Originally published in 1940, The Blue Grove is a study of the poetry of the Uraons. This unique consideration of the poetry and folk song of the Uraons presents a wide range of poems organised by theme, including dance poems, cultivation poems, and marriage poems. It also includes examples of a Uraon marriage sermon, a Uraon farewell address, and Uraon riddles. The poems are preceded by a detailed analysis of Uraon marriages and dancing, providing important contextual information. The Blue Grove will appeal to anyone with an interest in the rich history of Uraon folk songs, poetry, and dance.
Anthropologist and journalist Blank gives a new perspective to the 3,000-year-old Hindu classic, retelling the ancient tale while following the course of Rama's journey through present-day India and Sri Lanka.
"Master of craft and narrative" Walter Mosley returns with this crowning achievement in the Easy Rawlins saga, in which the iconic detective's loyalties are tested on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California (National Book Foundation) It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. The young man comes to Easy with a story that makes little sense. He and his lover, a beautiful young woman, were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences—the bond between veterans superseding all other considerations. The veteran is not Easy’s only unlooked-for trouble. Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart. Blood Grove is a crackling, moody, and thrilling race through a California of hippies and tycoons, radicals and sociopaths, cops and grifters, both men and women. Easy will need the help of his friends—from the genius Jackson Blue to the dangerous Mouse Alexander, Fearless Jones, and Christmas Black—to make sense of a case that reveals the darkest impulses humans harbor. Blood Grove is a novel of vast scope and intimate insight, and a soulful call for justice by any means necessary.
The “shocking, erotic, and suspenseful” winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction from the author of City of Night (Out Magazine). John Rechy’s first novel, City of Night, an international bestseller, is considered a modern classic. Subsequent work asserts his place among America’s most important writers. The author’s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, John accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul’s library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening’s “blue hour,” John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador’s daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son’s mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic “dangerous games.” With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination in the group. As “games” veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable. “A beach read for those who prefer to thumb Genet rather than Grisham on the deckside chaise.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Mysterious, intriguing, and brashly amatory, Rechy’s take on gamesmanship, power, domination, and deception is a welcome return to form for the author and a wild ride indeed.” —The Bay Area Reporter “Steamy . . . with a kind of Gatsby-by-way-of-Henry James subplot. Beautifully written.” —Kirkus Reviews
Claire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book, Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. In the never-before-published story “The Long and Painful Death,” a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage and, during the ceremony and the festivities that follow, battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life; later that night, he finds an unlikely answer in the magical healing powers of a seer. A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures, Walk the Blue Fields is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland’s greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The final trial was the Columbia Race Riot trials, in which 25 black men were accused of rioting and attempting to murder white police officers in Columbia, Tennessee. The verdicts were stunning, and the national press had defined the riots as the first major racial confrontation following World War II. #2 The atmosphere around the Columbia courthouse was becoming more volatile. A political cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier had been poking around the courthouse, and he believed that the telephone wires were tapped, which he reported back to Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP. #3 In 1946, Marshall returned to Columbia to try the case. He was surrounded by white hostility, and the trial was long and difficult. #4 A mob began to gather around town and outside the jail, and by late afternoon the sheriff was hearing talk that a group of men was planning to spring the Stephenson niggers out of the jail and hang them.
