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Title Author Description
book image Ride a Cockhorse
Ride a Cockhorse
Raymond Kennedy
Kennedy
Who knows why meek, middle-aged Frances suddenly gets a libido, a new hairstyle, the desire to take over the bank that employs her—and a serious case of grandiosity. But it’s a hell of a ride. Raymond Kennedy has created in Ride a Cockhorse a rollicking cautionary tale of small-town demagoguery that prefigures both America’s current financial woes and the rise of the likes of Sarah Palin.
Contributors: Katherine A. Powers
book image Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley
Store of the Worlds
Robert Sheckley
Sheckley
An original collection of stories from an overlooked master. “One of the few acknowledged humorists in SF, and by far the funniest, Sheckley plays with myths the way Mel Brooks plays with classic movies.” —The New York Times Book Review
Contributors: Jonathan Lethem, Alex Abramovich
book image A Game of Hide and Seek
Game of Hide and Seek
Elizabeth Taylor
Taylor
Harriet comes of age between the wars. She’s not especially charming or attractive, but she has one passion in her life: Vesey. Nothing, not marriage to another man, or motherhood, will change that. “Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth.”—Sarah Waters
Contributors: Caleb Crain
book image Walkabout
Walkabout
James Vance Marshall
Marshall
“A haunting little idyll in the same vein as A High Wind in Jamaica...tells of two children, a boy and a girl, sole survivors of a plane crash in the Australian bush. Their fragile veneer of modern culture clashes with the primitive soul of a boy who is making his tribal ‘walkabout.’” —Time
Contributors: Lee Siegel
book image Red Shift
Red Shift
Alan Garner
Garner
Red Shift is a passionate fever-dream of a novel. It time-slips through English history and circles around the troubled mind of Tom, a love-struck teenager in tense rebellion against the strictures of his lower middle-class upbringing. “A bitter, complex, brilliant book.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
book image Masscult and Midcult: Essays Against the American Grain
Masscult and Midcult
Dwight Macdonald
Macdonald
Essayist and provocateur Dwight Macdonald was not afraid to slay sacred cows, and he did so with glee. In this newly gathered collection, Macdonald takes on Ernest Hemingway, James Agee, Tom Wolfe, Webster’s Dictionary, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, and, most famously, the possibly pernicious ascendancy of popular culture.
Contributors: John Summers , Louis Menand
book image Hav
Hav
Jan Morris
Morris
In Hav, famed travel-writer Jan Morris takes us on a guided tour through one of the most fascinating places on earth, the fabled city-state of Hav. But don’t be fooled: Hav is like no place on earth. In fact, it is wholly the product of Jan Morris’s prodigious imagination. “Last Letters from Hav,” the first part of this novel, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1985. Here Morris adds a second part, bringing the story up to date for the post–9/11 world.
Contributors: Ursula K. Le Guin
book image The Mangan Inheritance
Mangan Inheritance
Brian Moore
Moore
After his movie-star wife dispenses with him, Jamey Mangan decamps to Ireland in search of his roots. After all, he bears an uncanny resemblance to the only known photograph of the famous Irish poète maudit James Clarence Mangan. Filled with pathos and humor, The Mangan Inheritance is a cautionary tale for those seeking their presents in their pasts.
Contributors: Christopher Ricks
book image The Judges of the Secret Court
Judges of the Secret Court
David Stacton
Stacton
Stacton’s historical recreation of John Wilkes Booth’s plot to assassinate Lincoln, its execution, and its aftermath (including the trials of the conspirators, Mary Surratt among them) is among the finest books ever written about the Civil War. “David Stacton is an original, finely pitched voice in American fiction.” —Larry McMurtry
Contributors: John Crowley
book image Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age
Dancing Lessons
Bohumil Hrabal
Hrabal
An elderly roué, passing a group of sunbathing women, reminisces about the women he has known. Part drunken boast, part confession, part metaphysical poem on the nature of love and time, this astonishing novel (which unfolds in a single monumental sentence) shows why Milan Kundera called Hrabal “our very best writer today.”
Contributors: Adam Thirlwell , Michael Henry Heim