The Sunlit Night

The Sunlit Night

Author: Rebecca Dinerstein

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-06-02

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1632861127

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In the barren landscape of the Far North, under the ever-present midnight sun, Frances, who lives in an isolated artist colony, and Yasha, who arrives from Brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father's last wish, form a bond that offers them solace amidst great uncertainty.


Hex

Hex

Author: Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1984877380

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One of Vanity Fair's 21 Best Books of 2020 (So Far) A Vulture, LitHub, and PureWow Most Anticipated Book of 2020 "As precise as any scientific observation and far more tantalizing." --Vogue "A sophisticated, surprising take on the campus novel (with a welcome dose of witchery). Knight's writing feels a little wild and charged, as if you're constantly on the edge of discovering something new with her." --Goop "Hex is some dark and joyous witchery." --Lauren Groff, author of Florida "A beautiful, spooky spell." --Jenny Slate, actress and author of Little Weirds A breathtaking and hypnotic novel about poison, antidotes, and obsessive love Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in biological science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote, working alone to set a speed record for the detoxification of poisonous plants. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, is the hero of Nell's heart. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan's office despite herself, mesmerized by Joan's elegance, success, and spiritual force. Surrounded by Nell's ex, her best friend, her best friend's boyfriend, and Joan's buffoonish husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. All six are burdened by desire and ambition, and as they collide on the university campus, their attractions set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak. Meanwhile, Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study, and she begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity.


Somewhere in the Night

Somewhere in the Night

Author: Nicholas Christopher

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-05-11

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1439137617

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Film noir is more than a cinematic genre. It is an essential aspect of American culture. Along with the cowboy of the Wild West, the denizen of the film noir city is at the very center of our mythological iconography. Described as the style of an anxious victor, film noir began during the post-war period, a strange time of hope and optimism mixed with fear and even paranoia. The shadow of this rich and powerful cinematic style can now be seen in virtually every artistic medium. The spectacular success of recent neo-film noirs is only the tip of an iceberg. In the dead-on, nocturnal jazz of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, the chilled urban landscapes of Edward Hopper, and postwar literary fiction from Nelson Algren and William S. Burroughs to pulp masters like Horace McCoy, we find an unsettling recognition of the dark hollowness beneath the surface of the American Dream. Acclaimed novelist and poet Nicholas Christopher explores the cultural identity of film noir in a seamless, elegant, and enchanting work of literary prose. Examining virtually the entire catalogue of film noir, Christopher identifies the central motif as the urban labyrinth, a place infested with psychosis, anxiety, and existential dread in which the noir hero embarks on a dangerously illuminating quest. With acute sensitivity, he shows how technical devices such as lighting, voice over, and editing tempo are deployed to create the film noir world. Somewhere in the Night guides us through the architecture of this imaginary world, be it shot in New York or Los Angeles, relating its elements to the ancient cultural archetypes that prefigure it. Finally, Christopher builds an explanation of why film noir not only lives on but is currently enjoying a renaissance. Somewhere in the Night can be appreciated as a lucid introduction to a fundamental style of American culture, and also as a guide to film noir's heyday. Ultimately, though, as the work of a bold talent adeptly manipulating poetic cadence and metaphor, it is itself a superb aesthetic artifact.


Little Weirds

Little Weirds

Author: Jenny Slate

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2019-11-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0316485357

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One of Vanity Fair's Great Quarantine Reads: Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders). You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of "Obvious Child." But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed.


The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars

The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars

Author: Paul Broks

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2018-07-03

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307985792

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When celebrated neuropsychologist Paul Broks's wife died of cancer, it sparked a journey of grief and reflection that traced a lifelong attempt to understand how the brain gives rise to the soul. The result of that journey is a gorgeous, evocative meditation on fate, death, consciousness, and what it means to be human. The Darker the Night, The Brighter the Stars weaves a scientist’s understanding of the mind – its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person – with a poet’s approach to humanity, that crucial and ever-elusive why. It’s a story that unfolds through the centuries, along the path of humankind’s constant quest to discover what makes us human, and the answers that consistently slip out of our grasp. It’s modern medicine and psychology and ancient tales; history and myth combined; fiction and the stranger truth. But, most importantly, it’s Broks’ story, grounded in his own most fascinating cases as a clinician—patients with brain injuries that revealed something fundamental about the link between the raw stuff of our bodies and brains and the ineffable selves we take for who we are. Tracing a loose arc of loss, acceptance, and renewal, he unfolds striking, imaginative stories of everything from Schopenhauer to the Greek philosophers to jazz guitarist Pat Martino in order to sketch a multifaceted view of humanness that is as heartbreaking at it is affirming.


The Herd

The Herd

Author: Andrea Bartz

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1984826379

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Why did the founder of a glamorous coworking space for women disappear? Her best friends will risk everything to uncover the truth in this “propulsive thriller” (Marie Claire) from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick We Were Never Here. “Perfect for fans of Big Little Lies.”—The Washington Post NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Real Simple • Marie Claire • Good Housekeeping • CrimeReads As CEO of the Herd, an elite women-only coworking space, Eleanor Walsh seems to have it all: close friends, a sweet husband, and the most glamorous and successful female-empowerment-based company in New York City. Then she vanishes on the night of a glitzy press conference—and the police suspect foul play. For Hana, the head of PR for the Herd and Eleanor’s best friend, this is a nightmare. For Hana’s sister, Katie, a journalist, this is the story that will make her career. But when the sisters launch their own investigation and begin to learn what Eleanor was hiding, they must also face the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other—and confront just how dangerous it can be when women’s perfect veneers start to crack.


The Sunlight Dialogues

The Sunlight Dialogues

Author: John Gardner

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 722

ISBN-13: 9780811216708

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Vivid, compassionate, and often disturbing, this expansive novel is John Gardner's masterpiece.


Girls Against God

Girls Against God

Author: Jenny Hval

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-10-20

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1788738977

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A genre-warping, time-travelling horror novel-slash-feminist manifesto for fans of Clarice Lispector and Jeanette Winterson. Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her work, things start stirring themselves up. In a corner of Oslo a coven of witches begin cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a death metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. And awful things happen in aspic. Jenny Hval's latest novel is a radical fusion of queer feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, writing and art. "Strange and lyrical. Hval’s writing is surreal and rich with the grotesque banalities of human existence." —Publishers Weekly "The themes of alienation, queerness, and the unsettling nature of desire align Hval with modern mainstays like Chris Kraus, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Maggie Nelson." —Pitchfork


The Jasmine Sneeze

The Jasmine Sneeze

Author: Nadine Kaadan

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1911373277

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Haroun, the cat, likes nothing better than to spend his days sleeping in the sunlit courtyards of Damascus. Yet one thing always ruins his sleep: jasmine The sweet-scented flowers send him into fits of sneezes One day, Haroun hatches a plan to fix the problem, but little does he know that the Jasmine Spirit has a trick or two up her sleeve . . . A sweet and entertaining story by award-winning Syrian author-illustrator, Nadine Kaadan, that sheds a welcome light onto Syria's long and proud cultural heritage in a period of history marred by war.


The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending

Author: Julian Barnes

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-10-05

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 0307957330

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BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.