Perestroika in Paris

Author: Jane Smiley
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525520368
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a captivating, brilliantly imaginative story of three extraordinary animals—and a young boy—whose lives intersect in Paris in this "feel-good escape” (The New York Times). Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and—she's a curious filly—wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather nears, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom.

Paris Bride

Author: John Schad
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1950192636
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
"In July 1905, in Paris, a young woman, a bride, becomes Marie Schad. In April 1984, in London, Marie Schad is declared to be no more--indeed, to never have been, and returns to France. Paris Bride pursues this no-woman in a wild attempt to glimpse her face in the modernist crowd. With increasing desperation the pages of Stephane Mallarmé, Oscar Wilde, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Louis Aragon, André and Walter Benjamin are all ransacked for traces of Marie. What is pieced precariously together is an experimental life--a properly modernist life, a life that, by its very obscurity, lives the obscure life of modernism itself.

The Little Bookroom

Author: Eleanor Farjeon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780192719478
Category : Children's stories
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
A collection of the author's best stories, chosen by herself, this charming book will delight and enthrall readers. Tales of the king's daughter who cries for the moon, the girl who saves her village from destruction by kissing a peach-tree, the six princesses who live for the sake of theirlong hair, and many, many more.* Eleanor Farjeon is the recipient of many awards for her work including the Carnegie Medal and the Hans Christian Andersen Award* Exquisite illustrations throughout by Edward Ardizzone

Dogopolis

Author: Chris Pearson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679816X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Book Description
Straying -- Biting -- Suffering -- Thinking -- Defecating.

My Friends

Author: Emmanuel Bove
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810160583
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
"Victor Baton is a wounded war veteran trying to reestablish his prewar lifestyle but avoid work. Living in a run-down boardinghouse, Baton spends his days searching Paris for the modest comforts of warmth, cheap meals, and friendship, but he finds little. Despite his desperate situation, Baton remains vain and unsympathetic, a Bovian antihero to the core. Bove himself called My Friends, published in France in 1923, a "novel of impoverished solitude."" --Book Jacket.

The Beach

Author: Alex Garland
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101657502
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
The irresistible novel that was adapted into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach." The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.

Drifts

Author: Kate Zambreno
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593087224
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
“Drifts is a dazzling and enjoyable book. Kate Zambreno has invented a new form. It is a kind of absolute present, real life captured in closeup. I've never read truer pages on the subject of pregnancy. No writer has come so close to achieving a total grasp of life: the entanglement of everyday things, a writing project, and a pregnant body, in a single work.” —Annie Ernaux, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Named a Best Book of the Year by The Paris Review, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Vulture, and Refinery29 “Reading all Zambreno feels like the jolt one gets from a surprise cut or burn in the kitchen, that sudden recognition that you’re in a body and the body can be hurt.” —Alicia Kennedy, Refinery29 Haunting and compulsively readable, Drifts is an intimate portrait of reading, writing, and creative obsession. At work on a novel that is overdue, spending long days walking neighborhood streets with her restless terrier, corresponding ardently with fellow writers, the narrator grows obsessed with the challenge of writing the present tense, of capturing time itself. Entranced by the work of Rainer Maria Rilke, Albrecht Dürer, Chantal Akerman, and others, she photographs the residents and strays of her neighborhood, haunts bookstores and galleries, and records her thoughts in a yellow notebook that soon subsumes her work on the novel. As winter closes in, a series of disturbances—the appearances and disappearances of enigmatic figures, the burglary of her apartment—leaves her distracted and uncertain . . . until an intense and tender disruption changes everything. A story of artistic ambition, personal crisis, and the possibilities and failures of literature, Drifts is the work of an exhilarating and vital writer.

Duplicate Keys

Author: Jane Smiley
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030775877X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a brilliant literary thriller set in Manhattan that’s “as taut and chilling as anything Hitchcock put on film" (San Francisco Chronicle). “A first-rate cliffhanger.” —The New York Times Book Review Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New York’s erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One sunny day, Alice enters the apartment and finds two of the band members shot dead. As the double-murder sends waves of shock through their lives, this group of friends begins to unravel, and dangerous secrets are revealed one by one. When Alice begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, the tension breaks out as it occurs to her that she is not the only person with a key, and she may not get a chance to change the locks. Jane Smiley applies her distinctive rendering of time, place, and the enigmatic intricacies of personal relationships to the twists and turns of suspense. The result is a thriller that will keep readers guessing up to its final, shocking conclusion.

To Tell You the Truth

Author: Gilly Macmillan
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062875647
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Named a New York Times Best Thriller of the Year and Best Book to Gift! "An unsettling and atmospheric thriller that’s almost impossible to put down . . . Will keep you guessing right up until its satisfying but unexpected conclusion." — Buzzfeed "Riveting." — The New York Times Book Review The acclaimed author of The Nanny and What She Knew—hailed by stalwarts including Ruth Ware, Liane Moriarty, Tess Gerritsen, and Shari Lapena—returns with another serpentine thriller that cleverly blends atmosphere, tarnished memories, mystery, and twisty secrets from the past into a potent, intense read that will leave you questioning everything you believe. To tell you the truth . . . everybody lies. Lucy Harper’s talent for writing bestselling novels has given her fame, fortune and millions of fans. It’s also given her Dan, her needy, jealous husband whose own writing career has gone precisely nowhere. Now Dan has vanished. But this isn’t the first time that someone has disappeared from Lucy’s life. Three decades ago, her little brother Teddy also went missing and was never found. Lucy, the only witness, helplessly spun fantasy after fantasy about Teddy’s disappearance, to the detectives’ fury and her parents’ despair. That was the start of her ability to tell a story—a talent she has profited from greatly. But now Lucy’s a grown woman who can’t hide behind fiction any longer. The world is watching, and her whole life is under intense scrutiny. A life full of stories, some more believable than others. Could she have hurt Teddy? Did she kill Dan? Finally, now, Lucy Harper’s going to tell the truth. Cross her heart. And hope to die. "Spellbinding . . . Bold, suspenseful, and impossible to put down. This one will stay with me for a long time." — Samantha Downing, #1 internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife

A Gentleman in Moscow

Author: Amor Towles
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448135508
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 547

Book Description
The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers Soon to be a Showtime/Paramount+ series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov From the number one New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel 'A wonderful book' - Tana French 'This novel is astonishing, uplifting and wise. Don't miss it' - Chris Cleave 'No historical novel this year was more witty, insightful or original' - Sunday Times, Books of the Year '[A] supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year 'Charming ... shows that not all books about Russian aristocrats have to be full of doom and nihilism' - The Times, Books of the Year On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a life without luxury be the richest of all? A BOOK OF THE DECADE, 2010-2020 (INDEPENDENT) THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF BILL GATES'S SUMMER READS OF 2019 NOMINATED FOR THE 2018 INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLERS WEEK AWARD