funny, some movingly poignant, the play becomes a deeply affecting evocation both of a tortured time in American history and of the indomitable spirit of the people who survived and prevailed in the face of unaccustomed adversity.