LITMIR.BIZ

In the alternate universe of this glitteringly surreal first novel, the Aztecs rule, having conquered the European invaders. Zenzontli, Keeper of the House of Darkness, is visited by visions of a parallel world run by the Europeans, where consumerism reigns supreme. Aztecs armed with automatic weapons, totemic powers and blood sacrifice conquer and colonize 1940s Europe, as ghosts of the world wars emerge to haunt contemporary Los Angeles. Atomik Aztex is a hilarious read. A potent concoction, with influences from graphic novels, along with Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo , the paranoia of Philip K. Dick and William Burroughs, and an outrageous cyber-Aztlán mix reminiscent of Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Sesshu Foster is the author of the critically acclaimed City Terrace Field Manual .

Подробнее

Beginning with its famous line, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad”, “Scaramouche” is the entertaining romantic adventure by Rafael Sabitini, the prolific Italian-English author. Set in the time of the French Revolution, this 1921 novel tells of the romantic adventures of André-Louis Moreau, a man who has never known the names of his parents. Educated as a lawyer and living with his godfather, André-Louis becomes drawn to the revolutionaries after his best friend is killed in a duel with the aristocratic Marquis de la Tour. Moreau gives stirring speeches to the rebels concerning wealthy men who are not brought to justice, which helps set the stage for the Revolution. When André-Louis is forced into hiding for his political involvement, he discovers his gifts for acting, playwriting, and fencing in a series of entertaining events. He is a true hero as he protects the people he cares for while seeking revenge in this courtly and transformative story. Readers will get caught up with André-Louis and his noble quest to honor his forgotten friend in this charming and entertaining adventure renowned for its accurate and satisfying sword fighting and historical details. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

Подробнее

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully , the debut novel from Norwegian writer and translator Karen Havelin, is the story of a woman whose body has become her enemy. We meet Laura Fjellstad first as she works and cares for her young daughter, while struggling with debilitating pain and endometriosis, an invisible chronic illness. As the novel tracks backward, the reader meets Laura's younger and somewhat healthier selves (a hopeful bride in New York, a baby queer in Paris, a figure skater in Norway), and uncovers her tireless work to gain control of her identity, her illness and the conflicting demands made by doctors, friends, lovers and family. Havelin's debut novel etches details of daily life into a gripping and darkly humorous bildungsroman about the intricacies of love and life in a fragile body. Man Booker Prize-winning author Paul Beatty says, Most books about disease try to describe the pain; told in poetic whisper, Karen Havelin's debut novel lets pain speak for itself. It's a book that dares you be nosy, to eavesdrop and listen in to a stoic young woman whom no one noticed until she began to disappear, her body disintegrating from the inside out until there's nothing left but searing agony and almost impossibly—a burning triumph. Jarringly funny and perceptive; an intimate reckoning with the inner demons and precarity of everyday life, unpacked through the very specific lens of a woman with chronic pain.

Подробнее

“Murphy artfully connects multiple narratives to produce a sprawling tale of love, family, duty, war, and displacement. It is above all a stinging indictment of the ill-fated war in Iraq and the heavy tolls it continues to exact on its people.”—Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner The world is Rita Khoury’s oyster. The bright and driven daughter of a Boston-area Irish-Arab family that has risen over the generations from poor immigrants to part of the coastal elite, Rita grows up in a 1980s cultural mishmash. Corned beef and cabbage sit on the dinner table alongside stuffed grape leaves and tabooleh , all cooked by Rita’s mother, an Irish nurse who met her Lebanese surgeon husband while working at a hospital together. The unconventional yet close-knit family bonds over summers at the beach, wedding line-dances, and a shared obsession with the Red Sox.Rita charts herself an ambitious path through Harvard to one of the best newspapers in the country. She is posted in cosmopolitan Beirut and dates a handsome Palestinian would-be activist. But when she is assigned to cover the America-led invasion of Baghdad in 2003, she finds herself unprepared for the warzone. Her lifeline is her interpreter and fixer Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally restless young man whose dreams have been restricted by life in a deteriorating dictatorship, not to mention his own seemingly impossible desires. As the war tears Iraq apart, personal betrayal and the horrors of conflict force Rita and Nabil out of the country and into twisting, uncertain fates. What lies in wait will upend their lives forever, shattering their own notions of what they’re entitled to in a grossly unjust world. Epic in scope, by turns satirical and heartbreaking, and speaking sharply to America’s current moment, Correspondents is a whirlwind story about displacement from one’s own roots, the violence America promotes both abroad and at home, and the resilience that allows families to remake themselves and endure even the most shocking upheavals.

Подробнее

Over the last decade, Yan Lianke has been continually heralded as one of the “best contemporary Chinese writers” ( The Independent ) and “one of the country’s fiercest satirists” ( The Guardian ). Among many awards and honors, he has been twice a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize and he was awarded the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize for his impressive body of work. Now, for the first time, his two most acclaimed novellas are being published in English. “Timeless” and “marvelous” ( Asian Review of Books ), Marrow is a haunting story of a widow who goes to extremes to provide a normal life for her four physically and mentally disabled children. When she finds out that bones “the closer from kin the better” can cure their illnesses and prevent future generations from the same fate, she feeds them a medicinal soup made from the bones of her dead husband. But after running out of bones, she resorts to a measure that only a mother can take. A luminous, moving fable, The Years, Months, Days —a bestselling classic in China and winner of the prestigious Lu Xun Literary Prize—tells of an elderly man who stays in his small village after a terrible drought forces everyone to leave. Unable to make the grueling march through the mountains, he becomes the lone inhabitant, along with a blind dog. Tending to a single ear of corn, and fending off the natural world from overtaking the village, every day is a victory over death. With touches of the fantastical, these two novellas—masterpieces of the form—reflect the universality of mankind’s will to live, live well, and live with purpose.

