Hotel Malta is a fascinating tale of love and hope, the story of Ernest and Eva Bloom whose lives were upended by World War II, and of Amotz, their grandson, whose marriage is disintegrating, while expecting the birth of his first child. Compelled by an overpowering urge, Ernest makes an intriguing request of his grandson that returns him to a fraught period in his life, rekindling the memory of three distant, stormy, passionate days in Naples in the 1950s. This request alters not only Ernest Bloom's life but also the lives of others, both close and distant. The book raises many questions: How can three days of bliss be weighed against an entire life, and what is love, after all? How does an author find her place in the lives of her characters? And perhaps the most heartbreaking question of all - is it possible to die of happiness?The author's two previous books, Amstel (shortlisted for the prestigious Sapir Prize, 2008) and The Sand Dunes of Paris, were received with critical acclaim, have been translated into English and were awarded national and international prizes: "Arabesque," from Amstel, won first prize in UNESCO's international Mediterranean Short Story Competition; The Sand Dunes of Paris was awarded the Hebrew Literature Translation Prize by the Israel Ministry of Culture. Hotel Malta was awarded the Hebrew Literature Translation Prize in 2016. Go, Pave the Sea, her most political novel, will be published soon (Autumn 2017).

"Elsewhere confronts complex themes through the prism of a Jewish family in which old secrets are disclosed and the truth is seemingly forever concealed. At the end of this compelling novel nothing remains certain as Ethan discovers that home can often be the place that feels most unfamiliar."--Dust jacket.

In this revealing psycho-geography , Dennis Marks makes a journey through the eastern borderlands of Europe to learn about the elusive writer Joseph Roth and the world in which he lived. The result is a riveting and involving documentary that reunites Roth with his creative landscape. Joseph Roth, best-known as the author of the novel The Radetsky March and the non-fiction work, The Wandering Jews, was one of the most seductive, disturbing and enigmatic writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1894 in the Habsburg Empire in what is now Ukraine, and dying in Paris in 1939, he was a perpetual displaced person, a traveller, a prophet, a compulsive liar, and a man who covered his tracks. Through the Eastern borderlands of Europe, Dennis Marks explores the spiritual geography of a still neglected master and uncovers the truth about Roth s lost world.

Raise the stakes and feel the heat. Kip is addicted to the pure adrenaline rush that hits when the stakes are high and the bets are laid down. His gambling addiction uses up his money, his mother's money -- and then their real trouble begins. Dennis Foon's believable portrait of a teen caught in a gambling addiction crackles with suspense and a foreboding sense of where Kip will land. Originally published in 2000, this remarkable novel has been updated to reflect new technology and the rise of online gambling. Praise for the previous edition of Double or Nothing : New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age "Our Choice" List, Canadian Children's Book Centre South Carolina Young Adult Book Award finalist "This edgy novel believably captures the nightmare of compulsive gambling." -- Horn Book "Compelling characters . . . a fast-moving plot with plenty of crisp, authentic dialog." -- Booklist

When a group of hedonistic West European tourists gather to celebrate Christmas in a remote French chateau, an English woman is murdered. Tatiana, 'the unloved child', declares she knows who did it. The subsequent inquiry into the death proves to be more of an investigation into the nature of love, insatiable rage and sadistic desire, framed within an unfolding narrative of colonial violence which will change the tourists' version of history for ever. The Unloved is a pivotal novel in Levy's career, first published in 1994 and reissued now for a new generation of readers.

Before E. M. Forster's Maurice, written in 1914, introduced a new openness about the favorable depiction of homosexuality in English fiction, a number of novels and stories carried coded portraits of homosexuals and homosexuality. Many of these were, by necessity, published privately; still others were written to insure that the homosexual component would be recognizable to a select few; still others embedded homosexual content within such "safe" genres as the Western and the public school novel. There have been several recent anthologies of twentieth-century gay fiction, but David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell's fascinating book is the first to explore the texts that circulated before the "gay fiction" genre came into being, and before greater tolerance allowed writers to treat homosexual themes directly. Leavitt and Mitchell include extracts from stories and novels by well-known writers such as Herman Melville, Walter Pater, Henry James, Willa Cather, and D. H. Lawrence, as well as work from neglected figures such as Count Eric Stenbock, John Francis Bloxam, "Alan Dale," and Gerald Hamilton -- the inspiration for Christopher Isherwood's Mr. Norris. The result is an entertaining and revelatory anthology, and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the literary treatment of homosexuality.

