All Aunt Hagar's Children

All Aunt Hagar's Children
Author: Edward P. Jones
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2006-08-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0060557567

In fourteen sweeping and sublime stories, five of which have been published in The New Yorker, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jones's masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his mother's own violent Southern childhood. In "In the Blink of God's Eye" and "Tapestry" newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stone's throw away and the future uncertain, Jones's cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come.

Lost in the City

Lost in the City
Author: Edward P. Jones
Publisher: Amistad Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 1992
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780060566289

Set in the nation's capital, a collection of stories about African Americans living in Washington, D.C., introduces characters who struggle daily with loss--of family, of friends, of memories, and of themselves. Repritn. 15,000 first printing.

In the Blink of God’s Eye (Fast Fiction)

In the Blink of God’s Eye (Fast Fiction)
Author: Edward P Jones
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2011-01-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 000742647X

1901. In Washington, Ruth and Aubrey take in a baby left in a tree.

The Known World

The Known World
Author: Edward P. Jones
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2009-03-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061746363

From Edward P. Jones comes one of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The Known World tells the story of Henry Townsend, a black farmer and former slave who falls under the tutelage of William Robbins, the most powerful man in Manchester County, Virginia. Making certain he never circumvents the law, Townsend runs his affairs with unusual discipline. But when death takes him unexpectedly, his widow, Caldonia, can't uphold the estate's order, and chaos ensues. Edward P. Jones has woven a footnote of history into an epic that takes an unflinching look at slavery in all its moral complexities. “A masterpiece that deserves a place in the American literary canon.”—Time

We the Animals

We the Animals
Author: Justin Torres
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2011-08-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547577001

The critically acclaimed debut from the National Book Award–winning author of Blackouts. In this award-winning, groundbreaking novel, Justin Torres plunges us into the chaotic heart of one family, the intense bonds of three brothers, and the mythic effects of this fierce love on the people we must become. “A tremendously gifted writer whose highly personal voice should excite us in much the same way that Raymond Carver’s or Jeffrey Eugenides’s voice did when we first heard it.” —The Washington Post Three brothers tear their way through childhood—smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful. “We the Animals is a dark jewel of a book. It’s heartbreaking. It’s beautiful. It resembles no other book I’ve read.” —Michael Cunningham “A fiery ode to boyhood. . . A welterweight champ of a book.” —NPR, Weekend Edition NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0 Digital Edition)

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (Oprah's Book Club 2.0 Digital Edition)
Author: Ayana Mathis
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385350295

The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: this special eBook edition of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. The arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction. A debut of extraordinary distinction: Ayana Mathis tells the story of the children of the Great Migration through the trials of one unforgettable family. In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation. Beautiful and devastating, Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie is wondrous from first to last—glorious, harrowing, unexpectedly uplifting, and blazing with life. An emotionally transfixing page-turner, a searing portrait of striving in the face of insurmountable adversity, an indelible encounter with the resilience of the human spirit and the driving force of the American dream.

B-Side Books

B-Side Books
Author: John Plotz
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231553684

There are the acknowledged classics of world literature: the canonical works assigned in schools, topping every must-read list . . . and then there are the B-Sides. These are the books that slipped through the cracks, went unread, missed their rightful appointment with posterity. They were ahead of their times or behind their times or on a whole different schedule than the rest of the universe. What do you do when a book that you love has been neglected or dismissed by everyone else? In B-Side Books, leading writers, critics, and scholars show why their favorite forgotten books deserve a new audience. From dusty westerns and far-out science fiction to obscure Czech novelists and romance-novel precursors, the contributors advocate for the unsung virtues of overlooked books. They write about unheralded novels, poetry collections, memoirs, and more with understanding, respect, passion, and love. In these thoughtful, often personal essays, contributors—including Stephanie Burt, Caleb Crain, Merve Emre, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carlo Rotella, and Namwali Serpell—read books by writers such as Helen DeWitt, Shirley Jackson, Stanislaw Lem, Dambudzo Marechera, Paule Marshall, and Charles Portis.

The Evening of the Holiday

The Evening of the Holiday
Author: Shirley Hazzard
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2004-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312423261

Passionate undercurrents sweep in and out of this eloquent novel about a love affair in a summer countryside in Italy and its inevitable end.

What Is the What

What Is the What
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2009-02-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307371379

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)–the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.