Frederick Busch's 18th work of fiction, Girls , is a novel whose roots lie buried in an earlier short story. In "Ralph the Duck," Busch introduced Jack and Franny, a young couple trying to recover from the recent death of their baby daughter. In Girls Busch expands Jack and Franny's lives beyond this single personal tragedy to encompass a greater the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl, daughter of the town minister and his dying wife, from the community. Propelled by his own loss, Jack, a security guard at a local college, begins investigating the disappearance, and thus Busch's novel becomes a literary detective story. In the course of solving the mystery, Jack must grapple with his attraction to a professor at the college, the disintegration of his marriage, and the impossibility of outrunning the past.

Life might have been very different for Gideon. Failed academic turned literary odd-jobber, Gideon Shand is bedevilled by his youth. Through his own fault, the chance of a brilliant Cambridge career has been missed. Nor is all well with his seemingly happy marriage: his wife should have married someone else... When Gideon s alter ego, Stephen Heilman, helps the Shands move to his own neighbourhood from the troublesome city of Chaworth, the past finally catches up with them, forcing Gideon to face the truth. This stylish novel of sexual deceit, ambition- and failure - has all the mordant wit and stinging social comment that mark Raphael as one of our most dazzling novelists. Raphael is spot on in his observation. One of our most competent and consistently entertaining chroniclers - Guardian By far and away the best thing he has ever done. The book is written with great aplomb... and the dialogue is exceptional -Financial Times Cover illustration by Gary Keane

Instrumentation : SST Soli - SATB Chorus - 2.2.2.2 - 4.2.3.0 - Timp - Org - Str(Ger.) Lobgesang was written for the 400th anniversary of the invention of moveable type by Johannes Gutenberg, an event celebrated in Leizig in the Summer of 1840. The work unites dome of Mendlessohn's most pressing compositional concerns: to bring the Church and the concert hall one step closer together as he felt had already been accomplished in England, and, at the same time, to give expression to his dydactic and educational impetus while creating a novel genre transcending conventional boundaries. Editor :Cornelis

A lyrically written, sensual, and extraordinarily enjoyable novel in which a Renaissance anatomist's astonishing discovery forever changes the female erotic universe. In sixteenth-centruy Venice, celebrated physician Mateo Colombo finds himself behind bars at the behest of the Church authorities. His is a crime of disclosure, heinous and heretical in the Church's eyes, in that his research threatens to subvert the whole secular order of Renaissance society. Like his namesake Christopher Colombus, he has made a discovery of enormous significance for humankind. Whereas Colombus voyaged outward to explore the world and found the Americas, Mateo Colombo looked inward, across the mons veneris, and uncovered the clitoris. Based on historical fact, The Anatomist is an utterly fascinating excursion into Renaissance Italy, as evocative of time and place as the work of Umberto Eco, and reminiscent of the earthy sensuality of Gabriel García Márquez. Perceptive and stirring, it ironically exposes not only the social hypocracies of the day, but also the prejudices and sexual taboos that may still be with us four hundred years later.

Of course, I've always had a secret. Have I always known it? I suppose I did, in a way - in the way that children know such things. That is, I knew and didn't know.In this novel, Eva Hoffman explores various kinds and strata of secrets: intimate secrets and secrets of family past: the kinds of secrets that can be decoded from clues, and the kind that themselves seem to offer tantalizing clues to the fundamental mysteries of the human selfhood. This is a story about a peculiarly powerful mother daughter bond and about a haunting, about a young womans quest for individuation and the challenges posed by contemporary science to our deepest notions of individuality. Using the near future to reflect on the conditions of the present, Hoffman has written self knowledge a novel of ideas for our time, and an imaginative fable whose resonance is timeless.