This publication is the product of the collaboration of two of the finest creative individuals at work in South Africa today, a photographer and a novelist, on a project that is the city of Johannesburg. 'Johannesburg is a fragmented city. It is not a place of smoothly integrated parts. And it has a name that does not roll easily off the tongue.' So begins David Goldblatt's introduction to TJ, a book of photographs of Johannesburg. Commencing in the 1950s, his masterful lens probes, documents and comments on life over six decades in this incomparable African city. Selected from a massive body of work, this superb distillation presents a unique pictorial history of the city. A new novel by Ivan Vladislavic partners the book of photographs. In Double Negative, a young man in Johannesburg receives an induction into the intricate nature of photography and artistic representation. The novel traces the young man as he heads into his career that takes him overseas and back, developing in the process an ever widening perspective on not only the social and political change in the country but also on questions to do with observation and the observing subject. It brings into sharp focus the history of South Africa's recent past and the difficulty of imaging and re-imagining it.

With the legal-behind-the-scenes finesse and courtroom drama of Presumed Inocent, Trial is a taut and exciting novel of a lawyer caught between two clients. He struggles to wrest justice from the complexity, subtlety and bald simplicity of the law, but gripping and surprising events will throw him more than a curve or two. Condensed in Reader's Digest.

A beautifully observed novel by literary star Charlotte Mendelson about the joys of passionate love and those left in its wake, told with Charlotte's signature wit and wisdom.[Bokinfo]

""Topsy-Turvy" is Charles Bernstein's most capaciously unruly collection to date, gathering disparate poems, both tiny and grand, that speak directly to our time of "covidity," as he calls it one of the book's most poignantly disarming works. He charts in equal measure the turbulence of both the body politic and the individual. Novel and traditional forms jostle against one another: horoscopes, shanties, and elegies rub up against gags, pastorals, and feints; homophonic translations, songs, screenplays, and slapstick tangle deftly with commentaries, conundrums, psalms, and prayers. There is even an ode to the New York subway and a memorial for Harpers Ferry hero Shields Green, along with collaborations with artists Amy Sillman and Richard Tuttle. "Topsy-Turvy" is also full of other voices: Pessoa, Geeshie Wiley, Rückert, and Rimbaud; and Drummond, Virgil, Ferneyhough, and Caudio Amberian; and even an imaginary first-century aphorist. Bernstein's "cognitive dissidence" is a lyrically explosive mix of pathos, comedy, and wit, though the reader is kept guessing which is which at almost every turn. Bernstein didn't set out to write a book about the pandemic, but these poems, performances, and translations are oddly prescient, marking a path through dark times with a politically engaged form of aesthetic resistance"--

An original and compelling vision of a just society "A 'new view' of the theoretical foundations of liberalism that will 'challenge us to clarify our own implicit notions of liberal democracy.' "-- The New York Times Book Review Winner of a Certificate of Merit for the American Bar Association's 1981 Gavel Award for outstanding public service First published in 1980 and continuously in print ever since, Bruce Ackerman's classic Social Justice in the Liberal State offers a new foundation for liberal political theory-- a world in which each of us may live his or her own life in his or her own way, without denying the same right to others. Full of provocative discussions of issues ranging from education to abortion, it makes fascinating reading for anyone concerned with the future of the liberal democratic state. "Professor Ackerman has tackled age-old problems of social justice with the refreshing technique of a series of dialogues in which the proponent of a position must either confront his opponent with an answer, constrained by the three principles of rationality, consistency, and neutrality, or submit to a checkmate. The author's ability to combine earthiness with extreme subtlety in framing the dialogues has produced a novel, mind-stretching book."--Henry J. Friendly, Senior Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit "What limits should we place on genetic manipulation? How many children should we have? How should we regulate abortions and adoptions? What rights does the community have, what rights do parents have in the education of children? What rights do children have? What resources must we leave to future generations? To see all these as questions of distributive justice is to connect them in a new way (and to make) a significant contribution."--Michael Walzer, The New Republic "The breadth of the attack on the fundamental issues of man and society is impressive."-- Foreign Affairs Bruce A. Ackerman is professor of law at the Yale Law School.