Подробнее

Few works of contemporary literature are so universally acclaimed as central to our understanding of the human experience as Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett’s famous trilogy. Molloy , the first of these masterpieces, appeared in French in 1951. It was followed seven months later by Malone Dies and two years later by The Unnamable . All three have been rendered into English by the author.

Подробнее

“Kerouac dreams of America in the authentic rolling rhythms of a Whitman or a Thomas Wolfe, drunk with eagerness for life.”—John K. Hutchens

Подробнее

A joy ride set on a crash course with the past. Audrey Cole has always loved to drive. Anytime, anywhere, any car: a questionable rustbucket, a family sedan, the SUV she was paid to drive around the oil fields. From the second she learned to drive, she’s always found a way to hit the road. Years ago, when she abandoned her oil field job, she found herself chauffeuring around the Lever Men, a B-list band relegated to playing empty dive bars in far-flung towns. That’s how she found herself at the Crash Palace, an isolated lodge outside the big city where people pay to party in the wilderness. And now, one night, while her young daughter is asleep at home, Audrey is struck by that old urge and finds herself testing the doors of parked cars in her neighbourhood. Before she knows it, she’s headed north in the dead of winter to the now abandoned Crash Palace in a stolen car, unable to stop herself from confronting her past The Crash Palace is a funny, moving, and surprising novel by the author of the Amazon First Novel Award–nominated The Milk Chicken Bomb . Audrey is unlike any character you’ve met before, and you'll love being along for the ride.

Подробнее

Подробнее

Fifteen-year-old Ian Daly's moral universe is turned upside down when, at this father's funeral, he discovers that his father had two secret families. "Cassidy's debut is affecting…Like the best coming-of-age novels, Here Lies a Father grounds its big concerns in the exquisite particulars of one person’s life."– Literary Hub “Mckenzie Cassidy stuns with his beautiful debut novel, Here Lies a Father . Told as a classic coming-of-age story, Cassidy’s narrator, fifteen-year-old Ian Daly, is a nuanced combination of the naivete of Huckleberry Finn and the shrewdness of Holden Caufield."– Southern Review of Books ”Cassidy’s engrossing debut…convincingly depicts the ways his sensitive, turbulent protagonist navigates the murky period between adolescence and adulthood. Cassidy’s distinctive coming-of-age story will move readers.”– Publishers Weekly "Ian is a worthy literary cousin of Holden Caulfield, another kid with little tolerance for fakes and phonies and too much hard-won skepticism for his age. The grown-ups have let Ian down; now he must create himself."– Kirkus Reviews "If you're looking for a good, quicker read that will get you thinking about family life, mental health and how the environment someone grew up in can affect how they are as a person, I'd definitely recommend Here Lies A Father ."– Girls at the Rock Show " Here Lies a Father is a fantastic, page-turning read, chock full of surprises and deeply manifesting home truths and their layered meanings, and so clearly points to the fact that even after just the one book, Mckenzie Cassidy has hit a literary home run."– Exclusive Magazine "Here Lies A Father is a coming of age story ripe with secrets and lies. Mckenzie Cassidy captures all the wonder and confusion of one teen’s rites of passage as he grapples with the truth about his parents and the mystery of the past."–Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels"Keenly observed and beautifully written, Mckenzie Cassidy's Here Lies a Father follows a blue-collar Holden Caulfield through a weekend odyssey of family secrets, lies, and revelations. It's a novel for anyone who has ever wondered about their parents' pasts–I couldn't put it down."–Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female "A marvelous read, full of surprises, home truths, and excellent prose. Mckenzie Cassidy has joined the illustrious ranks of Ivan Turgenev and his classic Fathers and Sons ."–John Bowers, author of The Colony " Here Lies A Father is a raw balance of beauty and sadness, both a compelling page-turner and a call to linger over each of Cassidy's exquisitely crafted sentences."–Libby Cudmore, author of The Big Rewind When Ian Daly and his sister Catherine arrive for their wayward father’s funeral in his small and desolate upstate New York hometown, a secret that was kept from them their entire lives emerges: their father Thomas abandoned two other families, leaving behind two furious wives and several children who never knew their father. Ian wants to know more of the truth, but his sister and mother want to preserve the carefully constructed myth they’ve created around who Thomas really was.In the cold, lonely winter landscape of small-town New York, fifteen-year-old Ian sets out alone to learn the truth about his father’s past and the families he left behind. Here Lies a Father examines the long-term effects shameful secrets have on a family, and how difficult it is for a young man to reconstruct his own sense of right and wrong, when every value and moral principle he was ever taught was based on a lie.

Подробнее