This book invites readers into Elena Ferrante's workshop. It offers a glimpse into the drawers of her writing desk, those drawers from which emerged her three early standalone novels and the four installments of My Brilliant Friend, known in English as the Neapolitan Quartet. Consisting of over twenty years of letters, essays, reflections, and interviews, it is a unique depiction of an author who embodies a consummate passion for writing.In these pages Ferrante answers many of her readers' quest...
Bookish Samantha has always hidden behind the words of others-namely, her favorite characters in literature. Now, as she discovers love beyond the pages of her favorite novels, she will learn to write her own story.Sam is, to say the least, bookish. An English major of the highest order, her diet has always been Austen, Dickens, and Shakespeare. The problem is, both her prose and conversation tend to be more Elizabeth Bennet than Samantha Moore.But life for the twenty-three-year-old orphan is ab...
Pamela (Bibliotheque Du Xviiie Siecle, #37) (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Samuel Richardson
Unfolding through letters, the novel depicts with much feeling Pamela's struggles to decide how to respond to her would-be seducer and to determine her place in society. Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), a prominent London printer, is considered by many the father of the English novel, and Pamela the first modern novel. Following its hugely successful publication in 1740, it went on to become one of the most influential books in literary history, setting the course for the novel for the next cen...
A man gets up earlier and earlier each day, dresses in the dark, makes his coffee and lights the fire with a box of matches. Then he rummages through the thoughts that crowd his head and preoccupy him. Here is mid-life domesticated man, whose thoughts veer brilliantly from love and marriage, to firelighters and suicide, in the twinkling of an eye. This is Baker at his best, humorous and observant, revealing the underlying truths about the ephemerality of life, the joy of small things, the darkne...
The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club. “Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.” Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American...
How do you cope in a world without your mother? When Barbara realizes time is running out, she writes letters to her four daughters, aware they'll be facing the trials and triumphs of life without her at their side. But how can she leave them when they still have so much growing up to do?Take Lisa, in her mid-thirties but incapable of making a commitment; or Jennifer, trapped in a stale marriage and buttoned up so tight she could burst. While twentysomething Amanda is the traveler, always distan...
Lose yourself in the uplifting, escapist debut of the year . . .'If you liked Harold Fry and Me Before You, you will love Cullen's nostalgic debut. This life-affirming book will draw you in and keep you there' IndependentWilliam Woolf is a letter detective at the Dead Letters Depot in East London, spending his days reuniting lost mail with its intended recipient.But when he discovers a series of letters addressed simply to 'My Great Love' everything changes . . . Written by a woman to a soulmate...
'Funny as hell. Formally inventive. Daringly concise' C. M. Taylor They've all got a book in them, unfortunately. In December 2016, Julia Greengage, aspiring writer and resting actor, puts up a poster in her local library inviting people to join a new writers' group. The group will exchange constructive feedback and 'generally share in the pains and pleasures of this excruciating yet exhilarating endeavour we call Literature'. Seven people, each in their own way a bit of a work in progress, h...
By the Costa Award-winning author of Pure, a profound and tender tale of guilt, a search for atonement and the hard, uncertain work of loving.'The writing is near perfect. But the novel's excellence goes far beyond this . . . You read [it] . . . with your pulse racing, all your senses awake' Guardian'A beautiful, lambent, timely novel' Sarah HallAn ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic living quietly in Somerset, Stephen Rose has just begun to form a bond with the daughter he barely knows when he...
A Victorian gentleman is forced by illness to entertain himself with the family archive, and he uncovers the Regency-era correspondence and diaries of one Miles Lufton, MP - apparently a black sheep of the family, connected with a scandal long buried. But through the pieced-together artefacts from the past, a fuller picture emerges of a man torn between two personalities - Miles, serious, studious and penniless, and 'Pronto', flirt, political mover and eternal 'extra man'. Miles longs to dispose...
Herzog (Alison Press Books) (Viking Critical Library)
by Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow's Herzog is part confessional, part exorcism, and a wholly unique achievement in postmodern fiction. Is Moses Herzog losing his mind? His formidable wife Madeleine has left him for his best friend, and Herzog is left alone with his whirling thoughts - yet he still sees himself as a survivor, raging against private disasters and the myriad catastrophes of the modern age. In a crumbling house which he shares with rats, his head buzzing with ideas, he writes frantic, unsent letters to f...
Le Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis (Le Mappe Di Pierre, #3)
by Ugo Foscolo
Life in the spotlight was never going to be easy... Jess's life was turned upside down when her blog went viral. Now, with hundreds of thousands of followers, Jess is now navigating the trials and tribulations of a world online. Being a mummy blogger was originally an escape, but now it seems to be turning into a career. And after one wrong post on her social media channels, Jess discovers that life in the spotlight isn't always peachy. With a new baby on the way, the possibility of starrin...
With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Beirut Blues, published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level. The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament...
