Casa editrice: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Compassionate and profound in their wry humor, this collection of stories captures the poetry of human relationships at the point where reality and imagination meet.
"Reader, my 'library' is not what it sounds", says the columnist Raul Butler-Singh, writing a piece in the Trinidad Guardian in 2077 to argue that making heterosexuality illegal "may be attended with some inconvenience". Like his character's borrowing from J. Swift, Anton Nimblett raids his library and tampers artfully with its sound. In "Spouter Inn", he reimagines the classic opening of Moby Dick (where Ishmael shares a bed with Queequeg and has the best night's sleep ever) and imagines the tattoed harpoonist's backstory that Melville never wrote. In "Something Promised", Nimblett makes the ultimately odious Mr. Slime in George Lamming's classic In the Castle of My Skin into quite a different kind of person, a gentle gay man who reflects, "Nobody never ask, What it is that make Mr Slime happy, eh?" In "Perseverence Village", David Das shares much of the outward circumstance of V.S. Naipaul's Mr Biswas – except that his most profound experience is a gay sexual encounter in his teens. But Nimblett does not only revisit the absences of past fiction; a wide range of characters are caught in the midst of their missions for self-knowledge, such as Anglican Joyce who wonders how much she has actually chosen her path away from her Spiritual Baptist roots, or Errol who discovers that "If a man pays close enough attention, he finds there is a place, one place, where he is most himself" – which for Errol is his taxi. These are stories that repay close attention. Nimblett is a writer who listens for the background notes, who knows "people not easy, not even the people who look like you", who knows "you would get fool if you believe simple is easy, or simple not important". Whether set in rural Trinidad or urban New York, these stories will enhance Anton Nimblett's reputation as one of the most generous and humane of observers of human life, male or female, gay or straight.Mostra libro
Veteran radio repertory company ZPPR Productions is guaranteed to give you goose bumps! Ranging from comic to horrific, these bite-sized thrillers include suspenseful contemporary dramas, satiric murder mysteries, and tongue-in-cheek parodies. This recording includes: • "Vigilante"— Is it a villain or a hero who turns in the subway mugger? • "An Open-and-Shut Case" — A shrewd, funny police lady solves what seemed like a straightforward murder case. • "Dé jà Vu" — The clock turns back, revealing a shocking truth to a dying man. • "A Hat Rack of Death" — In a delicious, murderous farce, the unlovely host of a bizarre cocktail party is found murdered.Mostra libro
The Call of Cthulhu is one of Lovecraft's best-known works. It is the only story written by Lovecraft in which the extraterrestrial entity Cthulhu himself makes a major appearance. Narrator Francis Wayland Thurston, recounts his discovery of the strange notes left behind by his granduncle, George Gammell Angell, a prominent Professor of Semitic languages at Brown University. At first the story revolves around a small bas-relief sculpture found among the papers, which the narrator describes: "My somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature.... A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings". The sculpture is the work of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design who based the work on delirious dreams of "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror". Frequent references to Cthulhu and R'lyeh are found in papers authored by Wilcox. Angell also discovers reports of "outre mental illnesses and outbreaks of group folly or mania" around the world (in New York City, "hysterical Levantines" mob police; in California, a Theosophist colony dons white robes to await a "glorious fulfillment")...Mostra libro
In A Respectable Woman, Mrs. Baroda, the wife of a wealthy sugar plantation owner plays hostess to Mr. Gouvernail, a friend of her husband's. The reserved Mr. Gouvernail is a puzzle to Mrs. Baroda who is nonetheless intrigued by the man's retiring nature. When the two speak to each other outside one evening, Mrs. Baroda wants to get closer to her guest but realizes this would be at odds with her position as a respectable woman. First published in Vogue in 1894, A Respectable Woman is the story of a woman struggling to understand her desires.Mostra libro
Erin had a plan . . . Go to college, become an advertising exec, marry her boyfriend of five years, and start a family—all in that order. But even the best laid plans are no match for life's curveballs. Plagued by deception, rejection, and an unfortunate diagnosis, she runs away from the only life she's ever known to forge a new one. But like they say, the past always finds a way to catch up, and after suffering from panic attacks she is forced to step back into her old life as she recuperates. Back in Oak Harbor with her family, Erin is forced to deal with the reason she distanced herself from them in the first place and when the two people she has been trying to avoid the most show up in the beautiful coastal town, she cannot escape the decisions she has to make that will either heal her wounds or break her into a million pieces. Marg has been happy and thriving in her relationship with Ben. The only problem is going after the one thing she's always desired may prove to be more than Ben can handle. When her mother comes to stay with her, Marg finds herself in unfamiliar territory as she tries to navigate their new relationship.Mostra libro
Frederick Britten Austin (1885 - 1941) was a popular British fiction writer, whose crime and mystery stories were very much influenced by his experiences as a soldier. He had enlisted in the London Rifle Brigade on 4 August, 1914, the day war was declared on Germany. By war's end he had reached the rank of captain.In 'The Strange Case of Mr. Todmorden' an elderly and wealthy woman has been mysteriously murdered in her bed. The only clue is that a particular diamond brooch is missing from her dressing table. Her oldest friend and solicitor, Mr. Todmorden, sets out to solve the mystery and discovers a terrible...truly terrible...secret, which he is desperate to conceal.Mostra libro
