A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin $45.00
Berlin's stories have a wide emotional range, matching a depth of perception with a lightness of touch that enables her to convey difficult lives in a way that is a pleasure to read.
"There’s a radical kind of transparency to careworn, haunted, messily alluring and yet casually droll stories. Her sentences, when she wants them to be, are toast instead of mere warm bread. In A Manual for Cleaning Women we witness the emergence of an important American writer, one who was mostly overlooked in her time. Ms. Berlin’s stories make you marvel at the contingencies of our existence. She is the real deal." - The New York Times
A little girl finds the end of a line and her adventure begins. She follows it through the pages as it becomes a slide, a hoop, a bubble, and then something that threatens to spoil the fun...
Unforbidden pleasures, Phillips argues, are always the ones we tend not to think about, yet when you look into it, it is probable that we get as much pleasure, if not more, from them. And we may have underestimated just how restricted our restrictiveness, in thrall to the forbidden and its rules, may make us.
"Phillips is one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson for our time." - John Banville
"Every mind-blowing book from Adam Phillips suspends all the certainties we are most attached to and somehow makes this feel exhilarating." - Deborah Levy
"Brilliantly amusing and often profoundly unsettling. Phillips is the Martin Amis of British psychoanalysis." - The Times
1999. Victor, homeless after a family tragedy, finds himself pounding the streets of Seattle with little meaning or purpose. He is the estranged son of the police chief of the city, and today his father is in charge of one of the largest protests in the history of Western democracy. But in a matter of hours reality will become a nightmare.
"In the contemporary tradition of Aleksandar Hemon and Philipp Meyer, with echoes of Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy, Yapa strides forward with a literary molotov cocktail to light up the dark." - Colum McCann
>> How to live cheaply and finish your novel.
>> On losing the first draft of his novel.
Ten writers from around the world explore the themes of movement, freedom and narrative.
Nat and Ruth are young orphans, living in a crowded foster home run by an eccentric religious fanatic. When a traveling con-man comes knocking, they see their chance to escape and join him on the road, proclaiming they can channel the dead - for a price, of course. Decades later, in a different time and place, Cora is too clever for her office job, too scared of her lover to cope with her unplanned pregnancy, and she too is looking for a way out. So when her mute Aunt Ruth pays her an unexpected visit, apparently on a mysterious mission, she decides to join her. Together the two women set out on foot, on a strange and unforgettable odyssey across the state of New York.
"Terrific. Fromartz is much more than an obsessive cook. He s also a fine reporter and writer. And Perfect Loaf is much more than a book about baking bread .What Fromartz is really writing about is how a deeper understanding of something leads to a deeper appreciation of it. He is showing us the world through a slice of bread." - Los Angeles Times
"Cunnigham questions the traditional happy endings of fairy tales, and there are no grand conclusions or magical cure-alls to be seen in his new collection of stories. His interpretations of the much-loved stories vary from prequels and sequels to mere retellings, and his versions are subtle and satisfying, the tone understated and sharp. The complex relationships between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters are explored rigorously. There are also smart twists in the tales, clever diversions which provide new talking-points in the ancient conversations, but they seem completely natural. Somehow, his new features feel as if they have always belonged, to the extent that, on reflection, it is difficult to remember where the old ends and the new begins." - Independent
Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia, performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the mid-nineteenth century. Mütter was a medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anaesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time. He wore pink silk suits to perform surgery, added an umlaut to his last name just because he could, and amassed an immense collection of medical oddities that would later form the basis of Philadelphia's renowned Mütter Museum.
One of publishing's most distinguished editors looks back over her life and tells us how becoming old (she is approaching 100) has resolved her perspective.
Near the little town of Fairfold, in the darkest part of the forest, lies a glass casket. Inside the casket lies a sleeping faerie prince that none can rouse. He's the most fascinating thing Hazel and her brother Ben have ever seen. They dream of waking him - but what happens when dreams come true? In the darkest part of the forest, you must be careful what you wish for.
Jago is a kid from a rough part of London who has worked hard to get a job in a bank and is now on a fast-track secondment to the Berlin office. Marcantonio is one of the new generation in the 'Ndrangheta crime families from Calabria, Southern Italy. He is in Germany to learn how to channel their illicit millions towards legitimate businesses all over Europe. When Jago witnesses Marcantonio commit a vicious assault and the police seem uninterested, the Englisman refuses to let the matter drop.
"The best thriller writer in the world." - Sunday Telegraph.
In 1859, the brilliant scientist Urbain LeVerrier discovered that the planet Mercury has a wobble, that its orbit shifts over time. His explanation was that there had to be an unseen planet circling even closer to the sun. He called the planet Vulcan. Supported by the theories of Sir Isaac Newton, the finest astronomers of their generation began to seek out Vulcan and at least a dozen reports of discovery were filed. There was only one problem. Vulcan does not exist - and was never there. The real explanation was only revealed when a young Albert Einstein came up with a theory of gravity that also happened to prove that Mercury's orbit could indeed be explained - not by Newton's theories but by Einstein's own theory of general relativity.
One ordinary morning, Norah walked out of her house on Willoughby Street and never looked back. Six years later, she returns to the home she walked away from only to find another woman in her place. Fay held Norah's family together after she disappeared, she shares a bed with Norah's husband and Norah's youngest daughter calls Fay 'Mummy'. Now that Norah has returned, everyone has questions
Abraham Ortelius' pioneering world atlas, the unexpected origins of 'wolf smoke', the proliferation of the blunderbuss in the fifteenth century Great Wall theatre of war, even Kafka's experimental short story 'The Great Wall of China' are some of the unique objects that were shaped by China's most famous national landmark. Lindesay presents objects from all over the world, and from the second century BCE to the late twentieth century to tell the story of a human construction that can be seen from the moon.
England in 1215. This was not just the year of Magna Carta and King John's war with his barons, but a year of crusading and church reform, of foreign wars and dramatic sieges, of trade and treachery; a year in which London would be stormed by angry barons; England would be invaded by a French army; and a supposedly impregnable castle would be brought down with burning pig fat.
A man is washed up on a deserted beach on the Hebridean Isle of Harris, barely alive and borderline hypothermic. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his identity is a map tracing a track called the Coffin Road. He does not know where it will lead him, but filled with dread, fear and uncertainty he knows he must follow it.
Who is going to fail the 'gives joy' test next?
