catapult new york ny (288 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Near new with a hint of rubbing and scuffing to mylar protected dust jacket. Otherwise tight, bright, unmarked interior. NO remainder marks. Shipping confirmed!.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERMemoir meets craft master class in this daring, honest, psychologically insightful exploration of how we think and write about intimate experiencesa must read for anybody shoving a pen across paper or staring into a screen or a past" (Mary Karr)In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storytellers life and the questions which run through it. How might we go about capturing on the page the relationships that have formed us? How do we write about our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean for an authors way of writing, or living, to be dismissed as navel-gazingor else hailed as so brave, so raw? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong? Drawing on her own path from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professorvia addiction and recovery, sex work and academiaMelissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideasand occasional notes of cautionto anyone who has ever hoped to see themselves in a story. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone by 22 literary writers including- Lev Grossman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lena Dunham, Jesmyn Ward, Yiyun Li, and Anthony DoerrIf you're feeling lonely or if you've ever felt unseen, if you're emboldened by solitude or secretly longing for it- Welcome to The Lonely Stories. This cathartic collection of essays illuminates an experience that so few of us openly discuss. Some stories are heartbreaking, such as Jesmyn Ward's reckoning with the loss of her husband and Dina Nayeri's reflection on immigrating to a foreign country. Others are witty, such as Lev Grossman's rueful tale of heading to the woods or Anthony Doerr's struggles with internet addiction. Still others celebrate the clarity of solitude, like Claire Dederer's journey toward sobriety and Lidia Yuknavitch's sensual look at desire. Thoughtful and affirming, The Lonely Stories reveals the complexities of an emotion we've all felt-reminding us that we're not alone.Contributors include-Megan GiddingsClaire DedererImani PerryJeffery Renard AllenMaggie ShipsteadEmily RaboteauLev GrossmanLena DunhamYiyun LiAnthony DoerrHelena FitzgeraldMaile MeloyAja GabelJean KwokAmy ShearnPeter Ho DaviesMaya Shanbhag LangJhumpa LahiriJesmyn WardLidia YuknavitchDina NayeriMelissa Febos Thoughtful and affirming, this collection of essays about the joys and struggles of being alone illuminates an experience that is rarely openly discussed. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness- a grandfather who beats his wife, a barman father who dreams of being a country music star. At one time, Jones's parents can barely afford groceries; at another, her volatile grandfather presents her with a fur coat.After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake. And through the lens of her own family's catastrophes and triumphs, Jones pays homage to the landscapes and legends of her childhood home, a region haunted by its history- Eliza Pinckney cultivates indigo, Blackbeard ransacks the coast, and the Gray Man paces the beach, warning of Hurricane Hazel."From horse thieves to hurricanes, from shattered Southern myths to fractured family ties, from Nashville to Myrtle Beach to Miami, Low Country is a lyrical, devastating, fiercely original memoir" of one family's changing fortunes in the Low Country of South Carolina (Justin Taylor, author of Riding with the Ghost).J. Nicole Jones is the only daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, a family that grew rich building the hotels and seafood restaurants that draw tourists to Myrtle Beach. But at home, she is surrounded by violence and capriciousness- a grandfather who beats his wife, a barman father who dreams of being a country music star. At one time, Jones's parents can barely afford groceries; at another, her volatile grandfather presents her with a fur coat.After a girlhood of extreme wealth and deep debt, of ghosts and folklore, of cruel men and unwanted spectacle, Jones finds herself face to face with an explosive possibility concerning her long-abused grandmother that she can neither speak nor shake. And through the lens of her own family's catastrophes and triumphs, Jones pays homage to the landscapes and legends of her childhood home, a region haunted by its history- Eliza Pinckney cultivates indigo, Blackbeard ransacks the coast, and the Gray Man paces the beach, warning of Hurricane Hazel. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. "In this delightful autofictionthe first book by Gainza, an Argentine art critic, to appear in Englisha woman delivers pithy assessments of worldclass painters along with glimpses of her life, braiding the two into an illuminating whole." The New York Times Book Review, Notable Book of the Year and Editors' ChoiceThe narrator of Optic Nerve is an Argentinian woman whose obsession is art. The story of her life is the story of the paintings, and painters, who matter to her. Her intimate, digressive voice guides us through a gallery of moments that have touched her.In these pages, El Greco visits the Sistine Chapel and is appalled by Michelangelos bodies. The mystery of Rothkos refusal to finish murals for the Seagram Building in New York is blended with the story of a hospital in which a prostitute walks the halls while the narrators husband receives chemotherapy. Alfred de Dreux visits Gericaults workshop; Gustave Courbets devilish seascapes incite viewers to have sex, or to eat an apple; Picasso organizes a cruel banquet in Rousseaus honor . . . All of these fascinating