Undermajordomo Minor

Undermajordomo Minor PDF

Author: Patrick deWitt

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0062281232

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From the bestselling, Man Booker–short-listed author of The Sisters Brothers comes a brilliant and boisterous novel that reimagines the folk tale A love story, an adventure story, a fable without a moral, and an ink-black comedy of manners, Undermajordomo Minor is Patrick deWitt's long-awaited follow-up to the internationally bestselling and critically acclaimed novel The Sisters Brothers. Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which being the whereabouts of the castle's master, Baron Von Aux. He also encounters the colorful people of the local village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty for whose love he must compete with the exceptionally handsome soldier Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of humanity is laid bare for our hero to observe. Undermajordomo Minor is an adventure, a mystery, and a searing portrayal of rural Alpine bad behavior, but above all it is a love story—and Lucy must be careful, for love is a violent thing.

French Exit

French Exit PDF

Author: Patrick deWitt

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1526601192

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Frances Price is in dire straits. Scandais swirl around the recently widowed New York socialite, and her adult-aged, toddler-brained son Malcolm is no help. Cutting their Tosses, they grab their cat, Small Frank, and head for the exit. Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self- destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters. Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons.

The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers PDF

Author: Patrick deWitt

Publisher: House of Anansi

Published: 2011-05-14

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1770890270

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Winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Prix des libraires du Quebec and the Stephen Leacock Medal. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Walter Scott Prize. Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die: Eli and Charlie Sisters can be counted on for that. Though Eli has never shared his brother’s penchant for whiskey and killing, he’s never known anything else. On the road to Warm’s gold-mining claim outside San Francisco — and from the back of his long-suffering one-eyed horse — Eli struggles to make sense of his life without abandoning the job he's sworn to do. Patrick deWitt, acclaimed author of Ablutions, doffs his hat to the classic Western, and then transforms it into a comic tour-de-force with an unforgettable narrative voice that captures all the absurdity, melancholy, and grit of the West — and of these two brothers, bound to each other by blood and scars and love.

The Waiter

The Waiter PDF

Author: Matias Faldbakken

Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1501197533

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“As if The Remains of the Day had been written by Kingsley Amis, The Waiter is…one of the most purely entertaining novels I’ve read in years. This book is a meal you won’t want to finish.” —J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest In the tradition of the modern classics The Remains of the Day and A Gentleman in Moscow comes The Waiter, in which the finely tuned balance of a timeworn European restaurant is irrevocably upset by an unexpected guest. The Hills dates from a time when pigs were pigs and swine were swine, the Maître D’ likes to say—in other words from the mid-1800s. Every day begins with the head waiter putting on his jacket. In with one arm, then the other. Shrugged onto his shoulders. Horn buttons done up. Always the same. There is clinking. Cutlery is moved around porcelain and up to mouths. But in this universe unto itself, there is scarcely any contact between the tables of regulars. And that is precisely how the waiter likes it. Sheer routine…until a beautiful young woman walks through the door and upsets the delicate balance of the restaurant and all it has come to represent. Told in a kaleidoscopic rotation of voices—the headwaiter, the bartender, the coat checker, the chef who never speaks—The Waiter marks the North American debut of an exciting new voice in literary fiction that will leave you longing to sit down at The Hills, order a drink, and watch the world go by….

The Minor Outsider

The Minor Outsider PDF

Author: Ted McDermott

Publisher: ONE

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 0992918278

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Ed and Taylor, both aspiring young writers, fall in love during a summer of aimless drinking and partying in their university town of Missoula, Montana. Lonely and looking for love, they connect despite their profound differences: Ed is brooding, ambitious and self-destructive, living in denial of a mysterious tumour spreading from his limbs to his brain. Beautiful Taylor is positive, full of hope and emotional generosity, but like everyone, she has her limits. Their difficult relationship is intense, exciting yet doomed from the start, complicated further when Taylor falls pregnant. As Ed resists the harmony she brings to his life, Taylor's need to protect herself and their child also grows, until a dramatic finale. Ted Mc Dermott's stark book speaks truthfully and with a touch of dark humor for and to today's generation of young people trying to find hope in what feels to many like an existential void. The Minor Outsider will be read as the young literary voice of our dark times.

