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SHORTLISTED FOR THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a richly atmospheric debut about lost innocence and rural America... 'Remarkable. This novel reads like a miracle' NPR 'Brimming with longing, with heartbreak' New York Times Jude is popular, beautiful, wealthier than most in Deep Valley. Cindy is Jude's neighbour - younger, poorer, a kid from the kind of family everyone knows will come to no good. Jude is black and Cindy is white. One summer, Jude disappears. Search parties go out but come back empty-handed and strangely pleased. Jude thought she was better than everyone else. Look at her now. Meanwhile Cindy is performing a vanishing act of her own. She is slipping out of her old life and into someone else's. She is becoming Jude... 'Lyrical, sexy, humane, and just a total pleasure to read' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot 'One of the most exquisitely written books I've read in a long time. A haunting novel about craving escape so badly you're willing to erase yourself, by a writer I would follow anywhere' Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
In the middle of the journey of our life Dante finds himself lost in a dark wood but then he founds a whole lot of literary movements and arguably modernity itself with his Divine Comedy that, nonetheless, inexplicably, didn't make God laugh. This serious absence caused God's non-divine counterparts, humans, to wonder: "Why are we in hell?" "Why is it so funny?" "And why can't I laugh?"
Poetry. Winner of the 2011 Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Prize, selected by Matthea Harvey. The poems in S. E. Smith's debut collection are caffeinated, wildly comic, assured maximalist performances introducing such characters as three slutty bears, a horse thief named Dirk, Becky Home-ecky, and a pony of darkness. Divided into sections appropriately titled "Parties," "Beauty," and "Devastation," Smith's book is at once free-spirited, metaphysically inquisitive, and romantically exuberant: "If god wanted us to be strangers, why would he place us / next to each other in the movie theater and make us think / our knees are touching when they're really a few inches / apart? Looking at Anita Ekberg's breasts, we can see / the future. It is soft, pink, and frolics in a fountain / where the sea gods bathe their weary feet."
In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined - one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.
From the internationally bestselling author of The Essex Serpent—soon to be an Apple TV+ Series “A beautiful, dream-like, unsettling narrative in which every word, like a small jewel, feels carefully chosen, considered and placed. Rarely do debut novels come as assured and impressive as this one.”—Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The Paying Guests Elegant, sinister and psychologically complex, After Me Comes the Flood is the haunting debut novel by Sarah Perry, the bestselling author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth. One hot summer’s day, John Cole decides to shut his bookshop early, and possibly forever, and drives out of London to see his brother. When his car b...
From the astonishingly talented writer of The Accidental and Hotel World comes Ali Smiths brilliant retelling of Ovids gender-bending myth of Iphis and Ianthe, as seen through the eyes of two Scottish sisters. Girl Meets Boy is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, and the absurdity of consumerism, as well as a story of reversals and revelations that is as sharply witty as it is lyrical. Funny, fresh, poetic, and political, Girl Meets Boy is a myth of metamorphosis for a world made in Madison Avenues image, and the funniest addition to the Myths series from Canongate since Margaret Atwoods The Penelopiad.
A playful, form-bending novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet 'Playful and audacious' Independent Narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, Artful slips slyly between fiction and essay, guiding the reader thrillingly through a sequence of ideas on art and literature. With Smith's trademark humour, inventiveness, poignancy and critical insight, this is unique experiment in form, style, life, love, death, immortality and what art can mean. Based on four electrifying lectures given by the author at Oxford University, and exploring the explosive connections between art, story, memory and grief - Artful is a tidal wave of ideas to blast away the cobwebs and change how you see the world. ***** 'Artful is a revelation; a new kind of book altogether . . . makes you glad to be alive' Jackie Kay 'Powerful and moving' London Review of Books 'Blending of criticism and fiction, Artful belongs in a genre of its own . . . Joyful for anyone interested in the art of writing, and living, well' Anita Sethi, New Statesman
SHORTLISTED FOR THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE For fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, a richly atmospheric debut about lost innocence and rural America... 'Remarkable. This novel reads like a miracle' NPR 'Brimming with longing, with heartbreak' New York Times Jude is popular, beautiful, wealthier than most in Deep Valley. Cindy is Jude's neighbour - younger, poorer, a kid from the kind of family everyone knows will come to no good. Jude is black and Cindy is white. One summer, Jude disappears. Search parties go out but come back empty-handed and strangely pleased. Jude thought she was better than everyone else. Look at her now. Meanwhile Cindy is performing a vanishing act of her own. She is slipping out of her old life and into someone else's. She is becoming Jude... 'Lyrical, sexy, humane, and just a total pleasure to read' Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot 'One of the most exquisitely written books I've read in a long time. A haunting novel about craving escape so badly you're willing to erase yourself, by a writer I would follow anywhere' Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
From an award-winning author, Fingersmith is an extraordinary, ingenious tale of fraud, insanity and secrets London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves - fingersmiths - under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her 'family'. But from the moment Sue draws breath, her fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away. 'A page turning thriller while managing to be a tender love story' Adam Kay 'Intensely atmospheric, impeccably paced, and cunningly structured' Mail on Sunday 'A chilling, ingenious erotic thriller - unputdownable' Sunday Express 'Long, dark, twisted and satisfying... An unforgettable experience' Julie Myerson, Guardian
Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When his promise to fulfil a dying man's last wish sees him wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit, the old woman comes to his aid. A Year of Marvellous Ways is a glorious, life-affirming story about the magic in everyday life and the pull of the sea, the healing powers of storytelling and sloe gin, love and death and how we carry on when grief comes snapping at our heels.