episodes in art history interact with the narrators life in Buenos Airesher family and work; her loves and losses; her infatuations and disappointments. The effect is of a character refracted by environment, composed by the canvases she studies.Seductive and capricious, Optic Nerve marks the Englishlanguage debut of a major Argentinian writer. It is a book that captures, like no other, the mysterious connections between a work of art and the person who perceives it. The U.S. debut novel of a celebrated Argentinian author--named a finalist for the Premio Dulce Chacon--blending fiction, history, and personal essay to tell the story of one woman's obsession with art Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Featuring deep dives into thirst traps, drag queens, Antonio Banderas, and telenovelasall in the service of helping us reframe how we talk about (desiring) menthis insightful memoir-in-essays is as much a coming of age as a coming out bookManuel Betancourt has long lustfully coveted masculinityin part because he so lacked it. As a child in Bogota, Colombia, he grew up with the social pressure to appear strong, manly, and, ultimately, straight. And yet in the films and television he avidly watched, Betancourt saw glimmers of different possibilities. From the stars of telenovelas and the princes of Disney films to pop sensation Ricky Martin and teen heartthrobs in shows like Saved By the Bell, he continually found himself asking: Do I want him or do I want to be him?The Male Gazed grapples with the thrall of masculinity, examining its frailty and its attendant anxieties even as it focuses on its erotic potential. Masculinity, Betancourt suggests, isnt suddenly ripe for deconstructionor even outright destructionamid so much talk about its inherent toxicity. Looking back over decades worth of pop cultures attempts to codify and reframe what men can be, wear, do, and desire, this book establishes that to gaze at men is still a subversive act.Written in the spirit of Hanif Abdurraqib and Olivia Laing, The Male Gazed mingles personal anecdotes with cultural criticism to offer an exploration of intimacy, homoeroticism, and the danger of internalizing too many toxic ideas about masculinity as a gay man. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceNew York Times Notable author Maria Gainza, who dazzled critics with Optic Nerve, returns with the captivating story of an auction house employee on the trail of an enigmatic master forgerIn the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she specializes in canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentinean high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancolico? On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist.Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by "authenticity" in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and what is told. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book AwardA historical tapestry of border-crossing travelers, of students, wanderers, martyrs and invaders, The White Mosque is a memoiristic, prismatic record of a journey through Uzbekistan and of the strange shifts, encounters, and accidents that combine to create an identityIn the late nineteenth century, a group of German-speaking Mennonites traveled from Russia into Central Asia, where their charismatic leader predicted Christ would return.Over a century later, Sofia Samatar joins a tour following their path, fascinated not by the hardships of their journey, but by its aftermath: the establishment of a small Christian village in the Muslim Khanate of Khiva. Named Ak Metchet, The White Mosque, after the Mennonites whitewashed church, the village lasted for fifty years.In pursuit of this curious history, Samatar discovers a variety of characters whose lives intersect around the ancient Silk Road, from a fifteenth-century astronomer-king, to an intrepid Swiss woman traveler of the 1930s, to the first Uzbek photographer, and explores such topics as Central Asian cinema, Mennonite martyrs, and Samatars own complex upbringing as the daughter of a Swiss-Mennonite and a Somali-Muslim, raised as a Mennonite of color in America.A secular pilgrimage to a lost village and a near-forgotten history, The White Mosque traces the porous and ever-expanding borders of identity, asking: How do we enter the stories of others? And how, out of the tissue of life, with its weird incidents, buried archives, and startling connections, does a person construct a self? Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. For readers of Sally Rooney and fans of Shuggie Bain and Just Kids, Juno Loves Legs is the epic and heartbreaking story of a young friendship set in working-class Dublin in the 1980sJuno Loves Legs is the story of two teens labeled as delinquents. Juno and "Legs" grow up on the same housing estate in Dublin, where spirited, intelligent Juno is ostracized for her poverty and Legs is persecuted for his sexuality; they find safety only in each other. Set against the backdrop of Dublin in the 1980s, a place of political, social and religious change, the friends yearn for an unbound life and together they begin to fight to take up the space of who they truly are. As their defiance reverberates through their lives, the children are further alienated from their surrounding society through acts of bravery and cowardice, both their own and others. Finding themselves as outsiders, they are feared, coveted and watched, but rarely truly seen.Told through the eyes of Juno, we see the pair begin to navigate the political and oftentimes confusing adult world with honesty and intuition. A country emerging from a dark Catholicism into the wider world of possibilities. Who is invited into modernity and gentrification and who is left behind?Caught between the rich depth of her intellect and the harsh reality of her life, we follow Juno as she begins to understand how divergent a life lived and a life thought can be.Juno Loves Legs shows the frustration of feeling trapped in a life that is not yours and the ability of friendship to lift us out of our experiences and into a truer version of ourselves. It is a novel that reminds us that kindness, bravery, and love appear in places where they are not always expected and in forms not usually recognised, but with a potency that cannot be ignored. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debuta coming-of-age story about the crucible of girlhood, from a writer of rare and startling talentWe would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones. In Falls Landing, Floridaa place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowerssomething sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they see will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the "we" of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. "How lovely to discover a book on the craft of writing that is also fun to read . . . Alison asserts that the best stories follow patterns in nature, and by defining these new styles she offers writers the freedom to explore but with enough guidance to thrive." Maris Kreizman, VultureA Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2019 | A Poets & Writers Best Books for WritersAs Jane Alison writes in the introduction to her insightful and appealing book about the craft of writing: For centuries theres been one path through fiction were most likely to travel one were actually told to followand thats the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides . . . But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculosexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?"W. G. Sebalds Emigrants was the first novel to show Alison how forward momentum can be created by way of pattern, rather than the traditional arc--or, in nature, wave. Other writers of nonlinear prose considered in her museum of specimens include Nicholson Baker, Anne Carson, Marguerite Duras, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Susan Minot, David Mitchell, Caryl Phillips, and Mary Robison.Meander, Spiral, Explode is a singular and brilliant elucidation of literary strategies that also brings high spirits and wit to its original conclusions. It is a liberating manifesto that says, Lets leave the outdated modes behind and, in thinking of new modes, bring feeling back to experimentation. It will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. Novelist and writing teacher Jane Alison illuminates the many shapes other than the usual wavelike "narrative arc" that can move fiction forward. The stories she loves most follow other organic patterns found in nature--spirals, meanders, and explosions, among others. Alison's manifesto for new modes of narrative will appeal to serious readers and writers alike. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A collection of horror-inspired flash fiction, featuring over 40 new stories from literary, horror, and emerging writers-edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto, the twisted minds behind Tiny Crimes- Very Short Tales of Mystery and MurderIn this playful, inventive collection, leading literary and horror writers spin chilling tales in only a few pages. Each slim, fast-moving story brings to life the kind of monsters readers love to fear, from brokenhearted vampires to Uber-taking serial killers and mind-reading witches.But what also makes Tiny Nightmares so bloodcurdling-and unforgettable-are the real-world horrors that writers such as Samantha Hunt, Brian Evenson, Jac Jemc, Stephen Graham Jones, Lilliam Rivera, Kevin Brockmeier, and Rion Amilcar Scott weave into their fictions, exploring how global warming, racism, social media addiction, and homelessness are just as frightening as, say, a vampire's fangs sinking into your neck.Our advice? Read with the hall light on and the bedroom door open just a crack.Featuring new stories from Samantha Hunt, Jac Jemc, Stephen Graham Jones, Rion Amilcar Scott, and more! Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. An exhilarating travelogue for a new generation about a journey along Colombia's Magdalena River, exploring life by the banks of a majestic river now at risk, and how a country recovers from conflict."Richly observed." -Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book ReviewAn American writer of Argentine, Syrian, and Iraqi Jewish descent, Jordan Salama tells the story of the Rio Magdalena, nearly one thousand miles long, the heart of Colombia. This is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's territory-rumor has it Macondo was partly inspired by the port town of Mompox-as much as that of the Middle Eastern immigrants who run fabric stores by its banks.Following the river from its source high in the Andes to its mouth on the Caribbean coast, journeying by boat, bus, and improvised motobalinera, Salama writes against stereotype and toward the rich lives of those he meets. Among them are a canoe builder, biologists who study invasive hippopotamuses, a Queens transplant managing a failing hotel, a jeweler practicing the art of silver filigree, and a traveling librarian whose donkeys, Alfa and Beto, haul books to rural children. Joy, mourning, and humor come together in this astonishing debut, about a country too often seen as only a site of war, and a tale of lively adventure following a legendary river. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Queer. Muslim. Arab American. A proudly Fat femme. Randa Jarrar is all of these things. In this "exuberant, defiant and introspective" memoir of a cross-country road trip, she explores how to claim joy in an unraveling and hostile America (The New York Times Book Review). Randa Jarrar is a fearless voice of dissent who has been called "politically incorrect" (Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times). As an American raised for a time in Egypt, and finding herself captivated by the story of a celebrated Egyptian belly dancer's journey across the United States in the 1940s, she sets off from her home in California to her parents' in Connecticut. Coloring this road trip are journeys abroad and recollections of a life lived with daring. Reclaiming her autonomy after a life of survival--domestic assault as a child, and later, as a wife; threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush--Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body. On the way, she schools a rest-stop racist, destroys Confederate flags in the desert, and visits the Chicago neighborhood where her immigrant parents first lived. Hailed as "one of the finest writers of her generation" (Laila Lalami), Jarrar delivers a euphoric and critical, funny and profound memoir that will speak to anyone who has felt erased, asserting: I am here. I am joyful. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.These intimate stories of South Indian immigrants and the families they left behind center women's lives and ask how women both claim and surrender power-a stunning debut collection from an O. Henry Prize winnerTraveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A fearless collection of stories that celebrate the humor, darkness, and depth of emotion of the queer and trans experience that's not typically represented: liminal or uncertain identities, queer conception, and queer joyIn this exuberant, prize-winning collection, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming characters seek love and connection in hilarious and heartrending stories that reflect the complexity of our current moment.A nonbinary writer on the eve of top surgery enters into a risky affair during the height of COVID. A lesbian couple enlists a close friend as a sperm donor, plying him with a potent rainbow-colored cocktail. A lonely office worker struggling with their gender identity chaperones their nephew to a trans YouTube convention. And in the depths of a Midwestern winter, a sex-addicted librarian relies on her pet ferrets to help resist a relapse at a wild college fair.Capturing both the dark and lovable sides of the human experience, Rainbow Rainbow establishes debut author Lydia Conklin as a fearless new voice for their generation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A TIME Best Book of the YearA New Yorker Best Book of the Year An extraordinary novel from a Man Booker International Prize-winning author that follows one young Omani woman as she builds a life for herself in Britain and reflects on the relationships that have made her from a remarkable writer who has constructed her own novelistic form (James Wood, The New Yorker).From Man Booker International Prizewinning author Jokha Alharthi, Bitter Orange Tree is a profound exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. It presents a mosaic portrait of one young womans attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.Zuhour, an Omani student at a British university, is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she cant help but ruminate on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her strong emotional bond with Bint Amir, a woman she always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just before Zuhour left the Arabian Peninsula.As the historical narrative of Bint Amirs challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhours isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips and dreams mingle with memories. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In this electric debut essay collection, a Myanmar millennial playfully challenges us to examine the knots and complications of immigration status, eating habits, Western feminism in an Asian home, and more, guiding us toward an expansive idea of what it means to be a Myanmar woman todayWhat does it mean to be a Myanmar persona baker, swimmer, writer and womanon your own terms rather than those of the colonizer? These irreverent yet vulnerable essays ask that question by tracing the journey of a woman who spent her young adulthood in the US and UK before returning to her hometown of Yangon, where she still lives.In Youve Changed, Pyae takes on romantic relationships whose futures are determined by different passports, switching accents in American taxis, the patriarchal Myanmar concept of hpone which governs how laundry is done, swimming as refuge from mental illness, pleasure and shame around eating rice, and baking in a kitchen far from white Americas imagination.Throughout, she wrestles with the question of who she isa Myanmar woman in the West, a Western-educated person in Yangon, a writer who refuses to be labeled a race writer. With intimate and funny prose, Pyae shows how the truth of identity may be found not in stability, but in its gloriously unsettled nature. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The beguiling story of a young journalist whose investigation of a murder leads her to the most legendary healer in all of Mexico, from one of the most prominent voices of a new generation of Latin American writersPaloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.Sent to report on Palomas murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain village of San Felipe. There, the two womens lives twist around each other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant, cruel and full of hope.A story of the worlds repeated failure to control feminine power and the sheer magic of language itself. An enthralling, passionate story about secrets both holy and profane. Catherine Lacey, author of Pew and Nobody Is Ever Missing Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The essential annual guide to the newest voices in literatureSelected by Venita Blackburn, Richard Chiem, and Dantiel W. MonizThe essential annual guide to the newest voices in literatureSelected by Venita Blackburn, Richard Chiem, and Dantiel W. MonizBest Debut Short Stories is an annual celebration of the most promising short story writers today. Selected by a panel of distinguished judges, these twelve stories are the 2023 winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, which recognizes each writer's outstanding debut in a literary magazine.The stories in this anthology encompass fraught family gatherings, death, inheritance, reproduction and birth, translation, secrets, and betrayals. They show us what we would rather not face- a grandmother's repeated resurrection, the loss of a child, a family's excuses for a predator. They direct our attention away from fluorescence and to the natural world- iguanas climbing into beds, a reflection in an orange, sweat like rain drops, gossamer petals, a child named Ant. They question how well we can ever know other people- partners reconsidering each other on the brink of divorce, an imaginary roommate. They remind us that some questions have no perfect answer- Why pretend not to understand someone in need? What can anyone do with anxieties over becoming a parent?This year's stories were selected by judges Venita Blackburn, Richard Chiem, and Dantiel W. Moniz, innovators of the short story form. Each story is accompanied by an introduction from the journal editor who first published it, providing insight about what's exciting in fiction right now, and recognizing the vital work literary magazines do in nurturing new voices. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut NovelHow can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? An Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question in this powerful-and funny-debut novel of generational change, a mother's secret, and an activist's coming-of-ageTwenty-one-year-old Reed is fed up. Angry about the killing of a Black man by an Asian American NYPD officer, he wants to drop out of college and devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. But would that truly bring him closer to the moral life he seeks?In a series of intimate, charged conversations, his mother-once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition-demands that he rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son. As Reed zips around his hometown of Los Angeles with his mother, searching and questioning, he faces a revelation that will change everything.Inspired by his family's roots in activism, Ryan Lee Wong offers an extraordinary debut novel for readers of Anthony Veasna So, Rachel Kushner, and Michelle Zauner- a book that is as humorous as it is profound, a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the Center for Fiction Debut Novel prize, this fableistic, "beautifully crafted, poetic" debut novel about a sister trying to hold back her brother from the edge of the abyss is for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Tommy Orange (The New York Times Book Review).In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother's passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa's own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be.As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother's ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina's vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARA wrenching debut memoir of familial grief by a National Book Award finalistand a defining account of what it means to love and lose a difficult parent, for readers of Joan Didion and Dani Shapiro.When Christopher Sorrentino's mother died in 2017, it marked the end of a journey that had begun eighty years earlier in the South Bronx. Victoria's life took her to the heart of New York's vibrant mid-century downtown artistic scene, to the sedate campus of Stanford, and finally back to Brooklyna journey witnessed by a son who watched, helpless, as she grew more and more isolated, distancing herself from everyone and everything she'd ever loved.In examining the mystery of his mother's life, from her dysfunctional marriage to his heedless father, the writer Gilbert Sorrentino, to her ultimate withdrawal from the world, Christopher excavates his own memories and family folklore in an effort to discover her dreams, understand her disappointments, and peel back the ways in which she seemed forever trapped between two identities: the Puerto Rican girl identified on her birth certificate as Black, and the white woman she had seemingly decided to become. Meanwhile Christopher experiences his own transformation, emerging from under his father's shadow and his mother's thumb to establish his identity as a writer and individualone who would soon make his own missteps and mistakes.Unfolding against the captivating backdrop of a vanished New York, a city of cheap bohemian enclaves and a thriving avant-gardea dangerous, decaying, but liberated and potentially liberating placeNow Beacon, Now Sea is a matchless portrait of the beautiful, painful messiness of life, and the transformative power of even conflicted grief."Acute, intimate and exceedingly fair, Sorrentinos memoir is a post-mortem that examines not the causes of his parents deaths but the endurance and effects of their confounding marriage . . . This is the story of a son who is trying to dissect and understand the love that remainsand sometimes emergesafter death. We may have a greater cultural appetite for eulogies, but an autopsy, in looking directly at the cold corpse of a family in all its gruesomeness and mystery, can be just as profound, and in the hands of a writer as restrained and humane as Sorrentino, just as beautiful." Eleanor Henderson, The New York Times Book Review Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed-about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith-in search of the truth about her son."The memoir dedicates important space to the numbing bureaucracy that often accompanies medical visits, particularly as seen through the eyes of a Black woman in the South. Having moved often within White neighborhoods and educational institutions around her home in Charlottesville, Harris is unflinching about her periodic unease in those quarters. . . Harris also brings humor to bear in moments of great adversity."