All Russians Love Birch Trees


Olga Grjasnowa - 2012
    Fluent in five languages and able to get by in several others, Masha lives with her boyfriend, Elias. Her best friends are Muslims struggling to obtain residence permits, and her parents rarely leave the house except to compare gas prices. Masha has nearly completed her studies to become an interpreter, when suddenly Elias is hospitalized after a serious soccer injury and dies, forcing her to question a past that has haunted her for years.   Olga Grjasnowa has a unique gift for seeing the funny side of even the most tragic situations. With cool irony, her debut novel tells the story of a headstrong young woman for whom the issue of origin and nationality is immaterial—her Jewish background has taught her she can survive anywhere. Yet Masha isn’t equipped to deal with grief, and this all-too-normal shortcoming gives a particularly bittersweet quality to her adventures.

Amsterdam Cops: Collected Stories


Janwillem van de Wetering - 1999
    These lively stories span two decades and a great deal of ups and downs in the lives of Grijpstra and de Gier.

Chanson Dada: Selected Poems


Tristan Tzara - 1975
    Translated as a labor of love over a ten year period the poems encompass the full range of Tzara's works, the results of which have brought Tzara's poetry to life for English language readers for over 25 years. Completely revised, updated edition of this classic survey.

Deco Devolution: The Art of BioShock 2


Jordan Thomas - 2010
    Contains concept art and models of the game's characters, locations, and weapons, as well as artists' comments on the work and the game.Note:The Rapture Edition Art book is a reduced version of the Special Edition Art book made to be a value against the Special Edition. It is reduced to 96 pages, and scaled down to the dimensions of the game case itself.The Special Edition Art book is the main version of BioShock 2's art book. It is 168 pages and is composed of 10 chapters.♢Chapter 1 - Citizens of Rapture♢Chapter 2 - Big Daddies♢Chapter 3 - Big Sisters♢Chapter 4 - Little Sisters♢Chapter 5 - Environments♢Chapter 6 - Weapons♢Chapter 7 - User Interface♢Chapter 8 - Advertisements♢Chapter 9 - Storyboards♢Chapter 10 - Credits

Carn


Patrick McCabe - 1993
    Carn is the story of two women; Josie Keenan, who returns to Carn, Ireland, the provincial hometown she once left behind, and Sadie Rooney, a factory worker who dreams of leaving. As the two women strike up a friendship--fueled by hopes to better their lives, yet inextricably tied to the tenuous fate of Carn--each must confront the hard truths of her past and future. And despite its own attempt to thrive, the town itself cannot escape the daily reminders of Ireland's endless legacy of violence and unrest.Written in the raw, unsparing prose that marks McCabe's fiction, Carn is the timeless story of a small town struggling to break away from its bleak past, and the lives of two women aching to escape the forces that shaped them.

Ward No. 6 and Other Stories


Anton Chekhov - 1892
    6 and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics (1899), as well as several lesser-known works, no less masterful in their composition. David Plante is a Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He is the author of many novels, including The Ghost of Henry James, The Family (nominated for the National Book Award), and The Woods. He has been a contributor to The New Yorker, Esquire, and Vogue, and a reviewer and features writer for the New York Times Book Review. The cook's wedding --The witch --A dead body --Easter Eve --On the road --The dependents --Grisha --The kiss --Typhus --The pipe --The princess --Neighbours --The grasshopper --In exile --Ward No. 6 --Rothschild's fiddle --The student --The darling --A doctor's visit --Gooseberries --The Lady with the dog --In the ravine --The bishop.

Predators


Ed Gorman - 1993
    Because a predator lies in wait. This compelling new collection from the editors of the bestselling Stalkers tells of worlds where evil waits and watches...and kills. Each story will send chills up your spine, keep you burning the lights all night, and have you looking over your shoulder—just in case the Predator is there. So lock your doors, check your windows, and get ready to savor fiction that touches the primeval places…where all your screams are born.

