The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel

The Heaven of Mercury: A Novel PDF

Author: Brad Watson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2010-12-06

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780393341119

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Shortlisted for the 2002 National Book Award in Fiction: a dark, riotous Southern novel of sex, death, and transformation. Brad Watson's first novel has been eagerly awaited since his breathtaking, award-winning debut collection of short stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men. Here, he fulfills that literary promise with a humorous and jaundiced eye. Finus Bates has loved Birdie Wells since the day he saw her do a naked cartwheel in the woods in 1916. Later he won her at poker, lost her, then nearly won her again after the mysterious poisoning of her womanizing husband. Does Vish, the old medicine woman down in the ravine, hold the key to Birdie's elusive character? Or does Parnell, the town undertaker, whose unspeakable desires bring lust for life and death together? Or does the secret lie with some other colorful old-timer in Mercury, Mississippi, not such a small town anymore? With "graceful, patient, insightful and hilarious" prose (USA Today), Brad Watson chronicles Finus's steadfast devotion and Mercury's evolution from a sleepy backwater to a small city. With this "tragicomic story of missed opportunities and unjust necessities" (Fred Chappell), "Southern storytelling is alive and well in Watson's capable hands" (Kirkus Reviews starred review). "His work may remind readers of William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, or Flannery O'Connor, but has a power—and a charm—all its own, more pellucid than the first, gentler than the second, and kinder than the third" (Baltimore Sun).

Miss Jane: A Novel

Miss Jane: A Novel PDF

Author: Brad Watson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0393285448

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Longlisted for the National Book Award and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year "Gorgeous…A writer of profound emotional depths." —New York Times Book Review Since his award-winning debut collection of stories, Last Days of the Dog-Men, Brad Watson has been expanding the literary traditions of the South in work as melancholy, witty, strange, and lovely as any in America. Drawing on the true story of his great-aunt, he explores the life of Miss Jane Chisolm, born in rural, early-twentieth-century Mississippi with a genital birth defect that excludes her from the roles traditional for a woman of her time and place and frees her to live her life as she pleases. With irrepressible vitality and generosity of spirit, Miss Jane mesmerizes those around her, exerting an unearthly fascination that lives beyond her still.

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories

Last Days of the Dog-Men: Stories PDF

Author: Brad Watson

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2002-08-17

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1324000430

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"His people and dogs—those wonderful dogs!—come alive with honest, thrumming energy." —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award In prose so precise and beautiful it makes a reader's hair stand on end, Brad Watson writes about people and dogs: dogs as companions, as accomplices, and as unwitting victims of human passions; and people responding to dogs as missing parts of themselves. In each of these stories he captures the animal crannies of the human personality -- yearning for freedom, mourning the loss of something wild, drawn to human connection but also to thoughtless abandon and savagery without judgment. Ultimately, however, people are responsible where dogs are not: "I'm told in medieval times," the narrator of the title story tells us, "animals were regularly put on trial, with witnesses and testimony and so forth. But it is relatively rare today." Funny, dark, sometimes brutal, and stunning in their perfection of expression, Watson's stories herald the arrival of a true talent.

Red Mercury

Red Mercury PDF

Author: Max Barclay

Publisher: Signet

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 9780787109202

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Two government agents--Kyle Preston of the FBI's anti-terrorist unit and Mack McFall of the Department of Energy--team up to hunt for a bomber who threatens to nuke Atlanta during the Olympic Games.

The Heaven of Animals

The Heaven of Animals PDF

Author: David James Poissant

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1476729964

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A first collection by an award-winning writer features characters at relationship crossroads in such stories as "Lizard Man," in which two men race to save a sick alligator; and "The End of Aaron," in which a girl helps her boyfriend face his greatest fears.

The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre

The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre PDF

Author: Dominic Smith

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9781416551904

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The debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos reimagines the life of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of photography, who becomes convinced that the world is going to end when his mind unravels due to mercury poisoning. He is determined to reconnect with the only woman he has ever loved before the End comes. Louis Daguerre's story is set against the backdrop of a Paris prone to bohemian excess and social unrest. Poets and dandies debate art and style in the cafes while students and rebels fill the garrets with revolutionary talk and gun smoke. It is here, amid this strange and beguiling setting, that Louis Daguerre sets off to capture his doomsday subjects. Louis enlists the help of the womanizing poet Charles Baudelaire, known to the salon set as the "Prince of Clouds" and a jaded but beautiful prostitute named Pigeon. Together they scour the Paris underworld for images worthy of Daguerre's list. But Louis is also confronted by a chance to reunite with the only woman he's ever loved. Half a lifetime ago, Isobel Le Fournier kissed Louis Daguerre in a wine cave outside of Orleans. The result was a proposal, a rejection, and a misunderstanding that outlasted three kings and an emperor. Now, in the countdown to his apocalypse, Louis wants to understand why he has carried the memory of that kiss for so long.

65 Things to Do When You Retire

65 Things to Do When You Retire PDF

Author: Mark Evan Chimsky

Publisher: Sellers Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9781416206545

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Present essays from noted authors and retirement experts on how to use retirement to achieve one's personal dreams.

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Banner of Heaven PDF

Author: Jon Krakauer

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2004-06-08

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1400078997

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

The Book of Salt

The Book of Salt PDF

Author: Monique Truong

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2004-06-15

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0547524994

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A novel of Paris in the 1930s from the eyes of the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, by the author of The Sweetest Fruits. Viewing his famous mesdames and their entourage from the kitchen of their rue de Fleurus home, Binh observes their domestic entanglements while seeking his own place in the world. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh's youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh. Winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award A Best Book of the Year: New York Times, Village Voice, Seattle Times, Miami Herald, San Jose Mercury News, and others “An irresistible, scrupulously engineered confection that weaves together history, art, and human nature…a veritable feast.”—Los Angeles Times “A debut novel of pungent sensuousness and intricate, inspired imagination…a marvelous tale.”—Elle “Addictive…Deliciously written…Both eloquent and original.”—Entertainment Weekly “A mesmerizing narrative voice, an insider's view of a fabled literary household and the slow revelation of heartbreaking secrets contribute to the visceral impact of this first novel.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review