-Karen Iris Tucker, Washington PostA Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed-about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith-in search of the truth about her son."The memoir dedicates important space to the numbing bureaucracy that often accompanies medical visits, particularly as seen through the eyes of a Black woman in the South. Having moved often within White neighborhoods and educational institutions around her home in Charlottesville, Harris is unflinching about her periodic unease in those quarters. . . Harris also brings humor to bear in moments of great adversity."-Karen Iris Tucker, Washington PostOne morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris's round-cheeked, lively twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder, that tries to whisper that she's overreacting. But at the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed- something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor's life will never be the same.With every question the doctors answer about Tophs's increasingly troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a diagnosis. She spends countless hours trying to navigate health and education systems that can be hostile to Black mothers and children; at night she googles, prays, and interrogates her every action.Some days, her sweet, charismatic boy seems just fine; others, he struggles to answer simple questions. A long-awaited appointment with a geneticist ultimately reveals nothing about what's causing Tophs's drops in blood sugar, his processing delays-but it does reveal something unexpected about Taylor's own health. What if her son's challenges have saved her life?This Boy We Made is a stirring and radiantly written examination of the bond between mother and child, full of hard-won insights about fighting for and finding meaning when nothing goes as expected. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A haunting new novel by the author of Vengeance in which a chance encounter between a blocked painter and a journalist leads to a complicated romance that reveals their buried histories and vulnerabilities against the backdrops of an America in chaos and Mexico.Beginning in the first summer of the post-Obama world, Zachary Lazar's bewitching and masterful new novel tells the story of Christopher Bell, a blocked painter on the East End of Long Island, and Ana Ramirez, a journalist who fled the crisis in Venezuela and is looking for work in New York. Bell has always felt marked by his foreignness, having emigrated to the U.S. as a child, and has come to believe that "words like 'identity' and 'American' are somehow very meaningful and very meaningless at the same time. He has retreated to a modest house near a patch of woods, a rural nowherethat sometimes held more meaning for me in its silence than human language. In the woods, he encounters Ana, who is trying to reinvent herself as the kind of person shed been before the world she knew disappeared. A complicated romance develops that gradually reveals their buried historiesfrom the death of Bells former partner, Malika Jordan, a fellow artist, to the prison farm where he visits Malikas incarcerated brother Jesse, to Mexico City, where Anas exiled family now lives. All of them have faced the same problem: how to build a new life once the idea you've had of "home" vanishes or becomes unrecognizable.The Apartment on Calle Uruguay is a haunting exploration of love, art, and the cost of transformation. It lays out a fiercely intentional and introspective way of living in an unjust world. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. An intimate and empowering anthology of essays that explore the changing face of female desire in whip-smart, sensuous prose, with pieces by Tara Conklin, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and othersWhat is desire? And what are its rules? In this daring collection, award-winning and emerging female writers share their innermost longings, in turn dismantling both personal and political constructs of what desire is or can be.In the opening essay, Larissa Pham unearths the ache beneath all her wants- time. Rena Priest's desire for a pair of five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots spurs a reckoning with her childhood on the rez and the fraught history of her hometown. Other pieces in the collection turn cultural tropes around dating, sex, and romance on their heads-Angela Cardinale tries dating as a divorced mother of two in the California suburbs only to discover sweet solace in being alone; Keyanah B. Nurse finds power in polyamory; and when Joanna Rakoff spots a former lover at a bar, the heat between them unravels her family as she is pulled into his orbit-an undoing, she decides, that's worth everything.Including pieces by Tara Conklin, Torrey Peters, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and so many others, these candid and insightful essays tackle the complicated knot of women's desire.Featuring essays by Elisa Albert, Kristen Arnett, Molly McCully Brown, Angela Cardinale, Tara Conklin, Sonia Maria David, Jennifer De Leon, Camille T. Dungy, Melissa Febos, Amber Flame, Amy Gall, Aracelis