A captivating coming-of-age novel about love, sisterhood, secrets and betrayal[Bokinfo]

This book focuses on the Middle East arms control process as it unfolded during the years 1992–1995, as part of the multilateral track of the Arab–Israeli peace process initiated in Madrid, October 1991. This was the story of a regional process in the making: from the very concept of arms control as applied to the region, through the innovative regional forum and format for discussion that was devised for the talks, to the dynamics of the talks and the question of Egypt’s position within this novel regional setting. The result was that what seemed at the outset to be a most likely unpromising forum became the setting of unprecedented regional dynamics. The in-depth examination of ACRS – Arms Control Regional Security working group – engenders important insights into a number of concepts that lie at the heart of international relations studies: the notion of the strategic game, the meaning of power, the definition of security threats, the notions of hegemony and leadership, state identity, the conduct of regional politics, and the significance of cooperative processes in international relations.

Elisa - orphaned as a child, raised by a 'fallen woman', fed by fairy tales - has lived in an outlandish imaginary world for years. When her guardian dies, she feels compelled to confront her family's tortured and dramatic past, weaving the tale of her mother and grandmother through a history of intrigue, treachery, deception and desire. But as her saga of three generations of Sicilian women proceeds, it becomes something else entirely, taking in a whole legacy of oppression and injustice. By turns flamboyant and intense, raging and funny, Lies and Sorcery is a celebration of the female imagination, and the power of storytelling itself. First published in 1948, Elsa Morante's debut novel won the Viareggio Prize and earned her the lasting admiration of generations of writers from Italo Calvino and Natalia Ginzburg to Elena Ferrante. Translated by Jenny McPhee

Award-winning author and radio personality Ellen Kushner’s inspired retelling of an ancient legend weaves myth and magic into a vivid contemporary novel about the mysteries of the human heart. Brimming with ballads, riddles, and magical transformations, here is the timeless tale of a charismatic bard whose talents earn him a two-edged otherworldly gift. A minstrel lives by his words, his tunes, and sometimes by his lies. But when the bold and gifted young Thomas the Rhymer awakens the desire of the powerful Queen of Elfland, he finds that words are not enough to keep him from his fate. As the Queen sweeps him far from the people he has known and loved into her realm of magic, opulence—and captivity—he learns at last what it is to be truly human. When he returns to his home with the Queen’s parting gift, his great task will be to seek out the girl he loved and wronged, and offer her at last the tongue that cannot lie.

Kurt Janisch is an ambitious, but frustrated country policeman. Things are not going right in his life - at least not fast enough. But a country policeman gets talking to a lot of people in the line of duty - particularly women. Lonely, middle-aged women, women with a bit of property perhaps...Matters go from bad to worse: for Kurt Janisch, for the women who fall for him. Someone sees too much, knows too much. Soon there's a body in a lake and a murderer to be caught. A thriller set amid the mountains and small towns of southern Austria, "Greed" is Elfriede Jelinek's most accessible novel since "The Piano Teacher". But, as always, Jelinek gives the reader a lot more to think about: the ecological costs of affluence, the inescapable burden and inadequacy of our everyday words, the exploitative nature of relations between men and women, the impossibility of life without relationships. A meditative reflection on ageing, "Greed" is another chapter in Jelinek's chronicling of her love/hate relationship with Austria.

This is a startling novel - as much for the power and beauty of the writing as for its vivid, searing tale of life on the road as a stripper in Canada. Sarah is the product of a university family that blew angrily apart and the survivor of a childhood disease that meant lonely years spent in the grip of an insensitive medical establishment. Now, scarred in more ways than one, she is a seventeen-year-old high school dropout trying to make a living in the recession. Prospects are dim, and soon she is "Tabitha," heading out on the circuit of motels and strip-bars through the mining towns and suburbs of a seemingly bucolic West Coast. On-stage, dressed in elaborate costumes, she offers a vision of a sex and beauty. Off-stage, she tries to befriend the bikers and strippers and populate her life on the road, but friendships are fleeting when home is a Greyhound bus or a room behind a neon sign on the highway. Diana Atkinson paints a poignant, darkly humorous portrait of the reality behind voyeurism and desire. Delving into the shadowy moments of sex and survival, her work flashes with loss and beauty and a true empathy for those who live on the margins.

