Haywood’s novel is the story of the beautiful Princess Eovaai. Groomed for the throne by her father, who teaches her Lockean notions of liberty, she is overthrown, enmeshed in civil war, and then magically transported to a foreign land by an evil man. Part magician, part politician, he plots to marry her for political reasons. The fascinating reflexive structure of The Adventures of Eovaai incorporates argumentative intrusions (by the Translator, an Historian, etc.), interweaves political and amatory storylines, and blends a wild mix of genres.
DIVDIVA playwright vacationing in Jamaica becomes dangerously obsessed with deep-sea diving/divDIV /divDIVRon Grant is one of the finest playwrights of his generation, second only to Tennessee Williams in pure genius. But success does not mean he feels like a man. On vacation in Jamaica with his mistress, an ice queen who considers him her personal trophy, his thoughts are back in New York City, with a beautiful young girl he met a few days before he left town. As the stress bears down on him, the brilliant playwright goes nearly to pieces before he finds his salvation under water./divDIV /divDIVOn his first deep-sea dive, Grant falls in love with the haunting beauty of the reef. He returns as soon as he can, staying longer and swimming deeper until all his problems seep away. But a man can’t breathe underwater forever—and his obsession will drive him to take increasing risks that will change his life forever./divDIV /divThis ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author’s estate. /div
A post-WWII adventure from the bestselling author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. A top-secret mission sends a crew of Royal Air Force veterans from South Africa to the subarctic Kerguelen Islands in this suspense-packed tale of lawlessness, piracy, obsession, and greed. At the helm of the Aldebaran, a huge flying boat, sits the monomaniacal Captain Bennett, a man hell-bent on unearthing a treasure buried by the Germans in the final days of World War II. And on the seaplane’s radio is the young wireless operator Adcock, a man who listens to everything and tries to make sense of it all. The rest of the ex-soldiers on board seek either riches or adventure—but all are fleeing the frustrations and disappointments of their postwar lives. As the voyage takes dangerous turns toward natural and manmade threats, it becomes clear that Captain Bennett is keeping secrets and the Aldebaran is not alone on her quest. Adcock’s morals are soon put to the test, machine guns are mounted on the flying boat’s turrets, and the thirst for gold may cost the crew their lives. Classic kitchen sink realism meets high-flying adventure in this British thriller that goes beyond action and into the depths of human values and motivations in a war-damaged world. Drawing upon Alan Sillitoe’s own wartime experiences as a wireless operator, The Lost Flying Boat is full of aerial heroics, coded messages, shattered dreams, and the will to persevere.
Marge Piercy carries her portrait of the American experience back into the Fifties—that closed, repressive time in which forces for the upheavals of the Sixties ticked away underground. Spanning twenty years, and teeming with vivid characters, Braided Lives tells the powerful, unsentimental story of two young women coming of age. Jill, fiercely independent, dark, Jewish, an intellectual with Detroit street smarts, is a poet, curious, avid of life—a “professional student” and sometime thief. Donna, Jill’s cousin and closest friend, is blond, pretty, and alluring. Together, they grow and change at college in Ann Arbor, where the life of poets and painters contrasts sharply with the working-class neighborhood where Jill’s family lives. In Michigan, and afterward in New York City, the two women taste love and betrayal, friendship and pain, independence and fear as they reach a deepening understanding that to control their lives they must fight. And though their fates differ as widely as their personalities, both reflect the danger that sex posed at a time when abortions were illegal and an affair could destroy a woman’s life, making the outcome of a chance encounter or a night of love a matter of life and death. Braided Lives is an enduring portrait of the past that has led to our tenuous present. In her new introduction to this edition, Marge Piercy reflects on both the most autobiographical of her novels, and the ongoing battles to ensure the hard-fought victories of the Sixties and Seventies, particularly around sex and reproductive rights.
When John Calvin Marshall graduated from Harvard in 1956, he was prepared for a life of teaching and relative tranquility. But history had another plan for him: here, a veteran author re-envisions the Martin Luther King Jr. story in fearful, exciting, and violent terms. Political and provocative, And All Our Wounds Forgiven is both a compelling political fable and a striking and tender love story about one of this century's most charismatic black leaders and the two women he loved.
The exacting Miranda's search for a suitable companion brings her family into contact with a very different kind of household, raising a plenitude of questions about the ability to manage alone, the difficulties of living with strangers and some strange discoveries about intimates.