Girmay, Sonora Jha, Nicole Hardy, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, TaraShea Nesbit, Keyanah B. Nurse, Torrey Peters, Amanda Petrusich, Larissa Pham, Rena Priest, Joanna Rakoff, Karen Russell, Domenica Ruta, Susan Shapiro, Terese Svoboda, Lisa Taddeo, Ann Tashi Slater, Abigail Thomas, Merritt Tierce, Michelle Wildgen, Jane Wong, and Teresa Wong Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayA new collection of pieces on literature and life by the author of Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the NBCC Award for CriticismStationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Seymour Orner wrote a letter every day to his wife, Lorraine. She seldom responded, leading him to plead in 1945, Another day and still no word from you. Seventy years later, Peter Orner writes in response to his grandfathers plea: Maybe we read because we seek that word from someone, from anyone.From the acclaimed fiction writer about whom Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote, You know from the second you pick him up that hes the real deal, comes Still No Word from You, a unique chain of essays and intimate stories that meld the lived life and the reading life. For Orner, there is no separation. Covering such well-known writers as Lorraine Hansberry, Primo Levi, and Marilynne Robinson, as well as other greats like Maeve Brennan and James Alan McPherson, Orners highly personal take on literature alternates with his own true stories of loss and love, hope and despair. In his mothers copy of A Coney Island of the Mind, hes stopped short by a single word in the margin, YES!which leads him to conjure his mother at twenty-three. He stops reading Penelope Fitzgeralds The Beginning of Spring three quarters of the way through because he knows that finishing the novel will leave him bereft. Orners solution is to start again from the beginning to slow the inevitable heartache.Still No Word from You is a book for anyone for whom reading is as essential as breathing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Dept. of Speculation meets Black Mirror in this lyrical, speculative debut about a queer mother raising her daughter in an unjust surveillance state In a United States not so unlike our own, the Department of Balance has adopted a radical new form of law enforcement: rather than incarceration, wrongdoers are given a second (and sometimes, third, fourth, and fifth) shadow as a reminder of their crimeand a warning to those they encounter. Within the Department, corruption and prejudice run rampant, giving rise to an underclass of so-called Shadesters who are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections.Kris is a Shadester and a new mother to a baby born with a second shadow of her own. Grieving the loss of her wife and thoroughly unprepared for the reality of raising a child alone, Kris teeters on the edge of collapse, fumbling in a daze of alcohol, shame, and self-loathing. Yet as the kid grows, Kris finds her footing, raising a child whose irrepressible spark cannot be dampened by the harsh realities of the world. She cant forget her wife, but with time, she can make a new life for herself and the kid, supported by a community of fellow misfits who defy the Department to lift one another up in solidarity and hope.With a first-person register reminiscent of the fierce self-disclosure of Sheila Heti and the poetic precision of Ocean Vuong, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is a bold debut novel that examines the long shadow of grief, the hard work of parenting, and the power of queer resistance. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK | AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA beautiful exploration of the often complex parameters of freedom, prejudice, and individual sense of self. Chibundu Onuzo has written a captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never knew . . . [A] beautiful book about a woman brave enough to discover her true identity. Reese WitherspoonOnuzos sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonization, inheritance and liberation. The New York Times Book ReviewNamed a Best Book of the Month by Entertainment Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and Time Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Month by Goodreads, PopSugar, PureWow, LitHub, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and BuzzfeedA woman wondering who she really is goes in search of a father she never knewonly to find something far more complicated than she ever expectedin this stirring narrative about family, our capacity to change and the need to belong (Time).Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. In her 40s, she has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her motherthe only parent who raised heris dead. Searching through her mother's belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. His student diaries chronicle his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. Anna discovers that he eventually became the presidentsome would say dictatorof a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive. When Anna decides to track her father down, a journey begins that is disarmingly moving, funny, and fascinating. Like the metaphorical bird that gives the novel its name, Sankofa expresses the importance of reaching back to knowledge gained in the past and bringing it into the present to address universal questions of race and belonging, the overseas experience for the African diaspora, and the search for a family's hidden roots. Examining freedom, prejudice, and personal and public inheritance, Sankofa is a story for anyone who has ever gone looking for a clear identity or home, and found something more complex in its place. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.