David Szalay's debut novel is set in the alcohol-sodden, materialistic, insecure and increasingly sham world of a telephone salesman. The salesman in question is Paul Rainey, a 40-year-old functioning alcoholic on anti-anxiety medication who commutes into London every day from Hove.

Paul Dogolov, divorced Vietnam War hero and novelist, teaches a writing class in a maximum security prison. Convinced that one of his students, serving a life sentence for brutal murder, is innocent, he sets out to find the real killer. The search leads him to a remote, dust-blasted California desert town and a scorpion's nest of bizarre and vicious characters. The result is a tale of intrigue, corruption, and savage humor, in which Dogolov, through his encounter with the horrific, yet wildly comic, Fat Lady of the title, learns about terror, degradation, and ultimately, love in a funhouse-mirror world where illusion is reality, reality, a chimera. "David Scott Milton is certainly one of the most talented, uncompromising prose writers of his generation, and The Fat Lady Sings is perhaps his best and also most appealing novel." — Peter Bogdanovich

'Brilliantly clever . . . mercilessly funny.' - Kenneth Allsop, Daily Mail 'One of the most brilliantly written books since the war.' - Ian Fleming, Sunday Times ' A] clever and pitiless novel.' - Neil Ascherson, Observer ' An] extremely promising and funny first novel.' - New Yorker 'I laughed until I cried. Benedictus is a dazzling new wit and a blazing new talent.' - Patrick Dennis David Benedictus was only twenty-three when his shock-filled, highly controversial first novel was published in 1962. In The Fourth of June , Benedictus shows what it was like to have attended Eton College, one of England's most prestigious schools. Among its hallowed buildings, a boy is savagely beaten into paralysis by his House Captain, a bishop spends his evening spying on a chaplain's half-dressed daughter, and a housemaster is seduced by a desperate mother. Condemned by some reviewers as a farrago of sex, snobbery, and sadism, The Fourth of June nonetheless met with rave reviews from other critics, who proclaimed Benedictus one of the most promising new novelists of his generation, and went on to be a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. This new edition, the first in more than 30 years, includes an introduction by the author.

As the title Jar Jar Binks Must Die indicates, Daniel M. Kimmel is not only a film critic with strong opinions, he's also a fan. In this collection of essays, he covers movies from Metropolis (1927), answering the absurd claim that the restoration of this silent classic negated its status as a science fiction film, to how Star Trek, Avatar, Moon, and District 9 may have made 2009 a "miracle year" for the genre. Along the way he looks at neglected works like Things to Come (1936), explains why remakes aren't always bad, and how seeing E.T. in an empty screening room changed his mind about Steven Spielberg. Whether to rediscover old favorites or add new titles to your Netflix queue, this is a must-have for lovers of SF movies. Author Bio Daniel M. Kimmel is a past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics. When it was discovered he is also a science fiction fan he started getting invitations to participate at a number of SF conventions, which he continues to do. He reviewed for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette and now writes for Northshoremovies.net. He is a correspondent for Variety, the "Movie Maven" for the Jewish Advocate and teaches film--including a course on SF and horror--at Suffolk University. His essays on classic science films have appeared in several publications including Clarkesworld, Space and Time, and the Internet Review of Science Fiction. He is the author of a history of FOX TV, The Fourth Network (2004) which received the Cable Center Book Award. His other books include a history of DreamWorks, The Dream Team (2006) and I'll Have What She's Having: Behind the Scenes of the Great Romantic Comedies (2008). He is also the author of three novels: Shh! It's a Secret: a novel about Aliens, Hollywood, and the Bartender's Guide (2013) Time On My Hands: My Misadventures In Time Travel (2017), and Father of the Bride of Frankenstein (2019).

