Like a Portuguese version of As I Lay Dying, but more ambitious, António Lobo Antunes's eleventh novel chronicles the decadence not just of a family but of an entire society - a society morally and spiritually vitiated by four decades of totalitarian rule. In this his masterful novel, António Lobo Antunes, "one of the most skillful psychological portraitists writing anywhere, renders the turpitude of an entire society through an impasto of intensely individual voices." (The New Yorker) The protagonist and anti-hero Senhor Francisco, a powerful state minister and personal friend of Salazar, expects to be named prime minister when Salazar is incapacitated by a stroke in 1968. Outraged that the President (Admiral Américo Tomás) appoints not him but Marcelo Caetano to the post, Senhor Francisco retreats to his farm in Setúbal, where he vaguely plots a coup with other ex-ministers and aged army officers who feel they've been snubbed or forgotten. But it's younger army officers who in 1974 pull off a coup, the Revolution of the Flowers (so called since no shots were fired, carnations sticking out of the butts of the insurgents' rifles), ending 42 years of dictatorship. Senhor Francisco, more paranoid than ever, accuses all the workers at his farm of being communists and sends them away with a brandished shotgun, remaining all alone - a large but empty shadow of his once seeming omnipotence - to defend a decrepit farm from the figments of his imagination. When the novel opens, Senhor Francisco is no longer at the farm but in a nursing home in Lisbon with a bedpan between his legs, having suffered a stroke that left him largely paralyzed. No longer able to speak, he mentally reviews his life and loves. His loves? In fact the only woman he really loved was his wife Isabel, who left him early on, when their son João was just a tiny boy. Francisco takes up with assorted women and takes sexual advantage of the young maids on the farm, the steward's teenage daughter, and his secretaries at the Ministry, but he can never get over the humiliation of Isabel having jilted him for another man. Many years later he spots a commonplace shop girl, named Milá, who resembles his ex-wife. He sets the girl and her mother up in a fancy apartment, makes her wear Isabel's old clothes, and introduces her to Salazar and other government officials as his wife, and everyone goes along with the ludicrous sham, because everything about Salazar's Estado Novo ("New State") was sham - from the rickety colonial "empire" in Africa to the emasculate political leaders in the home country, themselves monitored and controlled by the secret police. Once the system of shams tumbles like a castle of cards, Francisco's cuckoldry glares at him with even greater scorn than before, and all around him lie casualties. Milá and her mother return to their grubby notions shop more hopeless than ever, because the mother is dying and Milá is suddenly a spinster without prospects. The steward, with no more farm to manage, moves his family into a squalid apartment and gets a job at a squalid factory. The minister's son, raised by the housekeeper, grows up to be good-hearted but totally inept, so that his ruthless in-laws easily defraud him of his father's farm, which they turn into a tourist resort. The minister's daughter, Paula, whom he had by the cook and who was raised by a childless widow in another town, is ostracized after the Revolution because of who her father was, even though she hardly ever knew him. Isabel, the ex-wife, also ends up all alone, in a crummy kitchenette in Lisbon, but she isn't a casualty of Senhor Francisco or of society or of a political regime but of love, of its near impossibility. Disillusioned by all the relationships she had with men, she stoutly resists Francisco's ardent attempts to win her back, preferring solitude instead. We have to go to the housekeeper, Titina, this novel's most compelling character, to find hope of salvation, however unlikely a source she seems. Unattractive and uneducated, Titina never had a romantic love relationship, though she secretly loved her boss, who never suspected. She ends up, like him, in an old folks' home, and like him she spends her days looking back and dreaming of returning to the farm in its heyday. Old age is a great equalizer. And yet the two characters are not equal. Titina retains her innocence. But it's not the innocence of helpless inability - the case of João, Francisco's son - nor is it the pathetic innocence of Romeu, the emotionally and mentally undeveloped co-worker by whom Paula has a son. Titina isn't helpless or ingenuous, and she isn't immune to the less than flattering human feelings of jealousy, impatience and anger. But she never succumbs to baser instincts. She knows her worth and cultivates it. She is a proud woman, but proud only of what she really is and what she has really accomplished in life. At one level (and it operates at many), The Inquisitors' Manual is

Ellen and Adam are struggling to determine the future of their relationship. Over the course of one summer, Ellen toils at a trendy urban art gallery while Adam embarks on a solo trip into the Arctic. While Adam enters the compelling and dangerous wilderness alone, Ellen gains fresh perspective via the lens of a new-found collection of friends. Through alternating points of view, we see Adam's and Ellen's impressions of their partnership change, until the end of the novel when their worlds - and changed world-views - suddenly collide.

Review In this adventure story for the entire family anything does! It is a story of childhood innocence and world peace. -- Ladybug PressThis book is an innovative Masterpiece for young and old. -- New WavesThis is a still more revolutionary contribution to children's literature than Harry Popper... -- Mariv Product Description Peace Flower is a story which can be read from the age of ten to a hundred and ten. It is an imaginative tale of fantastic adventures in space, to find the Peace Flower in the Future and bring it back to earth as it does not exist in our present. Lee and Ronni two brave children face the terrible nuclear giant Nuki, who tries to stop them from bringing peace on earth, and they triumph. The book has been adopted by many schools and colleges to teach peace education. It is available in English, in Hebrew, and in Arabic. It is also available on tape, from Ladybug Press, Ca. About the Author Ada Aharoni is an Israeli poet, writer, and lecturer. She writes in English and Hebrew and has published twenty two books to date that have been translated into several languages. She believes that culture and literature can help in healing the urgent ailments of our global village, such as war and conflict, and the themes of peace and conflict resolution are major ones throughout her works. She studied at London University, where she earned an M. Phil. Degree on Henry Fielding, and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she was awarded a Ph.D. on: Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize laureate. Her first novel, The Second Exodus, was published in 1983, and To Alexandria, Jerusalem and Freedom appeared in 1985. Her historical novel From The Nile to The Jordan, was published in 1994; and in 1996 she published The Peace Flower, a fantasy for young and old, which has been compared to St. Exupery's Little Prince. She is likewise one of the editors of the book: Saul Bellow: A Mosaic, that covers the First International Saul Bellow Conference, which she initiated and chaired at Haifa University. Among her published books are eight collections of poems in Hebrew, English, French and Arabic, and two books of translations of Israeli poetry, including Shin Shalom's New Poems. She is the Editor of the Anthology: A Song to Life and to World Peace, as well as of Waves of Peace (1997), dedicated to the memory of Yitzhak Rabin. She is the founder and editor of the Literary Magazine Galim: Waves (1987-1997), and the electronic journals internet Horizon: Pave Peace, and Poetry Israel: Lirit, featuring Israeli poets in English translation. Her latest published book is: You and I Can Change the World (Jan. 2000). Among her many prizes and awards are: The British Council Award, the Keren Amos President Award, the Haifa and Bremen Prize, The World Academy of Arts and Culture Award, the Korean Gold Crown of World Poets Award, the Shin Shalom Prize, the Yunus Emre Award, the Rachel Prize, and she was chosen as one the Hundred Global Heroines in Rochester, N.Y, in 1998. She was also awarded the Honorary Award of HSJE: The World Historical Society of the Jews from Egypt, for her "devoted and unmatched efforts to promote the history of the Jews from Egypt, through her visionary literature and poetry proclaiming peace in the world." She is President of the XIII World Congress of Poets (Haifa, Israel, 1992), and the founder and President of IFLAC: the International Forum for the Culture and Literature of Peace, and convener of PTLC the "Pave Peace Through Literature and Culture" commission of IPRA: the International Peace Research Association. She is also the founder and General Director of "The Bridge: Jewish and Arab Women for Peace in the Middle East." Ada Aharoni has taught literature and sociology at the University of Haifa, and sociology and Conflict Resolution, in the general studies department of the Technion in Haifa. She has been a guest lecturer and visiting professor at several American and European universities,

Amy Levy was a talented Anglo-Jewish writer who committed suicide at the age of 28 in 1889. During her brief career she published essays, short stories, three novels, and three collections of poetry, but none of them is in print today and her works are to be found almost solely in the closed stacks and rare book collections of university libraries. To correct this unavailability and set the stage for a generous selection of her work, Melvyn New introduces Amy Levy as an unmarried Victorian woman and an urban intellectual, disillusioned by the mores of her culture, yet unable to abandon her identification with the English Jews who embodied so much of what she scorned. He reconstructs her world in 1880s England--a time when the president of the British Medical Association warned his colleagues that educated women would become "more or less sexless. . . . [Such women] have highly developed brains but most of them die young"--raising questions that lead to the tortured heart and mind of this "found" writer.

The narrator of Early Companions was born in Germany. He tells of his early life there during Nazi times. When he came to New York, he participated in a left-wing movement, so he knows a thing or two about the internal squabbling among the comrades. Finally, he became a professor at a university, where he saw his share of faculty politics.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882. Excerpt: ... new class of over-ardent patriots who desire to raise the condition of the masses. It treats of the revolutionary youth and the new society struggling into existence, and sketches their attempts and failure. Turgenieff is no demagogue; he believes in no violent measures; he exposes as mercilessly the moral rottenness on the one hand, as the Utopian dreams on the other. It is the old moribund Russia that lives in Turgenieff's books, not the new and healthier one which we hope may arise thence; hence his works, as social studies, have a destructive, rather than a constructive tendency. But such as they are, they are great works of art that must long outlive the time that gave them birth. The fortunate fact that they all appear in the French language has brought them within reach of all readers for whom Russian is too commonly an unknown tongue. The Nihilist. 'Where is your new friend?' he asked Arkadi. 'He has gone out already. He generally gets up very early and makes some excursion. But I must tell you. once for all, that you need not take any notice of him; he does not care for conventionalities.' 'Yes, so I perceive.' Paul Petrovitch began slowly to spread butter on his bread. 'Will he remain here any length of time?' 'That depends. He will go from here to his father's.' 'And where does his father live?' 'In our district; eighty versts from here. He has a little estate there. He used to be the regimental doctor.' 'Ta-ta, ta-ta! I have been continually asking myself, where could I have heard that name before? Bazarof, Bazarof! Nicholas, do you not remember that in our father's division there was a Dr. Bazarof?' 'I seem to remember something of the sort.' 'Yes, it is right enough. So this doctor is his father--hm!' Paul Petrovitch twisted his moustache. '...

"Legends from Vamland is one of the most beautiful stories about human struggle against fear. The author blends together Romanian legends and myths with those of cultures throughout the world. One can hardly find any noble and beautiful human aspiration in all the cultures of the world whose reflection is not to be found in Legends from Vamland. The work is also intended to be one of science fiction, as the author provides the image of the spiritual life of an imaginary people from an imaginary land. The result is a book of splendid originality. One of the first Romanian writers of science fiction, Vladimir Colin was also an important representative of Jewish culture in Romania. Among his most important works of science fiction are Legends from Vamland, a work in many ways similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. These tales have been abridged and retold for English readers by Luiza Carol. Luiza Carol is associate editor of the international poetry magazine Voices Israel. She is an award-winning writer, poet, and translator and a member of the Federation of Israeli Writers and the Academy of American Poets"--

"In Shimon Adaf's sequel to One Mile and Two Days Before Sunset, Elish Ben Zaken has retired from investigating and taken up writing detective novels-but when a new case draws him to a town on the Israel-Gaza border, he faces an existential threat unlike any he's ever known"--

Delightfully quirky and willing to go where few other novels dare, The Swift Seasons takes readers deep into the lives of octogenarians in a retirement community as they learn to live with themselves and each other. At the heart of the story is Willa Warsaw, a childless and recent widow in her eighties who spends her days poring over the writing of Oliver Wendell Holmes and daydreaming. Naturally shy and a bit reclusive, Willa finds herself unaccountably drawn to the newest member of the community-former opera singer Eric Ravelle. Eric and Willa connect over their shared voice disorders, finding comfort in each other. But as their relationship deepens over the passing days, so do their health issues, bringing up very real concerns about their future together. Full of memorable characters, sharp insights into aging, and the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Swift Seasons is a treasured gift, a celebration of living long enough to grow old, and a meditation on things that endure or change as we age.

Exulting in life as few novels do, Jack Ludwig's Above Ground tells the memorable story of Josh, a man devoted to love, sex, and life, a man who roars with lusty pleasure, defiant in the face of pain and death. The novel's infectious commitment to hope and to life is matched in its appeal by the superb prose style that has placed Jack Ludwig among the foremost contemporary authors. Imaginative and sensuous language, deft, vivid characterizations, and an unerring sense of humour draw the reader willingly and pleasurably into the world that is being created. It is a world peopled by fascinating characters, almost all of whom work themselves into Josh's, and the reader's, affections.

Edward Phillips Oppenheim (22 October 1866 - 3 February 1946) was an English novelist, in his lifetime a major and successful writer of genre fiction including thrillers.Oppenheim produced over 100 novels from 1887 to 1943

The first section of the book develops Solway's approach to literature, starting from the assumption that genuine criticism requires the intellectual freedom to range at will across the literary landscape rather than restricting one's direction based on what is current, fashionable, or politically correct. Solway argues that advocating a theoretical school - postmodernism, poststructuralism, semiotics, new historicism, Marxist revisionism, or queer theory - generally involves abandoning the real critical project, which is the discovery of one's own undetermined motives, dispositions, and interests as reflected in the secret mirrors embedded in literary texts. Instead Solway pursues what he calls elective criticism, writing that enables the critical writer to freely discover his or her own identity - a concept that he claims cannot reasonably be diluted, relinquished, or deconstructed. In the second section Solway practices what he preaches, exploring a wide range of authors and subjects. His essays include an analysis of Franz Kafka's The Trial as a Jewish joke, a personal memoir of Irving Layton, an interpretation of Erin Moure's "Pronouns on the Main," an examination of language in William Shakespeare's romances, a reading of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" that is sympathetic to the Duke, an assertion that James Joyce has more in common with the traditional novelist than with the professional, (post-)modern alienator, and an exploration of Jonathan Swift's sartorial imagery that contends that form is the source of substantive identity.

"Eva is unlike anyone Adele and her two sons have ever met. Her rare beauty, the dazzling tales she tells them - of her travels, of wondrous places and creatures, even of the dangers she faced during the war - change their lives, as do the exquisite illuminations contained within the pages of the Miscellany. The two boys, Joseph and Asa, fall in love with Eva, and as Joseph recounts the story and his love for her, and the past begins to intrude upon the present, he finally reveals the novel's secrets, the darkness to which we are all subject."--BOOK JACKET.

Review An expert weaver, Stollman brings together themes of religion, science, and love into an emotional whole. -- Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003 Stollman's weightier fictions - elegantly written and wise - returns literature to its rightful role. -- Miami Herald, March 2, 2003 Product Description A collection of short stories by the author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul represents his earlier works as published in such literary magazines as American Short Fiction, the Yale Review, and Tikkun and explores such themes as the impact of the past on the present and of one person on another. 12,500 first pirnting. From Library Journal A story collection from the author of two celebrated novels: The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Aryehlev Stollman is a neuroradiologist and the author of two books, The Illuminated Soul and The Far Euphrates, which is an American Library Association Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Review Recommended Book of the Year, and the winner of a Wilbur Award and Lambda Award.

Amy Levy (1861-1889) was a British poet and novelist. Levy was born in Clapham, London into a Jewish family that was mildly observant, but as an adult she no longer practised Judaism although she continued to identify with the Jews as a people. Levy wrote stories, essays and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. The stories Cohen of Trinity and Wise in Their Generation, both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine Women's World, are among her best. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism. Her other works include Xantippe and Other Verse (1881), The Romance of a Shop (1888), Reuben Sachs (1888) and Miss Meredith (1889).

An adult novel about the world of children. In McCarthy-era New York City, fourth graders find a forgotten room in the foundations of a building, where they struggle to live their dreams. As the cold war of 1950s America envelops their school, they become radicalized. “Novels such as John Curl’s The Outlaws of Maroon, which capture a child’s point of view and examine the intersection of history and social justice, hold an important place in American literature. Think of To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Books such as these both illuminate moments in history and remind us to pay attention to children: we can learn from them, for they are paying attention to the world.” — Lucille Lang Day

"When Acting Visiting Assistant Professor L. Circassian is fired and rehired in the same week (with a 35 percent pay cut), he is only at the beginning of a cycle of abuse and professional debasement at the university. Joel Shatzky has created an hilarious novel about the corporatization of higher education - a book filled with blowhard deans, corrupt politicians, grasping CEOs, inept union officials, inappropriately dressed students, and scholars in donkey ears. "Option Three is an imaginative, funny and sometimes all too realistic account of life in today's colleges and universities."--Amazon.com

Ex-library copy with all the usual marks and stamps. Content clean and bright. DJ laminated to boards.