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Based on interviews with some of his closest associates, a portrait of the thirty-fifth president discusses his privileged childhood, military service, struggles with a life-threatening disease, and career in politics.
A year before he died, Jack Matthews (author of 10 story collections and over 30 books) was asked to suggest his 3 favorite stories from all his books for this story sampler. "Amos Smith, the Gunsmith" reaches into the folk tale tradition to produce a nice allegory about human labor. "A Woman of Properties" is a satirical suburban tale (reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor or Cheever) about a real estate agent with a grudge. "The Girl at the Window" is an unsettling and mysterious tale about our relationship to the past. Also included is an extended interview the author gave about the craft of writing in 2009. During his career as a writer, Mr. Matthews was distinguished professor of Fiction Wri...
An extensive investigation of the origins and numerous sightings of the mysterious and terrifying figure known as Spring-Heeled Jack • Shares original 19th-century newspaper accounts of Spring-Heeled Jack encounters as well as 20th and 21st-century reports • Explains his connections to Jack the Ripper and the Slender Man • Explores his origins in earlier mythical beings from folklore, his Steampunk popularity, and the theory that he may be an alien from a high-gravity planet Spring-Heeled Jack--a tall, thin, bounding figure with bat-like wings, clawed hands, wheels of fire for eyes, and breath of blue flames--first leapt to public attention in Victorian London in 1838, springing over h...
"The search for a prehistoric turquoise mine, murder, pueblo ceremonialism, a bookshop, and sheepherders and horsemen form a contemporary novel set in the high country of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico"--
"Bobby Kennedy was a personal hero to a multitude of Americans. As the train carrying his body headed to Washington, whites and blacks alike stood along the tracks, saluting him. They loved him as a fellow patriot who believed a great country could also be a good one. Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's Hardball, has discovered what made him who he was ... Drawing on extensive research and intimate interviews, Matthews shines a light on all the important moments of Bobby's life: his upbringing, his start in politics, his crucial role fighting for civil rights as attorney general, and his tragic run for president."--Dust jacket flap.
Cobb's The Fire Eaters"Cobb's short stories, printed in the New Yorker and other magazines, hinted at the power he displays in this beautifully controlled and convincing debut, winner of the 1992 Associated Writing Programs award for the novel."--Publisher's Weekly
A generation ago in Australia, abortion was a crime. It was also the basis of one of the country's most lucrative and longest-lasting criminal rackets. The Racket describes the rise and fall of an extraordinary web of influence, which culminated in the landmark ruling that made abortion legal, and a public inquiry that humiliated a powerful government and a glamorous police force. With forensic skill and psychological subtlety, Gideon Haigh brings to life a story of corruption in high places and human suffering in low, of murder, suicide, courtroom drama, political machinations, and of the abortionists themselves: among them a multi-millionaire philanthropist, a communist bush poet, a timid aesthete and a bankrupt slaughterman. It is the story, too, of Bertram Wainer, abortion's crash-through-or-crash campaigner, and the moral issue he bequeathed which still divides Australians.
In "The Raft," a ten-year-old-boy struggles with the shock of his father's leap from a ninth-floor window of the failed family business. A middle-aged woman invites her widowed mother to move in with her and then the two of them must fight it out to see which one has made the greater "sacrifice." A high school senior, more interested in boys than in fruit flies, uses her genetics project - "Sex-Linked Traits" - to probe the foibles of her own high-strung family. In "Uncle Maggot," a little girl, unwilling to say goodbye at her father's coffin, shocks the mourners with a very odd performance.
A powerful story collection that celebrates those who strive and fail and strive again. If Joseph Campbell's dictum—"follow your bliss"—has become inspiration and goad, accusation and cliché, then the characters in David Borofka's The Bliss of Your Attention are all the more puzzled by what their futures portend. Their bliss is never clear nor independent of others, for the characters in these stories are ever in search of connection, understanding, and validation, even if the latter—unlike reality and cynicism—is in short supply. As the narrator of "Live with It" tells her would-be novelist husband, "Learn to live with your disappointments." "I mean," she thinks, "I could give him ...