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The Sun Also Rises


Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway - 1926
    A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions. First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises helped to establish Hemingway as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Final Arrangements: A Novel


Miles Keaton Andrew - 2002
    He decided right then, at the age of nine, what he wanted to be when he grew up...an undertaker. The day he turned twenty-one, Casey joined the ranks of Morton-Albright, a family owned and operated mortuary, in the small Florida town of Angel Shoals. Immediately, he felt right at home. He seems to have a gift for embalming. The Morton and Albright families welcome him like the family he never had. The quirky and mischievous Natalie Albright is the girl he's always dreamed of. And within the walls of Morton-Albright, Casey feels a reassuring presence that calms him, like nothing ever has before. But his happiness will be short-lived if the mortuary falls victim to a rapacious funeral-home giant. With family secrets being uncovered, contested wills, and rumors of illegal funeral practices circling, the lives entwined in this funeral home become filled with intrigue, deception, and, of course, death. Bringing abundant experience and a fresh wit to the page, Miles Keaton Andrew offers a clever, spirited, darkly humorous first novel, rich with dialogue and full of nuanced characters.

The Ice Cream Girls


Dorothy Koomson - 2010
    Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts.Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again...

Erasure


Percival Everett - 2001
    But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection." "Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto." But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk - or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh - is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.

A Study in Charlotte


Brittany Cavallaro - 2016
    But that’s not the only complication: Sherringford is also home to Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective’s great-great-great-granddaughter, who has inherited not only Sherlock’s genius but also his volatile temperament. From everything Jamie has heard about Charlotte, it seems safer to admire her from afar.From the moment they meet, there’s a tense energy between them, and they seem more destined to be rivals than anything else. But when a Sherringford student dies under suspicious circumstances, ripped straight from the most terrifying of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Jamie can no longer afford to keep his distance. Jamie and Charlotte are being framed for murder, and only Charlotte can clear their names. But danger is mounting and nowhere is safe—and the only people they can trust are each other.

The Sharpest Sight: A Novel


Louis Owens - 1992
    Wonderfully rich, full of magic and people who are magically alive, The Sharpest Sight is a fine novel that should be read by all who seek to understand the American Indian search for identity."-James Welch, author of Indian Lawyer, and Winter in the Blood."With The Sharpest Sight, Louis Owens emerges as a strong and distinctive voice in contemporary Native American fiction. He writes with conviction, heart, and insight, and his novel, populated with complicated, passionate men and women, provides an insider’s view into a rich fictional world."-Michael Dorris, author of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, and The Crown of Columbus, with Louise Erdrich.

Bitter Harvest


Ann Rule - 1997
    Debora Green and her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar. Trapped and burned to death in the flames were twelve-year-old Tim and his six-year-old sister Kelly. Lissa, ten, was barely able to leap to safety from the garage roof into the arms of her mother, who was standing outside the house. When Michael Farrar returned to the scene, he had lost more than his children and his home. His entire life was in ruins. The fire was the climactic event of Michael and Debora's lives. Until that summer, they seemed to have it all -- a happy marriage, successful medical practices, three bright and beautiful children. Then they went on a trip to Peru with their son. There, they met attractive, blonde Celeste Walker, whose husband, John was also a successful doctor. But after that trip, nothing was the same again for either couple, and all the dark hidden places in Debora and Michael's marriage bubbled to the surface in a series of almost unbelievable horrors. "Bitter Harvest" is the chronicle of this tragedy in the heartland of America, the true story of the disintegration of a marriage and its horrifying consequences. Rule takes us deep in the psyche of a killer whose behavior was so twisted and so evil that it defies belief. Gripping, powerful, and ultimately terrifying, "Bitter Harvest" is a vivid recreation of an unthinkable crime -- and a depiction of the unimagined depths of a darkness within the human spirit. Copyright © 1998 Ann Rule. All Rights Reserved Performance copyright 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc. All Rights Reserved

Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle


Washington Irving - 1819
    In the first of these stories from the Catskill Mountains, a superstitious schoolmaster encounters a headless horseman; in the second, a man sleeps for twenty years, waking to a much-changed world.

Nightwood


Djuna Barnes - 1936
    That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another person—a woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

Quicksand and Passing


Nella Larsen - 1928
    They open up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read them years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable."--Alice Walker"Discovering Nella Larsen is like finding lost money with no name on it. One can enjoy it with delight and share it without guilt."  --Maya Angelou"A hugely influential and insighful writer." --The New York Times"Larsen's heroines are complex, restless, figures, whose hungers and frustrations will haunt every sensitive reader. Quicksand and Passing are slender novels with huge themes." -- Sarah Waters"A tantalizing mix of moral fable and sensuous colorful narrative, exploring female sexuality and racial solidarity."-Women's Studies International ForumNella Larsen's novels Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) document the historical realities of Harlem in the 1920s and shed a bright light on the social world of the black bourgeoisie. The novels' greatest appeal and achievement, however, is not sociological, but psychological. As noted in the editor's comprehensive introduction, Larsen takes the theme of psychic dualism, so popular in Harlem Renaissance fiction, to a higher and more complex level, displaying a sophisticated understanding and penetrating analysis of black female psychology.

Muse


Michael Cecilione - 1998
    A handsome author strikes up a conversation with an actress in a bookshop in Manhattan, and she knows this is the start of something that will change her life forever.

Lamb to the Slaughter


Roald Dahl - 1953
    It was initially rejected, along with four other stories, by The New Yorker, but was ultimately published in Harper's Magazine in September 1953. It was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starred Barbara Bel Geddes. Originally broadcast on April 13, 1958, it was one of only 17 AHP episodes directed by Hitchcock himself. The story was subsequently adapted for Dahl's British TV series Tales of the Unexpected. Dahl included it in his short story compilation Someone Like You."Lamb to the Slaughter" demonstrates Dahl's fascination with horror (with elements of black comedy), a theme that would influence both his in adult fiction as well as his children stories.

Where Seagulls Dare


Mark Farrer - 2016
    SABOTAGE. THEFT. PANTO. What's the connection between a scheming Russian oligarch and his bungling henchmen, an ardent eco-protester and a faded Hollywood bombshell? And why are they leaving crime scenes all over Scotland - from Largs to Orkney, Stornoway to the Borders? And what has any of this got to do with Cullen? He just wants to be bloody left alone. It’s a series of bizarre mishaps in a plot full of incident, humour and Scottish salmon. Oh no it isn’t! OH YES IT IS!

Snow Falling on Cedars


David Guterson - 1994
    But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.

Songs for the Missing


Stewart O'Nan - 2008
    and letting her hair grow. It was also the summer when, without warning, popular high school student Kim Larsen disappeared from her small midwestern town. Her loving parents, her introverted sister, her friends and boyfriend must now do everything they can to find her. As desperate search parties give way to pleading television appearances, and private investigations yield to personal revelations, we see one town's intimate struggle to maintain hope and, finally, to live with the unknown. Stewart O’Nan's new novel begins with the suspense and pacing of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss. On the heels of his critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Last Night at the Lobster, Songs for the Missing is an honest, heartfelt account of one family’s attempt to find their child. With a soulful empathy for these ordinary heroes, O’Nan draws us into the world of this small American town and allows us to feel a part of this family.