Tales the Devil Told Me


Book Description

What if Captain Hook gave up marauding and took a gig at the Post Office? How did Hamlet's uncle Claudius become such a rat? What might happen if a plastic surgeon fell for Medusa? If Moby Dick could write a letter, what would he say to Ahab? The answers to these and many other questions can be found in Tales the Devil Told Me by Jen Fawkes-winner of the 2020 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. These twelve stories examine the possible lives of such classic literary villains as Professor Moriarty, Shere Khan, Rumpelstiltskin, Polyphemus, Mrs. Danvers and others, while illuminating the consumptive nature of love, the crushing weight of isolation, the false promise of beauty, and the power of storytelling itself.




American Stutter: 2019-2021


Book Description

As Jonathan Lethem put, Steve Erickson's journal of the last 18 months of the Trump Presidency "sears the page." Erickson, one of our finest novelists, has long been an astute political observer, and American Stutter, part political declaration, part humorous account of more personal matters, offers a particularly moving reminder of the democratic ideals that we are currently struggling to preserve. Written with wit, eloquence, and a controlled fury as event unfold, Erickson has left us with an essential record of our recent history, a book to be read with our collective breath held.* Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels and two books about American culture. For 12 years he was founding editor of the national literary journal Black Clock. Currently he is the film/television critic for Los Angeles magazine and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and the Lannan Lifetime Achievement award.




Tanglewreck


Book Description

But Time is big business, and whoever gets control of Time controls life as we know it! In a house called Tanglewreck lives a girl called Silver and her guardian Mrs Rokabye. Unbeknown to Silver there is a family treasure in the form of a seventeenth-century watch called the Timekeeper, and this treasure holds the key to the mysterious and frightening changes in time. When Silver goes on the run to try and protect herself and the Timekeeper, a remarkable and compelling adventure unfolds, full of brilliance and wit, as is befitting an author with the imagination and style of Jeanette Winterson.




The Emperor of All Maladies


Book Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.




All the Wild Hungers


Book Description

A “lovely” memoir of caring for a mother with cancer, reflecting on our appetites for food and for life (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When her mother is diagnosed with a rare cancer, Karen Babine—cook, collector of vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast. In this series of mini-essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. As she notes that her sister’s unborn baby is the size of lemon while her mother’s tumor is the size of a cabbage, she reflects on what draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease. What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations? Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family’s experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable. “[Babine] continues to navigate her way through extraordinary challenges with ordinary comforts, finding poetry in the everyday. Reading this quiet book should provide the sort of balm for those in similar circumstances that writing it must have for the author.”―Kirkus Reviews “Profound…Anyone who has experienced a family member’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book…In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book’s title is the hunger for life.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune




Sculpting in Time


Book Description

A director reveals the original inspirations for his films, their history, his methods of work, and the problems of visual creativity




Art & Lies


Book Description

'There is no such thing as autobiography, there is only art and lies'. Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, separately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal. Art & Lies is a question and a quest: How shall I live?




Mannequin and Wife


Book Description

Winner of the Phillip H. McMath Award for prose In Mannequin and Wife, the debut story collection from Jen Fawkes, sharp and imaginative tales trip seamlessly across borderlands, navigating comedy and tragedy, psychological and magical realism, the mundane and the marvelous. Readers of these adventurous fictions will encounter a flock of stenographers, the strongest woman alive, a taxidermist with anger issues, an Elephant Girl, a fairy on her lunch break, and a married couple who live with a department store mannequin. Elsewhere, an American actor impersonates a code-breaking Britisher during World War II. A mother awaiting her son’s return discovers his personal ad soliciting the services of a cannibal (and fears the worst). A criminal mastermind’s protégé plots the destruction of Mount Rushmore from within an extinct volcano. A man buys a drive-in theater and transforms it into a carnival sideshow. And an attorney puzzles over how to leave someone his deceased client’s heart. Fawkes’s award-winning stories examine the vagaries of human relationships—mother and child, husband and wife, mentor and protégé—to tease out the startling complications that arise from our entanglements with those we loathe and those we love.




Reading, Writing and Learning in ESL


Book Description

Note: This is the bound book only and does not include access to the Enhanced Pearson eText. To order the Enhanced Pearson eText packaged with a bound book, use ISBN 0134403398. This book is the ideal source for teaching oral language, reading, writing, and the content areas in English to K-12 English learners. In an approach unlike most other books in the field, "Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL" looks at contemporary language acquisition theory as it relates to instruction and provides detailed suggestions and methods for motivating, involving, and teaching English language learners. Praised for its strong research base, engaging style, and inclusion of specific teaching ideas, the book offers thorough coverage of oral language, reading, writing, and academic content area instruction in English for K-12 English learners. Thoroughly updated throughout, the new edition includes a new chapter on using the Internet and other digital technologies to engage students and promote learning, many new teaching strategies, new and revised activities, and new writing samples. The Enhanced Pearson eText features embedded videos and assessments. Improve mastery and retention with the Enhanced Pearson eText* The Enhanced Pearson eText provides a rich, interactive learning environment designed to improve student mastery of content. The Enhanced Pearson eText is: Engaging. The new interactive, multimedia learning features were developed by the authors and other subject-matter experts to deepen and enrich the learning experience. Convenient. Enjoy instant online access from your computer or download the Pearson eText App to read on or offline on your iPad(r) and Android(r) tablet.* Affordable.The Enhanced Pearson eText may be purchased stand-alone for 50-60% less than a print bound book. * "The Enhanced eText features are only available in the Pearson eText format. They are not available in third-party eTexts or downloads." "*The Pearson eText App is available on Google Play and in the App Store. It requires Android OS 3.1-4, a 7 or 10 tablet, or iPad iOS 5.0 or later." "




Monologues for Teens


Book Description