Author Boris Akunin Original title Левиафан Translator Andrew Bromfield Country Russia Language Russian Series Erast Fandorin Genre Historical detective Publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson Publication date 1998 Published in English April 2004 Media type Print (Paperback) The novel is set in 1878. The story opens with the murder in Paris of Lord Littleby, all seven of his servants and two children of servants. All were poisoned except for Littleby, who was bludgeoned with an ancient Indian artifact, a golden statuette of Shiva, which belonged to Lord Littleby and was stolen from his room, along with an old Indian shawl. French detective Gustave Gauche, in charge of the investigation, boards the passenger ship Leviathan. Gauche knows that the murderer must be one of the first-class passengers, because one of the special golden badges for the ship's first-class passengers was left in Littleby's room. Among the suspects are a Japanese army officer, an addled English aristocrat, a married Swiss woman, and a clever young Russian diplomat on his way to his new post in Japan. The diplomat is Erast Fandorin, the master detective, who shoots down each of the ineffectual Gauche's incorrect conclusions, and in the end takes it on himself to find the murderer.

Ace SF Special, 1969. Paperback original novel. Fantasy.

Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum. In Reading Clocks, Alla Turca , Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously “modern” outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order. Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzer’s original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.

First published in 1922 by Boni & Liveright: New York, now public domain in the US and Canada (cover art from the original 1925 motion picture). Salome of the Tenements follows the story of a young Jewish immigrant living in New York who wishes to marry a wealthy man and escape the bounds of her lower-class upbringing. Yezierska drew inspiration for the novel from people she knew as well as her own relationship with John Dewey.

Madame is an unexpected gem: a novel about Poland during the grim years of Soviet-controlled mediocrity, which nonetheless sparkles with light and warmth. Our young narrator-hero is suffering through the regulated boredom of high school when he is transfixed by a new teacher -- an elegant "older woman" (she is thirty-two) who bewitches him with her glacial beauty and her strict intelligence. He resolves to learn everything he can about her and to win her heart. In a sequence of marvelously funny but sobering maneuvers, he learns much more than he expected to -- about politics, Poland, the Spanish Civil War, and his own passion for theater and art -- all white his loved one continues to elude him. Yet without his realizing it, his efforts -- largely bookish and literary -- to close in on Madame are his first steps to liberation as an artist. Later, during a stint as a teacher-in-training in his old school, he discovers that he himself has become a legendary figure to a new generation of students, and he begins to understand the deceits and blessings of myth, and its redemptive power. A winning portrait of an artist as a young man, Madame is at the same time a moving, engaging novel about strength and weakness, first love, and the efforts we make to reconcile, in art, the opposing forces of reason and passion.

"With the wit and penetration well known to readers of Balzac's Omelette and Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein's PEN AND BRUSH revisits the delights of the French novel. This time she focuses on late 19th- and 20th-century writers--Balzac, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, and Maupassant--through the lens of their passionate involvement with the fine arts. She delves into the crucial role that painters play as characters in their novels, which she pairs with an exploration of the profound influence that painting exercised on the novelists' techniques, offering an intimate view of the intertwined worlds of painters and writers at the time. Muhlstein's deftly chosen vignettes bring to life a portrait of the nineteenth century's tight-knit artistic community, where Cezanne and Zola befriended each other as boys and Balzac yearned for the approval of Delacroix. She leads the reader on a journey of spontaneous discovery as she explores how a great painting can open a mind and spark creative fire"--

In this brilliant new novel by the Booker Prize-winning author of Hotel du Lac and Making Things Better, a young woman leaves her family and London to study in France--and, through friendships and love, is able to do the work of leaving home.

At the heart of Anita Brookner's new novel lies a double mystery: What has happened to Anna Durrant, a solitary woman of a certain age who has disappeared from her London flat? And why has it taken four months for anyone to notice? As Brookner reconstructs Anna's life and character through the eyes of her acquaintances, she gives us a witty yet ultimately devastating study of self-annihilating virtue while exposing the social, fiscal, and moral frauds that are the underpinnings of terrifying rectitude. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

Anita Brookner's first novel available as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 'Dr Weiss at forty knew that her life had been ruined by literature.' Ruth Weiss an academic is beautiful intelligent and lonely. Studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry she seeks not salvation but enlightenment. Yet in revisiting her London upbringing her friendships and doomed Parisian love affairs she wonders if perhaps there might not be a chance for a new start in life . . .