Embers


Sándor Márai - 1942
    In a secluded woodland castle an old General prepares to receive a rare visitor, a man who was once his closest friend but who he has not seen in forty-one years. Over the ensuing hours host and guest will fight a duel of words and silences, accusations and evasions. They will exhume the memory of their friendship and that of the General’s beautiful, long-dead wife. And they will return to the time the three of them last sat together following a hunt in the nearby forest--a hunt in which no game was taken but during which something was lost forever. Embers is a classic of modern European literature, a work whose poignant evocation of the past also seems like a prophetic glimpse into the moral abyss of the present

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden


Hannah Green - 1964
    It is not a case history or study. I like to think it is a hymn to reality." —Joanne Greenberg

The Chess Machine


Robert Löhr - 2007
    But what the Habsburg court hails as the greatest innovation of the century is really nothing more than a brilliant illusion. The chess machine is secretly operated from inside by the Italian dwarf Tibor, a God-fearing social outcast whose chess-playing abilities and diminutive size make him the perfect accomplice in this grand hoax.Von Kempelen and his helpers tour his remarkable invention all around Europe to amaze and entertain the public, but despite many valiant attempts and close calls, no one is able to beat the extraordinary chess machine. The crowds all across Europe adore the Turk, and the success of Baron von Kempelen seems assured. But when a beautiful and seductive countess dies under mysterious circumstances in the presence of the automaton, the Mechanical Turk falls under a cloud of suspicion, and the machine and his inventor become the target of espionage, persecution, and aristocratic intrigue.

Agnes Browne Trilogy Boxed Set: The Mammy, The Chisellers, The Granny


Brendan O'Carroll - 2001
    The Agnes Browne Trilogy includes: * The Mammy * The Chisellers * The Granny

A Journey Round My Skull


Frigyes Karinthy - 1936
    Soon it was gone, only to be succeeded by another. And another. Strange, Karinthy thought, it had been years since Budapest had streetcars. Only then did he realize he was suffering from an auditory hallucination of extraordinary intensity. What in fact Karinthy was suffering from was a brain tumor, not cancerous but hardly benign, though it was only much later—after spells of giddiness, fainting fits, friends remarking that his handwriting had altered, and books going blank before his eyes—that he consulted a doctor and embarked on a series of examinations that would lead to brain surgery. Karinthy’s description of his descent into illness and his observations of his symptoms, thoughts, and feelings, as well as of his friends’ and doctors’ varied responses to his predicament, are exact and engrossing and entirely free of self-pity. A Journey Round My Skull is not only an extraordinary piece of medical testimony, but a powerful work of literature—one that dances brilliantly on the edge of extinction.

The Complete English Works


George Herbert - 1907
    Herbert experimented brilliantly with a remarkable variety of forms, from hymns and sonnets to "pattern poems", the shapes of which reveal their subjects. Such technical agility never seems ostentatious, however, for precision of language and expression of genuine feeling were his primary concerns. Herbert is one of the finest religious poets in any language, though even secular readers respond to his quiet intensity and exuberant inventiveness. The poems he made achieve a perfection of form and feeling, a luminosity and a metaphysical grandeur unexcelled in the history of English writing.Though long overshadowed by Donne and Milton, Herbert has come to be one of the most admired of the metaphysical poets. In this new edition of Herbert's works, the distinguished scholar and translator Ann Pasternak Slater shows through detailed textual notes, a reordering of the poems, and an extensive introduction just how great a writer Herbert is.

Dora Bruder


Patrick Modiano - 1997
    Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records, Modiano continues to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he discovers in official records and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the period—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Nazi Occupation, and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result, a montage of creative and historical material, is Modiano's personal rumination on loss, both memoir and memorial.

The Emperor of Lies


Steve Sem-Sandberg - 2009
    Driven by a titanic ambition, he sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex and strove to make it—and himself—indispensable to the Nazi regime. These compromises would have extraordinary consequences not only for Rumkowski but for everyone living in the ghetto. Drawing on the detailed records of life in Lódz, Steve Sem-Sandberg, in a masterful feat of literary imagination and empathy, captures the full panorama of human resilience and probes deeply into the nature of evil. Through the dramatic narrative, he asks the most difficult questions: Was Rumkowski a ruthless opportunist, an accessory to the Nazi regime motivated by a lust for power? Or was he a pragmatist who managed to save Jewish lives through his collaboration policies? How did the inhabitants of the ghetto survive in such extreme circumstances?A critically acclaimed breakout bestseller in Sweden, The Emperor of Lies introduces a writer of great significance to American readers. The archives detail daily life in the Lodz ghetto, under the reign of Rumkowki, but it takes a writer with Sem-Sandberg’s singular talent to help us understand the truth of this chilling history.