"Naked Sleeper" is the story of a love triangle between Nona, her husband Roy, and Lyle, a married professor she meets during a month away in the country. While there, Nona is working on a book about her father's life, trying to understand the reasons that he abandoned her and her mother when she was a child. Nona's search for details about her father's past becomes so entwined in the telling of this book that readers watch several stories unfold simultaneously: those of Nona's relationships with Roy and Lyle; with her mother, Rosalind; and with her phantom father.
A puddle of water on a highway changed Dinesh Palipana's life forever. Halfway through medical school, Dinesh was involved in a catastrophic car accident that caused a cervical spinal cord injury. After his accident, his strength and determination saw him return to complete medical school - now with quadriplegia. Dinesh was the first quadriplegic medical intern in Queensland, and the second person with quadriplegia to graduate medical school in Australia. Despite all of the pain and hardship he's faced, Dinesh now sees his accident as a turning point for the better in his life. He believes it has made him a better doctor, with a better grasp of the concerns and fears of his patients, and a more sensitive, open human. He fights for equal and equitable access for disabled people, and is a compassionate and skilled doctor working in one of Australia's busiest hospitals. After everything he's been through, Dinesh believes he is now happier, stronger and more capable than he was before the accident. It helped him to clarify what is important in his life, and taught him that happiness and strength can always be found within. Praise for Stronger: 'Dinesh's spirit of positivity and his love of life is astonishing. Thoughtful, powerful and moving, Stronger is an exemplar of resilience' - Dr Richard Harris 'Dinesh Palipana is an incredible leader who has challenged the limits of mindset and belief. His contribution to Australia will be felt for generations.' - Kurt Fearnley
From Sigrid Nunez, the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend, comes A Feather on the Breath of God: a mesmerizing story about the tangled nature of relationships between parents and children, between language and love A young woman looks back to the world of her immigrant parents: a Chinese-Panamanian father and a German mother. Growing up in a housing project in the 1950s and 1960s, she escapes into dreams inspired both by her parents' stories and by her own reading and, for a time, into the otherworldly life of ballet. A yearning, homesick mother, a silent and withdrawn father, the ballet--these are the elements that shape the young woman's imagination and her sexuality.
From the National Book Award-winning author of The Friend, one of the most celebrated novelists of her generation, the story of a woman's experiences in the Vietnam War "After my first book was published, I received some letters." So begins Sigrid Nunez's haunting novel about the poignant and unusual friendship between a writer and a retired army nurse who seeks her out decades after their childhood in the same housing project. Among the letters the narrator receives is one from a Rouenna Zycinski, recalling their old connection and asking if they can meet.Though fascinated by the stories Rouenna tells about her life as a combat nurse in Vietnam, the narrator flatly declines her request that they collaborate on a memoir. It is only later, in the aftermath of Rouenna's shocking death, that the narrator is drawn to write about her friend--and her friend's war. Writing Rouenna's story becomes all-consuming, at once a necessity and the only consolation. For Rouenna, an unforgettable novel about truth, memory, and unexpected heroism by one of the most gifted writers of her generation, is also a remarkable and surprising new look at war.
Go beyond basic scrap quilts with this guide to turning fabric bits snips into striking modern art quilts—featuring 8 quick and easy projects. In Scrappy Bits Applique, fabric designer and quilt artist Shannon Brinkley shares her secrets to putting sewing room scraps to use. With her easy stitching and collage techniques, she shows how simplicity can produce dramatic results. Shannon’s “scrappy” approach to quilting uses a fast raw-edged technique. With step-by-step instructions, she teaches you how to intuitively choose, cut, and sew bits of fabric to create a collage of unique images and textures. Included are eight engaging quilt projects to try out your new skills.
Challenging the tidy links among authorial position, narrative perspective, and fictional content, Stephen Hong Sohn argues that Asian American authors have never been limited to writing about Asian American characters or contexts. Racial Asymmetries specifically examines the importance of first person narration in Asian American fiction published in the postrace era, focusing on those cultural productions in which the author’s ethnoracial makeup does not directly overlap with that of the storytelling perspective. Through rigorous analysis of novels and short fiction, such as Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex, Sabina Murray’s A Carnivore’s Inquiry and Sigrid Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind, Sohn reveals how the construction of narrative perspective allows the Asian American writer a flexible aesthetic canvas upon which to engage issues of oppression and inequity, power and subjectivity, and the complicated construction of racial identity. Speaking to concerns running through postcolonial studies and American literature at large, Racial Asymmetries employs an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the unbounded nature of fictional worlds.
