In this "page-turner with a beating heart" (Boston Globe), a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold on to her home in California. But this becomes contested territory when a recent immigrant from the Middle East—a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force—becomes determined to restore his family's dignity through buying the house. When the woman's lover, a married cop, intervenes, he goes to extremes to win her love. Andre Dubus III's unforgettable characters—people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on—careen toward inevitable conflict. An "affecting, subtle portrait of two hostile but equally fragile camps" (The New Yorker), their tragedy paints a shockingly true picture of the country we still live in today, two decades after this book's first publication.
Nomadland takes readers on a journey from the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California and Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas. Employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads.
This book tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.
Sing, Unburied, Sing is a searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In her first novel since the acclaimed Salvage the Bones, Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America.
Drawing on influences like Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward provides an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle.
Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Their mother, Leonie, is a drug-addicted presence who is both tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother when she’s high. Mam is dying of cancer, and Pop tries to run the household while teaching Jojo how to be a man.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie takes her kids on a journey to Parchman Farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. The trip is rife with danger and promise.
Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and explores the power, and limitations, of family bonds. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, this novel is an essential contribution to American literature.
The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft brings together an extraordinary collection of tales from one of the most influential American writers of weird tales since Edgar Allan Poe.
Stories included are:
This collection showcases Lovecraft's mastery of the macabre and his pioneering of a new type of fiction that fused elements of supernatural horror with visionary science fiction, revolutionizing modern horror fiction.
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center.
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.