Salamanca


Dean Francis Alfar - 2007
    Salamanca streaks across decades and spaces, tracking the stormy relationship between polymorphous-perverse Gaudencio Rivera, whose passions ignite prodigious feats of writing and wandering, and Palawena beauty Jacinta Cordova, whose perfection transmutes walls into glass and adoration into art.Tracing the arc of an imperfect marriage sundered by acts of nature (not least human) and sutured by acts of will (not least nonhuman), and vividly peopled by a multigenerational and multinational cast of kith and kin, this work of imagination takes the reader on a magical excursion into Philippine life and history while setting new standards for the Filipino novel along the way.

The Private Parts of Women


Lesley Glaister - 1996
    Her new neighbour Trixie is eighty-four years old and a hymn-singing Salvation Army veteran. Trixie's life is one of apparent calm but beneath the surface lie not one but three different personalities. One of them is very private. And very dangerous.

Fly in the Ointment


Anne Fine - 2008
    So you tell me what you think you'd have done. You be the judgeWhen, like her cold and indifferent husband, Lois's old life vanishes into thin air, she can't help snatching at the opportunity to come alive.There's only one fly in the ointment: Janie Gay, the feckless and spiteful mother of her wayward son's child. But as Lois takes her second - and redeeming - chance at love, she finds herself on a collision course with a society that claims to support and protect. She lays her plans, and suddenly it seems that all those years of nurturing her own deep-frozen heart may not have been so wasted after all ...In this, her seventh novel, Anne Fine offers a deeply chilling portrayal of what can happen when the remorseless convictions of society clash with the impulse of a determined mother.

The Four Graces


D.E. Stevenson - 1946
    Stevenson Mr. Grace is vicar of a country parish in World War II England. Blessed with four grown-up daughters, three of whom live at home, he has constant help tending to his regular duties and responsibilities toward the war effort. Liz, Sal, and Tilly Grace have more than enough to keep them busy, but their responsibilities are put on hold when they're tempted with potential suitors. Reminiscent of Little Women, The Four Graces showcases Stevenson's talent for capturing love, family, and the humor and delight found in everyday life.

Ernest Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea (Bloom's Reviews)


Harold Bloom - 1999
    

Up Into The Singing Mountain


Richard Llewellyn - 1960
    Fiction - Sequel to "How Green Was My Valley"

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold


Evelyn Waugh - 1957
    Three years before he wrote it, Waugh suffered "a brief bout of hallucination" similar to the one that besets Mr. Pinfold in this wildly witty and occasionally frightening novel.A successful, middle-aged novelist with a case of "bad nerves," Gilbert Pinfold embarks on a recuperative trip to Ceylon. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Mr. Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, loud revival meetings. He can only infer that somewhere concealed in his room an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship. And then, instead of just sounds, he hears voices. But they are not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frightening intimate way, about him!

Heat Wave


Penelope Lively - 1996
    In her most accomplished and appealing novel since the Booker Prize-winning Moon Tiger, acclaimed author Penelope Lively tells an emotionally powerful, beautifully wrought story of love and marital infidelity through the eyes of a mother whose daughter's husband has strayed.

The Stillest Day: A Novel


Josephine Hart - 1998
    Bethesda Barnet is an artist and a teacher. Her village life with an invalid mother is ordered and calm until the sudden vision of a man's face imprints itself on her mind's eye -- and she becomes a woman obsessed. She paints fragmented images of Mathew Pearson, secretly and relentlessly. And then, on the stillest day, in an extreme moment, she performs an act so bold that it shatters lives. Daring to play God, she falls from grace and is sacrificed on the twin altars of convention and vengeance. "The Stillest Day" draws the reader into the darkest corner of a passionate psyche.