The Persistence of Racialization: Literature, Gender, and Ethnicity represents an attempt at unpacking the legacy of modern ideas of race initiated and established during the conquest of the Americas and their current relevance for literary criticism of ethnic writing, also known as minority writing. The book challenges ideas of a post-racial globalized world to question the tendency to devalue ethnic literary writing in general, and ethnic women’s productions in particular, by questioning reductive literary criticism of ethnic writing that perpetuates bias against ethnic writing and its authors. By advocating for a decolonial literary imagination, the book urges literary critics of ethnic writing to consider the complexities of modern race and its enduring impact on contemporary social and cultural narratives. Updated literary analyses of Jewish Argentine, Turkish German, and Chinese American women writers encourage literary critics of ethnic writing to explore alternative transnational frameworks that prioritize equity, diversity, and social justice.
The second in the Darby Holland Crime Novelseries of humorous noir novels set in Portland, Oregon's seedy side, featuring resourceful Darby Holland, owner of the tattoo parlor called The Lucky Supreme, and his brilliant and slightly mad side kick—the twiggy, vinyl clad tattoo artist, Delia. Time is up in Old Town. As the pace of gentrification reaches frenzy in Portland, Oregon, Darby Holland’s beloved tattoo parlor, Lucky Supreme, is destroyed by a bomb that ripped through an entire city block. Only a warning call from his favorite prostitute saved his life. Developers have been like wolves at the door of D’mitri (the drunken landlord) for the past few years, but this is different. With nothing to lose, Darby goes on a rampage to discover the bomber and the developer who set everything in motion. Along the way falls under FBI suspicion, messes with dangerous pimps and drug lords, gets his face permanently rearranged. At what is undoubtedly the lowest point in his adult life, Darby meets the woman of his dreams. Long, lanky, smart, and a foot taller than him, Suzanne is a woman of enormous appetite. Darby has finally met his match in bed and at the dinner table. But Suzanne, for all her strength and wisdom, can’t save Darby from his enemies. Fortunately, Delia (Darby’s tiny vinyl clad sidekick) and her punk-rock boyfriend’s band can. They and a ragtag team of Lucky Supreme faithfuls organize a positively outrageous caper in crime fiction, making full use of an Armenian smuggling operation, to pave the way for justice and the resurrection of the Lucky Supreme.
Bestselling author Patrick Gale’s quirky and hilarious novel of English country life is “a ridiculously crazy tour de force” (Publishers Weekly). The town of Barrowcester—pronounced “Brewster”—is English as can be. From its cozy little pubs to its immaculate cathedral close, the quiet city seems straight out of the pages of Thomas Hardy. For American academic Evan Kirby, it’s paradise, a welcome escape from the United States, where he was haunted by the grim memories of his brutal divorce. A historian of angels and demons, he has come to Barrowcester to explore the cathedral library. But he will find there are no angels in this peculiar little village—only demons lurking around every corner. From the agnostic bishop and his cannabis cookie–addicted mother to the sex-mad cardinal and the schoolboy with a very unusual relationship with his spaniel, every Barrower has a secret, each more shocking than the last. Evan came to bury himself in work, but as redemption comes to Barrowcester one sinner at a time, will he find love instead? Inspired by Patrick Gale’s own youth in England’s ancient capital, Facing the Tank is a loving satire of the absurdities at the heart of provincial life. An homage to Anthony Trollope, it is as sparkling a novel as Britain has produced in the last fifty years.
earth writers, "The Nearby Faraway" reads like an abridged autobiography of the writer's life and travels (both geographical and spiritual). A dedicated naturalist and writer's writer, David Petersen spends a lot of time outdoors in the Rocky Mountain West. His most recent titles include "Ghost Grizzlies" and "A Hunter's Heart".
