If On A Winter's Night A Traveler

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544133404
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel...Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." —from If On A Winter's Night a Traveler Italo Calvino's stunning classic imagines a novel capable of endless possibilities in an intricately crafted, spellbinding story about writing and reading. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a feat of striking ingenuity and intelligence, exploring how our reading choices can shape and transform our lives. Originally published in 1979, Italo Calvino's singular novel crafted a postmodern narrative like never seen before—offering not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, style, ambience, and author, and each interrupted at a moment of suspense. Together, the stories form a labyrinth of literature known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers pursue the story lines that intrigue them and try to read each other. Deeply profound and surprisingly romantic, this classic is a beautiful meditation on the transformative power of reading and the ways we make meaning in our lives. "Calvino is a wizard...There is no halting [this book's] metamorphoses." —New York Times Review of Books

The Hundred Brothers

Author: Donald Antrim
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1429977221
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
With a New Introduction by Jonathan Franzen There's Rob, Bob, Tom, Paul, Ralph, and Noah; Nick, Dennis, Bertram, Russell, and Virgil. The doctor, the documentary filmmaker, and the sculptor in burning steal; the eldest, the youngest, and the celebrated "perfect" brother, Benedict. In Donald Antrim's mordantly funny novel The Hundred Brothers, our narrator and his colossal fraternity of ninety-eight brothers (one couldn't make it) have assembled in the crumbling library of their family's estate for a little sinister fun. Executed with the invention and intelligence of Barthelme and Pynchon, Antrim's taxonomy of male specimens is in equal proportions disturbing and absurdly hilarious.

The Complete Cosmicomics

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544231937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
The complete collection of “nimble and often hilarious” short stories exploring the cosmos by the acclaimed author of Invisible Cities (Colin Dwyer, NPR). Italo Calvino’s beloved cosmicomics cross planets and traverse galaxies, speed up time or slow it down to the particles of an instant. Through the eyes of a “cosmic know-it-all” with the unpronounceable name of Qfwfq, Calvino explores natural phenomena and tells the story of the origins of the universe. Relating complex scientific and mathematical concepts to our everyday world, they are an indelible and delightful literary achievement. Originally published in Italian in three separate volumes—including the Asti d’Appello Prize-winning first volume, Cosmicomics—these thirty-four dazzling stories are collected here in one definitive English-language anthology. “Trying to describe such a diverse and entertaining mix, I have to admit, just as Calvino does so often, that my words fail here, too. There’s no way I—or anyone, really—can muster enough of them to quite capture the magic of these stories . . . Read this book, please.” —Colin Dwyer, NPR

Into the War

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544146387
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Book Description
"These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice."--from cover, page [4].

Difficult Loves

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156260558
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
In a collection of stories written during the 1940s and 1950s, the author captures moments of revelation in the lives of ordinary people, instants blending recognition and alarm as deceptions and illusions are laid bare.

Guide to Literary Agents 30th Edition

Author: Robert Lee Brewer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593332091
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
The Best Resource Available for Finding a Literary Agent, fully revised and updated No matter what you're writing--fiction or nonfiction, books for adults or children--you need a literary agent to get the best book deal possible from a traditional publisher. Guide to Literary Agents 30th edition is your go-to resource for finding that literary agent and earning a contract from a reputable publisher. Along with listing information for more than 1,000 agents who represent writers and their books, the 30th edition of GLA includes: Hundreds of updated listings for literary agents and writing conferences Informative articles on crafting effective queries, synopses, and book proposals (and the agent query tracker) Plus, a 30-Day Platform Challenge to help writers build their writing platforms Includes 20 literary agents actively seeking writers and their writing

Under the Jaguar Sun

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156927949
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

Book Description
One of Italy's greatest and most popular writers offers three witty, fantastical stories, each dominated by one of three senses--taste, hearing, or smell.

Upon a Winter's Night

Author: Karen Harper
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1459291093
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
A cold night's silent majesty hides a BITTER secret… Though she is deeply loved by her parents, the fact that Lydia Brand is adopted has always made her different from her close-knit Amish community. But as Christmas approaches and she begins to search for answers about her biological parents, more questions surface. Soon it seems that the deaths of two women in her small town may not be coincidences, after all. And her pursuit of the truth has left her only with hints of a dark secret—and threats from an unseen adversary. While she does her best to stave off advances from her parents' preferred suitor, Lydia discovers that her heart truly belongs to the man who's been there all along: her friend Josh Yoder. It's only with his help that Lydia can ensure that the stillness of a winter's night means peace…and not danger.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156154550
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
"A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then a tavern. Their powers of speech are magically taken from them and instead they have only tarot cards with which to tell their tales. What follows is an exquisite interlinking of narratives, and a fantastic, surreal, and chaotic history of all human consciousness."--Goodreads

Invisible Cities

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 054413320X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
Italo Calvino's beloved, intricately crafted novel about an Emperor's travels—a brilliant journey across far-off places and distant memory. “Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.” In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo—Mongol emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts his host with stories of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. As Marco Polo unspools his tales, the emperor detects these fantastic places are more than they appear.