The High Cost of Living: A Novel
Marge Piercy
Poetry / Literature & Fiction / Feminism
Passions flare in a most unlikely love triangle between three remarkable characters facing arduous life challenges in this engrossing novel by bestselling author Marge Piercy
Heartbroken after her girlfriend leaves her for another woman, Leslie, a history grad student, follows her thesis advisor from Grand Rapids to Detroit for a fresh start. There she befriends seventeen-year-old Honor, who sparks a familiar passion within her. Feeling that she can’t act on her desire, she sleeps with Honor’s older friend, Bernard, a gay former street hustler who resents his past and, to make matters more complicated, also lusts for Honor.
As the three grapple with issues of sexuality and identity, author Marge Piercy manages to be both intimately attuned to her characters’ emotions and aware of their role in a larger social and economic context. Leslie, Honor, and Bernard struggle financially in a city that doesn’t offer many opportunities, and they discover that expressing their sexuality and finding love may be privileges they cannot afford.
“A novel as ambiguous and fascinating as life itself.” —The New York Times
“Piercy goes over her subjects with a fine-tooth comb and provides food for thought about some of our directions, feelings and values.” —Publishers Weekly
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I, Houdini
Lynne Reid Banks
Children's Books / Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction
One family’s household has been in a state of disarray because of one small furry problem. Meet Houdini, an extraordinarily brilliant escapologist. No, not that Houdini. This one is a hamster. Once you meet him, you will understand that his owners just couldn’t name him anything else, for his name is quite fitting. He can escape from anything—a cage or the clutches of a mean cat. While on his escapades, he causes all kinds of trouble from chewing through wires to causing a flood. But Houdini thinks it’s all worth it, because he is desperate to explore the great Outdoors. But once he gets out, will he ever come back? Or will this be his final escape?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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A Notorious Lady
Maggie MacKeever
Maggie MacKeever
Lady Philippa Harte (Pippin to her friends) shocked the folk of the Scottish countryside when she stopped at a public inn owned by Lord Afton. His lordship had caused some scandal of his own in London, and brought his abandoned ways to the country with him. But there was a greater evil than Afton that threatened Pippin. Regency Romance by Maggie MacKeever; originally published by Fawcett
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The Sea, the Sea
Iris Murdoch
Fiction / Philosophy
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor both professionally and personally, and to amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors--some real, some spectral--that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core.
In exposing the jumble of motivations that drive Arrowby and the other characters, Iris Murdoch lays bare "the truth of untruth"--the human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the disguises they present to the world. Played out against a vividly rendered landscape and filled with allusions to myth and magic, Charles's confrontation with the tidal rips of love and forgiveness is one of Murdoch's most moving and powerful novels.
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Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death
Roger Manvell; Heinrich Fraenkel
Roger Manvell; Heinrich Fraenkel
ReviewManvell and Fraenkel have produced...biographies of Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, and the men who tried to kill Hitler in 1944....To the best of my knowledge there are no better biographies in existence. (_The New York Review of Books_ ) Product DescriptionJoseph Goebbels was possibly the most dangerous and intelligent member of the Nazi hierarchy, not excluding Hitler himself. Without Goebbels’ flair for propaganda and spectacular organization the Fuehrer might never have come to power. If Hitler was the Nazi genius of destructive evil, Goebbels was its constructive genius, for it was through his practical and intuitive understanding of the instruments of ‘public enlightenment’ that the dictatorship was built and maintained. As the founder of the Reich Chamber of Culture, the Gauleiter of Berlin and the architect of the complex machinery of modern totalitarian propaganda, Goebbels can be considered one of the most significantly evil and portentous figures of the twentieth century. A remarkable picture emerges of Goebbels’ mind as a schoolboy, student, lover, unsuccessful author and apprentice in political agitation. Interviews with his friends and family shed light on his character as a young man. This book charts the full trajectory of Goebbels’ career, showing him at the apex of his power, a master of oratory, a brilliant and cynical showman and a ruthless administrator. Doctor Goebbels also portrays the man at the end, in the Berlin Bunker, the most devoted of the Fuehrer’s henchmen, committing the last gesture of propaganda of which he was capable: the sacrifice of his life and that of his wife and six children.
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The Switch
Elmore Leonard
Mystery & Thrillers / Western
“My favorite Leonard book….He writes the way Hammett and Chandler might write today, if they sharpened their senses of ironic humor and grew better ears for dialogue.”
—Dallas Morning News
“The best writer of crime fiction alive.”
—Newsweek
Dangerously eccentric characters, razor-sharp black humor, brilliant dialog, and suspense all rolled into one tight package—that’s The Switch, Elmore Leonard’s classic tale of a kidnapping gone wrong…or terribly right, depending on how you look at it. The Grand Master whom the New York Times Book Review calls, “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever,” has written a wry and twisting tale that any of the other all-time greats—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, James M. Cain, Robert Parker…every noir author who ever walked a detective, cop, or criminal into a shadowy alley—would be thrilled to call their own. Leonard, the man who has given us U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (currently starring in TV’s Justified) is at his storytelling best, as a spurned wife decides to take a rightful—and profitable—revenge on her deceiving hubby by teaming up with the two thugs he hired to abduct her.
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The Night Lords
Nicolas Freeling
Nicolas Freeling
A British judge and a naked corpse put French inspector Henri Castang on delicate, dangerous ground in this mystery from the Edgar Award–winning author. When a local businessman's car is stolen, he's more concerned about what's inside—the body of his just-deceased grandmother. Then Parisian police Insp. Henri Castang is called to investigate the mysterious appearance of a woman's body found in a car. But just when it seems like his latest case is about to solve itself, Henri discovers a baffling murder wrapped up in a simmering crisis of international relations. On holiday with his family in France, a British high court judge found a naked corpse in the boot of his Rolls Royce. Having made the discovery upon arriving for dinner at a three-star Michelin restaurant, more than a few reputations are on the line. Now Castang must unravel a web of grim coincidences, lies, and political intrigue before another victim gets the boot....
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Trample an Empire Down
Mack Reynolds
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Here's what happens when a small group of mercenary rogues sets out to overthrow a despotic government. With a slogan of "What's in it for me?", and the highest of principles (from here on out, no one in this group sells out for less than $10,000.00!), the disgruntled eventually lead a political movement that brings down Big Brother. Great humor!
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