The Breakup Diaries


Maya O. Calica - 2003
    Sure, breaking up is hard to do, but who knew it involved: - Denial, followed by desperate bid to get back together involving promises to do everything to make him happy - Sever loss of sleep, appetite and self-esteem - Acute paralysis - or maybe death - of good judgment - Compulsive tendencies to document every event, feeling and fantasy in a manner of reporter trying to make sense of things - More compulsive tendencies to over-examine relationship carcass and over-analyze cause of death as couple - Getting a lifeWhen her perfect boyfriend - college hoop star certified hottie and young hotshot eagle Itos Ongpauco - decided to call it quits, Monica, barista by day and dreamer by night, found herseld stepping out from behind the coffee counter and out of her comfort zone - into the mad world of magazine publishing.While starting out at the bottom of the food chain as the overworked, unpaid intern at "M" magazine can obliterate any trace of self-esteem, anything - including bitchy bosses, temperamental photographers, rather dull but oh-so-hot male models - is a welcome balm to her pains. Never mind that her freebie-obsessed boss treats her like an on-call, 24-hour proxy service. Never mind, that, sometimes, when she's had too much alcohol, male models become irresistible. Never mind that, despite having just had her heart broken, the possibility of love presents itself again.

Before Ever After


Samantha Sotto - 2011
    That is, until the doorbell rings. Standing on her front step is a young man who looks so much like Max; same smile, same eyes, same age, same adorable bump in his nose; he could be Max's long-lost relation. He introduces himself as Paolo, an Italian editor of American coffee table books, and shows Shelley some childhood photos. Paolo tells her that the man in the photos, the bearded man who Paolo says is his grandfather though he never seems to age, is Max. Her Max. And he is alive and well.As outrageous as Paolo's claims seem; how could her husband be alive? And if he is, why hasn't he looked her up? Shelley desperately wants to know the truth. She and Paolo jet across the globe to track Max down; if it is really Max and along the way, Shelley recounts the European package tour where they had met. As she relives Max's stories of bloody Parisian barricades, medieval Austrian kitchens, and buried Roman boathouses, Shelley begins to piece together the story of who her husband was and what these new revelations mean for her "happily ever after." And as she and Paolo get closer to the truth, Shelley discovers that not all stories end where they are supposed to.

Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry


B.S. Johnson - 1973
    His job in a bank puts him next to, but not in possession of, money. As a clerk he learns the principles of Double-Entry Bookkeeping and adapts them in his own dramatic fashion to settle his personal account with society.Under the column headed 'Aggravation' for offences received from society (unpleasantness of Bank Manager; general diminution of life caused by advertising), debit Christie; under 'Recompense' for offences given back to society (general removal of items of stationery; Pork Pie Purveyors Ltd. bomb hoax), credit Christie. All accounts are to be settled in full, and they are - in the most alarming way.B.S. Johnson was one of Britain's most original writers and Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is his funniest book.

Get Better at Getting Better


Chandramouli Venkatesan - 2019
    Chandramouli Venkatesan identifies this as developing the capability to succeed and continuously improve that capability. He calls this the Get Better Model, or GBM—your model to continuously improve how good you are.A GBM is made up of four key components and these must be practised deliberately for getting better—getting better by yourself; getting better by leveraging others; making others get better; and making and implementing a get-better plan.This powerful and life-changing book shows you how you can unlock your potential at work, and in life, and constantly get better.

Goodnight and God Bless: On Life, Literature, and a Few Other Things, with Footnotes, Quotes, and Other Such Literary Diversions


Anita Nair
    Snugly interwoven with a warmly personal and anecdotal history of the author, this wise and witty book offers an ironic take on nearly everything. Drawing from her experiences as a woman, mother, daughter, wife and writer, Anita Nair marks over a decade of her literary career with deliciously amusing quotes, mostly unnecessary and unabashed trivia, footnotes and other erudite diversions. This is the perfect book to keep by your bedside, to dip and delve into anytime.

The Winter Of The Fisher


Cameron Langford - 1971
    A fisher survives his first year in the wilderness through the help of a kind Ojibway.