The Best Things

The Best Things PDF

Author: Mel Giedroyc

Publisher: Review

Published: 2021-04-01

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1472256247

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THE HILARIOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A big-hearted story of a family on the brink from the marvellous, much-loved Mel Giedroyc. 'Properly funny with a brilliant cast of characters' GRAHAM NORTON 'A real treat. I enjoyed it HUGELY' MARIAN KEYES 'Funny and fresh. No soggy bottoms here' CLARE MACKINTOSH __________ Sally Parker is searching for the hero inside herself. But TBH she just wants to lie down. Her husband Frank has lost his business, their home and their savings in one go. Her bank cards have been stopped. The kids are running wild. And now the bailiffs are at the door. What does a woman do when the bottom suddenly falls out? Will Sally Parker surprise everybody....most of all herself? __________ 'This book is a riot! Delicious in its detail' SOPHIE KINSELLA 'A stonking good read. Exactly like Mel herself: engaging, uproarious and gleeful' JO BRAND 'A warm, honest and humorous look at a family and what really matters in life. Brimming with hilarious scenes, it is also a redemptive book, and one of hope' WOMAN & HOME 'A warm contemporary fable bursting with colourful characters and comic energy' DAILY MAIL SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2021 REAL READERS ADORE THE BEST THINGS... 'A well written, warm hug of a read. Something much needed in these days of doom and gloom' 'This book is everything I would have expected from the wonderful Mel Giedroyc. Funny and touching*****' 'I could hear Mel reading this book! Terrific characters. Very entertaining *****' 'A lovely, warm cuddle of a book' 'One of the best things I've read this year. Please read it *****' 'I felt like Mel was reading this into my ear. I was left with the warm fuzzys at the end****' 'Would make a brilliant film or sitcom. The Parker family are a chaotic, loveable bunch' 'I zipped through it with many an accompanying titter, the occasional chortle and the odd unladylike snort. A nice piece of escapism, so needed at this time ****' 'Warm, interesting, clever and funny, as well as poignant at times. A brave heroine, a cast of strong characters and a page-turner of a story *****' 'Glorious storytelling, this is a rich comedic feast of domesticity. Excellent characters. Kept me gripped throughout. *****'

The Boy Detective Fails

The Boy Detective Fails PDF

Author: Joe Meno

Publisher: Akashic Books

Published: 2006-09-01

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1936070499

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In this “charming” and melancholic novel, a former child sleuth “investigates the hard-to-crack case of Lost Innocence” (Entertainment Weekly). A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus’ Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes. Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children—one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister’s case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown. “Haunted by the mystery of his sister’s death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible . . . The story of Billy’s search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up.” —Publishers Weekly “The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel (‘Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?’). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Comedic, imaginative, empathic . . . investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason.” —Booklist

Everyone's Awake

Everyone's Awake PDF

Author: Colin Meloy

Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 49

ISBN-13: 1452178453

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A silly and sublime bedtime book from the New York Times bestselling children's book author Colin Meloy. Giggle your way to sweet and silly dreams! A simple goodnight routine turns marvelously madcap in this cleverly rhymed picture book. Instead of settling down to sleep, Dad bakes bread, Mom fixes the roof, and Grandma plays cards with a ghost. And between the dog, the cat, Sister, and Brother, there's at least three different wars being waged! A modern classic perfect for read-aloud fun and bedtime alike. • A wildly fun read-aloud book for families • A laugh-out-loud book perfect for any child who struggles with getting ready for bed • Written by the lead singer of the Decemberists, the silly and clever rhymes make Everyone's Awake fun for both parent and child. Fans of Goodnight Already and Dinosaur vs. Bedtime will find Everyone's Awake to be a perfect path to a good night's sleep. • Children's books for kids ages 5-8 • Family read-aloud books • Books for bedtime Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter of The Decemberists, and the author of several children's books, including the New York Times bestselling Wildwood series. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Shawn Harris is an artist and musician who lives in Northern California. He is the illustrator of several award-winning children's books including Her Right Foot and What Can a Citizen Do?

Being Wrong

Being Wrong PDF

Author: Kathryn Schulz

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-01-04

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0061176052

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To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. In Being Wrong, journalist Kathryn Schulz explores why we find it so gratifying to be right and so maddening to be mistaken. Drawing on thinkers as varied as Augustine, Darwin, Freud, Gertrude Stein, Alan Greenspan, and Groucho Marx, she shows that error is both a given and a gift—one that can transform our worldviews, our relationships, and ourselves.

The Bees

The Bees PDF

Author: Laline Paull

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2014-05-06

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0062331167

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The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death. Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive where work and sacrifice are the highest virtues and worship of the beloved Queen the only religion. But Flora is not like other bees. With circumstances threatening the hive’s survival, her curiosity is regarded as a dangerous flaw but her courage and strength are an asset. She is allowed to feed the newborns in the royal nursery and then to become a forager, flying alone and free to collect pollen. She also finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers mysteries about the hive that are both profound and ominous. But when Flora breaks the most sacred law of all—daring to challenge the Queen’s fertility—enemies abound, from the fearsome fertility police who enforce the strict social hierarchy to the high priestesses jealously wedded to power. Her deepest instincts to serve and sacrifice are now overshadowed by an even deeper desire, a fierce maternal love that will bring her into conflict with her conscience, her heart, her society—and lead her to unthinkable deeds. Thrilling, suspenseful and spectacularly imaginative, The Bees gives us a dazzling young heroine and will change forever the way you look at the world outside your window.