"What does it take to constitute a we with others and how does feeling, thinking, and acting as part of a we, transform one's sense of self, one's relation to others, and the way one experiences the world? Is individual subjectivity something that necessarily requires a communal grounding or does a we-relationship always presuppose a plurality of pre-existing selves? What kind of understanding of and relation to others is required if a we is to emerge? Questions regarding the ontological, epistemological, and social character of we is not only of contemporary societal relevance, but are also questions that were intensively discussed by early phenomenological philosophers such as Husserl, Reinach, Stein, Scheler, Walther, Gurwitsch, and Schutz. Drawing on and engaging with ideas and distinctions found in these historical resources, Being We combines historical scholarship and systematic theorizing. It breaks new ground by interweaving work on selfhood and first-personal experience, social cognition, and collective intentionality, offers a much-needed cross fertilization between philosophy and theoretical considerations in the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, and social psychology), and provides a novel account of the complex interrelation between we, you, and I."-- Provided by publisher

'Brilliant . . . exhilarating . . . Exciting and memorably written, this is one of those rare reads that has you galloping to the end, but feeling bereft at having to say goodbye so soon' Independent Behind a crumbling facade of seeming normality, secrets begin to stir within the Lux family home. Jean Lux, constrained academic wife and guilty mother, is waiting for excitement - and it will come from an unexpected source. Meanwhile Eve, her intelligent elder daughter, luxuriates in wounded jealousy, until her loathing for her only sister verges on the murderous. Into this climate of static repression and bitterness enters Raymond Snow, the deadly rival of Jean's husband, who begins to show interest in the vulnerable Eve. Meanwhile, Jean's best friend, Helena, has something she is yearning to tell: a confession that may alter everyone's life forever. Beautifully written and very funny, Daughters of Jerusalem is a gripping tale of hidden love and hate, of the desire to belong and the need for escape. Daughters of Jerusalem won both the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. 'Brilliant and witty . . . Mendelson's second bewitchingly erotic and darkly dramatic novel confirms her as a stylish, perceptive chronicler of the heart's hidden desires' Daily Mail

A dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice - exploring the world of young Russian immigrant Slava Gelman who stumbles from one tragicomic incident to another.

The classic memior of Betty Jean Lifton's search for her secret past that helped open the way for so many others. Betty Jean Lifton, acclaimed author of several books on the psychology of the adtoped that have helped open the field, tells her own story of growing up adtoped in the closed adoption system. Calling Twice Born both an autobiography and a psychological journey into the past, Lifton takes the reader with her as she describes the loneliness and islolation of an adopted child cut off from the knowledge of her heritage. She explores the ambivalence and guilt that she feels toward her adoptive parents when she awakens as an adult to her need to ask: Who am I? With the mounting suspense of a detective novel, Twice Born explores not only the difficulty of searching for one's past when one's records are sealed, but also the complexity of trying to reunite with the birth mother from whom one has been separated by social taboos--and by time. More than a vivid and poinant memior, Lifton has given hs a story of mothering and mother-loss attachment and bonding, secrets and lies, and the human need for origins. Important reading for anyone touched by these issues and by the experience of adoption--which is everyone.

“Humpty Dumpty” is the story of the defeat of passion. In this novel our civilization with all its biological and psychological ancestry laid bare, rises to overpower one of its supermen. Savaron, the man, with a skyrocket for a soul, hurls himself against the invisible monster—the lifeless decaying thing he identifies as society. Genius holds carnival in Savaron's mind. Brilliantly and futilely he struggles to extricate himself from the grip of the crowd-men of his day. His brain for a little while illuminates the way for him. Love corrupts him, conventions repudiated by his mind steal into his heart, confusion begins to knock his brain and Savaron, the gay and unscrupulous giant, finds himself fastened to the earth of Lilliput. In this Novel Hecht has outwritten the promise of Erik Dorm and Gargoyles. More epithetical than the former and vaster in scope and clearer in detail than the latter, “Humpty Dumpty” emerges as one of the most vivid and daring of modern excursions into the soul of man. Ben Hecht was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. In the 1910s and 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. In the late 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. American Screenwriters calls him “one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures”. Hecht received the first Academy Award for Best Story for Underworld (1927). Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics.