4101 results for "Novel"

Small island

Levy, Andrea
An international bestseller. Andrea Levy's Small Island won the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best, The Whitbread Novel Award, The Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.
Picador 2010-03-30 441 pages

Great Society A New History

Amity Shlaes
The New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Man and Coolidge offers a stunning revision of our last great period of idealism, the 1960s, with burning relevance for our contemporary challenges. "Great Society is accurate history that reads like a novel, covering the high hopes and catastrophic missteps of our well-meaning leaders." --Alan Greenspan Today, a battle rages in our country. Many Americans are attracted to socialism and economic redistribution while opponents of those ideas argue for purer capitalism. In the 1960s, Americans sought the same goals many seek now: an end to poverty, higher standards of living for the middle class, a better environment and more access to health care and education. Then, too, we debated socialism and capitalism, public sector reform versus private sector advancement. Time and again, whether under John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon, the country chose the public sector. Yet the targets of our idealism proved elusive. What's more, Johnson's and Nixon's programs shackled millions of families in permanent government dependence. Ironically, Shlaes argues, the costs of entitlement commitments made a half century ago preclude the very reforms that Americans will need in coming decades. In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period, from U.S. Presidents to the visionary UAW leader Walter Reuther, the founders of Intel, and Federal Reserve chairmen William McChesney Martin and Arthur Burns. Great Society casts new light on other figures too, from Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, to the socialist Michael Harrington and the protest movement leader Tom Hayden. Drawing on her classic economic expertise and deep historical knowledge, Shlaes upends the traditional narrative of the era, providing a damning indictment of the consequences of thoughtless idealism with striking relevance for today. Great Society captures a dramatic contest with lessons both dark and bright for our own time.
HarperCollins Publishers 2020-11-24 528 pages

Fermat's last theorem: unlocking the secret of an ancient mathematical problem

Aczel, Amir D.
Over three hundred years ago, a French scholar scribbled a simple theorem in the margin of a book. It would become the world's most baffling mathematical mystery. Simple, elegant, and utterly impossible to prove, Fermat's Last Theorem captured the imaginations of amateur and professional mathematicians for over three centuries. For some it became a wonderful passion. For others it was an obsession that led to deceit, intrigue, or insanity. In a volume filled with the clues, red herrings, and suspense of a mystery novel, Dr. Amir Aczel reveals the previously untold story of the people, the history, and the cultures that lie behind this scientific triumph. From formulas devised for the farmers of ancient Babylonia to the dramatic proof of Fermat's theorem in 1993, this extraordinary work takes us along on an exhilarating intellectual treasure hunt. Revealing the hidden mathematical order of the natural world in everything from stars to sunflowers, Fermat's Last Theorem brilliantly combines philosophy and hard science with investigative journalism. The result: a real-life detective story of the intellect, at once intriguing, thought-provoking, and impossible to put down.
Four Walls Eight Windows 1996-10-20 147 pages

The dovekeepers

Hoffman, Alice
Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path. Yael's mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death. Revka, a village baker's wife, watched the murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed. Aziza is a warrior's daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier. Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power.The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets-about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them, and whom they love --
Simon & Schuster 2011 504 pages

The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester
#4 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written. The first Hugo Award winner for best novel in 1953. “One of the all-time classics of science fiction.”—Isaac Asimov “Bester's two superb books have stood the test of time. For nearly sixty years they’ve held their place on everybody’s list of the ten greatest sf novels” —Robert Silverberg In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime that hasn’t been heard of in 70 years: murder. That’s the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D’Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face and driven to the edge after D’Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival and bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath's knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence. Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.
ibooks 2018-01-08 224 pages

The Trials Of Zion

Dershowitz, Alan M.
50 years after Leon Uris's book, Exodus, which told the tumultuous and inspiring story of the founding of the state of Israel, celebrated attorney and bestselling author Alan M. Dershowitz has produced a thrilling novel of Israel today, a place where warring factions from within and outside the Middle East continue to battle for the soul of a land they all regard as holy. A shocking act of terror brings the simmering tensions of the Holy Land to the point of explosion. As the internal conflicts of this troubled region threaten to erupt in, a young Jewish-American lawyer joins the defense team of an arrested but possibly innocent Palestinian. Soon the lawyer's father, a famed criminal attorney, must win the Palestinian's case in court or risk losing his daughter forever. To solve the case, he must take into account the history of the Holy Land as it was experienced by people on all sides. THE TRIALS OF ZION combines the tension of the greatest courtroom dramas with the action of a fast-moving thriller, all set against the backdrop of one of the most colorful, complex and historically significant cultural settings in the world.
Grand Central Publishing 1960-01-01 400 pages

Suspect

Turow, Scott
"For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation-until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign designed to destroy her career and empower her enemies-both outside the police force and within. Clarice "Pinky" Granum spent most of her youth experimenting with an impressive array of drugs and failing out of various professions, including the police academy. Pinky knows that in the eyes of most people, she's nothing but a screwup-but she doesn't trust most people's opinions anyway. Moreover, she finally has a respectable-enough job as a licensed P.I. working for Rik on his roster of mostly minor cases, like workman's comp, DUIs and bar fights. Rik's shabby office and even shabbier cases are a far cry from the kinds of high-profile criminal matters Pinky became familiar with in the law office of her grandfather, Sandy Stern. But Rik and Pinky feel that Chief Gomez's case, which has attracted national attention, is their chance to break into the legal big leagues. Guided by her gut instinct and razor-sharp investigative skills, Pinky dives headfirst into a twisted scandal that will draw her into the deepest recesses of the city's criminal networks, as well as the human mind. But she will need every scrap of tenacity and courage to unravel the dark secrets those closest to her are determined to keep hidden"--
Grand Central Publishing 2022 439 pages

Fear Street: true evil

Stine, R. L.
"Corky and Bobbi Corcoran want nothing more than to make the cheerleading squad at Shadyside High. But as soon as the sisters are named to the team, terrible things start happening to the cheerleaders. First, there's a mysterious accident near the Fear Street cemetery. Soon after, piercing screams echo through empty school halls. And things only get more disturbing from there. Can Corky and Bobbi find out what's going on before the entire squad is slain? Nothing is ever truly laid to rest on Fear Street, and the girls may lose more than they bargained for in their fight to survive."--Provided by publisher.
Simon Pulse 2023-04-04 586 pages

The matzah ball

Meltzer, Jean
"Oy! to the world. Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a nice Jewish girl with a shameful secret: she loves Christmas. For a decade she’s hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach. But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Hanukkah’s not magical. It’s not merry. It’s not Christmas. Desperate not to lose her contract, Rachel’s determined to find her muse at the Matzah Ball, a Jewish music celebration on the last night of Hanukkah, even if it means working with her summer camp archenemy—Jacob Greenberg. Though Rachel and Jacob haven’t seen each other since they were kids, their grudge still glows brighter than a menorah. But as they spend more time together, Rachel finds herself drawn to Hanukkah—and Jacob—in a way she never expected. Maybe this holiday of lights will be the spark she needed to set her heart ablaze" -- back cover.
Piatkus 2021-09-28 403 pages

Girl Friday

Green, Jane
When Kit and Adam separated after almost fifteen years of marriage, Kit felt like she had lost her lover, her best friend and her identity all in one fell swoop. But now, a year on from the divorce, Kit has found herself again and she loves her life in the idyllic Connecticut town of Highfield. She has the perfect job – working for Robert McClore, the famous novelist – two wonderful children, a good relationship with her ex-husband and time to enjoy yoga with her friends. Then Tracy, Kit’s yoga instructor and close friend, introduces her to Steve – attentive, charming, the perfect gentleman – and, for the first time in years, Kit thinks she may have found the right one. But is Steve really as perfect as he seems? And why does it bother Kit when Tracy starts dating Kit’s reclusive boss, Robert? What no one knows is that Tracy is hiding a secret – one that threatens to ruin her new-found happiness with Robert and her friendship with Kit. And now Tracy must decide whether to keep her past hidden from them both for ever or whether she should reveal the truth before it’s too late... Sparkling, poignant and wise, Girl Friday is a captivating tale of friendship, family and marriage as both Kit and Tracy discover that sometimes the people you thought you had lost make their way back into your life again... N.B. Girl Friday is called Dune Road in the US
Penguin 2010 400 pages

Harlan Ellison's The city on the edge of forever: the original teleplay that became the classic Star trek episode

Ellison, Harlan
White Wolf Publishing presents, for the first time in unlimited edition trade paperback, the unrevised, unadulterated version of Harlan Ellison's award-winning Star Trek script, The City on the Edge of Forever - the spark that incited Ellison's vehement and long-lived feud with late TV producer Gene Roddenberry! The City on the Edge of Forever is, at its most basic, a poignant love story. Ellison takes the reader on a breathtaking trip through space and time, from the future, all the way back to 1930s America. In this harrowing journey, Kirk and Spock race to apprehend a renegade criminal and restore the order of the universe. It is here that Kirk faces his ultimate dilemma: a choice between the universe - or his one true love. White Wolf's Borealis Legends imprint makes available this astonishing teleplay as Ellison intended it to be aired. The author's introductory essay (expanded by 15,000 words from the limited edition) reveals all of the details of what Ellison describes as a "fatally inept treatment" of his creative work. Was he unjustly edited, unjustly accused, and unjustly treated?
White Wolf Pub 1996 276 pages

Picks and shovels

Doctorow, Cory
THE YEAR IS 1986. THE CITY IS SAN FRANCISCO. Here, Martin Hench will reinvent the forensic accountant for the digital age - what a bounty hunter is to people, he will be to tech money - but for now he's an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever. When Martin is hired by a Silicon Valley startup, Fidelity Computing, to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitor, he quickly realises he's on the wrong side. Martin ditches the greasy old guys running Fidelity Computing without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Computing Freedom. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women have set out to beat Fidelity Computing at their own game. But they have no idea of the depth of evil they're seeking to uproot. Or the risks they run. In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.
Head of Zeus 2025-09-11 400 pages

The Civil War: Red River to Appomattox

Shelby Foote
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the Modern Library publishes Shelby Foote's three-volume masterpiece in a new boxed set including three hardcovers and a new trade paperback, American Homer: Reflections on Shelby Foote and His Classic Civil War: A Narrative, edited by and with an introduction from Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and including essays by Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, and others. Random House publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned southern novelist Shelby Foote to write a short, one-volume history of the American Civil War. Thirty years and a million and a half words later--every word having been written out longhand with nib pens dipped into ink--Foote published the third and final volume of what has become the classic narrative of that epic war. As he approached the end of the final volume, Foote recounted this scene in a letter to his friend, the novelist Walker Percy: "I killed Lincoln last week--Saturday, at noon. While I was doing it (he had his chest arched up, holding his last breath to let it out) some halfassed doctor came to the door with vols I and II under his arm, wanting me to autograph them for his son for Xmas. I was in such a state of shock, I not only let him in; I even signed the goddam books, a thing I seldom do. Then I turned back and killed him and had Stanton say, 'Now he belongs to the ages.' A strange feeling, though. I have another 70-odd pages to go, and I have a fear they'll be like Hamlet with Hamlet left out. Christ, what a man. It's been a great thing getting to know him as he was, rather than as he has come to be--a sort of TV image of himself, with a ghost alongside." When Percy read the final book, he wrote to Foote: "It's a noble work. I'm still staggered by the size of the achievement. . . . It is The Iliad ." A selection of these letters, along with essays by Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, Ken Burns, Annette Gordon-Reed, Michael Eric Dyson, Julia Reed, Robert Loomis, Donald Graham, John M. McCardell, Jr., and Jay Tolson, are included in American Homer, the bonus paperback book available only in the Modern Library boxed set of The Civil War. Shelby Foote's tremendous, sweeping narrative of the most fascinating conflict in our history--a war that lasted four long, bitter years, an experience more profound and meaningful than any other the American people have ever lived through--begins with Jefferson Davis's resignation from the United States Senate and Abraham Lincoln's departure from Springfield for the national capital. It is these two leaders, whose lives continually touch on the great chain of events throughout the story, who are only the first of scores of exciting personalities that in effect make The Civil War a multiple biography set against the crisis of an age. Four years later, Lincoln's second inaugural sets the seal, invoking "charity for all" on the Eve of Five Forks and the Grant-Lee race for Appomattox. Here is the dust and stench of war, a sort of Twilight of the Gods. The epilogue is Lincoln in his grave, and Davis in his postwar existence--"Lucifer in Starlight." So ends a unique achievement--already recognized as one of the finest histories ever fashioned by an American--a narrative that re-creates on a vast and brilliant canvas the events and personalities of an American epic: the Civil War.
Random House 2011 2984 pages

The death of the artist: how creators are struggling to survive in the age of billionaires and big tech

Deresiewicz, William
"Over the last twenty years, art has become more accessible than ever before. A painter can post their latest creation on Instagram and wait as the likes pile up; a budding filmmaker can shoot a clip on their iPhone, then upload it to YouTube for thousands to view. The digital landscape has fundamentally altered what it means to be creative, as well as how consumers interact with artistic production both economically and curatorially. William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of contemporary culture in America, argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation within art. Whereas the nineteenth century considered artists to be craftsmen and the twentieth century treated them as professionals, artists today are uniquely dependent upon themselves. The internet, along with decreases in art funding and the growing prevalence of gig economies, has forced artists to become responsible for every aspect of their work, from conception to promotion, from sales to legacy. In The Death of the Artist, Deresiewicz profiles those struggling to make a living through the arts, from the twenty-something college novelist with a multi-hyphenated job title to the midlife painter who must utilize social media to stay relevant. Deresiewicz shows what the birth of the "creative entrepreneur" signifies about our evolving society at large and what might be done to keep artists thriving, because we need them"--
Henry Holt and Company 2020 355 pages

Conflict is not abuse: overstating harm, community responsibility, and the duty of repair

Schulman, Sarah
From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference. This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals. Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia , Empathy , After Delores , and The Mere Future . She lives in New York.
Arsenal Pulp Press 2016 299 pages