The Ballad of Big Feeling


Book Description

"Braverman spins images that pull that perfect trick of making the familiar feel fresh... It's a thrill to see that language can still be made to help us feel the rush of life anew." ---Lynn Steger Strong, New York Times Book Review The woman lives on a cul-de-sac with her lover and her dog. She is smart and sensible. She buys groceries and goes to work. And she finds herself reliving her childhood memories while she waits--for what, she is not sure. In the tradition of Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti, The Ballad of Big Feeling reveals the mind of a woman perched before middle age and confronting the hidden contradictions and intricacies of everyday life. In the hands of an exciting new writer, Ari Braverman, it's a tale both spare and spacious, textured and poetic, frustrating and funny -- a delicately crafted volume that will linger in the mind of the reader long after they've put it down. It is, in short, a startling and assured debut.




Ballad


Book Description

James Morgan’s gift for music has attracted Nuala, a soul-snatching faerie who feeds on the creative energies of exceptional humans until they die. While collaborating on a musical composition, James and Nuala unexpectedly fall in love. When James realizes that Nuala is being hunted, he plunges into a soul-scorching battle with the Faerie Queen.




Ballad for Sophie


Book Description

A young journalist prompts a reclusive piano superstar to open up, resulting in this stunning graphic sonata exploring a lifetime of rivalry, regret, and redemption. 1933. In the small French village of Cressy-la-Valoise, a local piano contest brings together two brilliant young players: Julien Dubois, the privileged heir of a wealthy family, and François Samson, the janitor’s son. One wins, one loses, and both are changed forever. 1997. In a huge mansion stained with cigarette smoke and memories, a bitter old man is shaken by the unexpected visit of an interviewer. Somewhere between reality and fantasy, Julien composes, like in a musical score, a complex and moving story about the cost of success, rivalry, redemption, and flying pianos. When all is said and done, did anyone ever truly win? And is there any music left to play?




The Ballad of Perilous Graves


Book Description

"Funny, wild, witty, and profound.”―Victor LaValle "A wild and wonderful debut, teeming with music, family and art."—New York Times "Magical, lyrical, gritty, otherworldly…hype like Bayou Classic in the 90s."—P. Djèlí Clark One of the Best Fantasy Books of 2022: New York Times; Oprah Daily; Vulture; Gizmodo; Boston Public Library A fun and fantastical love letter to New Orleans unfolds when a battle for the city's soul brews between two young mages, a vengeful wraith, and one powerful song in this wildly imaginative debut. Nola is a city full of wonders. A place of sky trolleys and dead cabs, where haints dance the night away and Wise Women help keep the order. To those from Away, Nola might seem strange. To Perilous Graves, it’s simply home. Perry knows Nola’s rhythm as intimately as his own heartbeat. So when the city’s Great Magician starts appearing in odd places and essential songs are forgotten, Perry knows trouble is afoot. Nine songs of power have escaped from the piano that maintains the city’s beat, and without them, Nola will fail. Unwilling to watch his home be destroyed, Perry will sacrifice everything to save it. But a storm is brewing, and the Haint of All Haints is awake. Nola’s time might be coming to an end.




The Ballad of Jack and Rose


Book Description

From the award-winning writer-director of Personal Velocity comes a startling drama about the nature of family and the meaning of ideals In his first role since Gangs of New York, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Jack Slavin, an engineer who over thirty years ago walked away from the mainstream to live out a more deliberate life. But the island commune he began in hopes of a better future has long since imploded and he is now its final resident. Jack's only other companion is his 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle), whom he has deliberately sheltered from the outside world. Now, beset by terminal illness, encroaching developers, and Rose's emerging womanhood, Jack faces troubling questions about the days ahead. In an attempt to provide his daughter with the kind of family she's never known, Jack invites Kathleen (Catherine Keener), the woman he's been secretly seeing on the mainland, and her sons to live with them. But rather than comforted, Rose feels betrayed and lashes out with a willful and deliberate retribution that places her innocence on the battlefield and Kathleen's safety in danger. His carefully constructed world flung out of control, Jack finds himself trapped between two headstrong women and forced to take action. With The Ballad of Jack and Rose, award-winning filmmaker Rebecca Miller has created a powerful and poetic third feature about a man who has cut himself off from a society that refuses to live up to his standards, and a young girl's sudden coming-of-age.




The Ballad of Ami Miles


Book Description

A teen girl on a quest to find her long-lost mother finds herself on a journey of self-discovery in Kristy Dallas Alley's moving YA debut, The Ballad of Ami Miles. Raised in isolation at Heavenly Shepherd, her family’s trailer-dealership-turned-survival compound, Ami Miles knows that she was lucky to be born into a place of safety after the old world ended and the chaos began. But when her grandfather brings home a cold-eyed stranger, she realizes that her “destiny” as one of the few females capable of still bearing children isn’t something she’s ready to face. With the help of one of her aunts, she flees the only life she’s ever known and sets off on a quest to find her long-lost mother (and hopefully a mate of her own choosing). But as she journeys, Ami discovers many new things about the world...and about herself.




The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)


Book Description

Ambition will fuel him. Competition will drive him. But power has its price. It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.




The Changeling


Book Description

“Mesmerizing . . . a dark fairy tale of New York, full of magic and loss, myth and mystery, love and madness.”—Marlon James, author of the Dark Star trilogy SOON TO BE AN APPLE TV+ SERIES STARRING LAKEITH STANFIELD • ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME Winner of an American Book Award, a Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel, a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel • Nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, an International Dublin Literary Award, a Mythopoeic Award for Literature When Apollo Kagwa’s father disappeared, he left his son a box of books and strange recurring dreams. Now Apollo is a father himself—and as he and his wife, Emma, settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Apollo’s old dreams return and Emma begins acting odd. At first Emma seems to be exhibiting signs of postpartum depression. But before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act and vanishes. Thus begins Apollo’s quest to find a wife and child who are nothing like he’d imagined. His odyssey takes him to a forgotten island, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever. NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST HORROR BOOKS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • USA Today • The New York Public Library • NPR • BuzzFeed • Kirkus Reviews • Book Riot “The thriller you won’t be able to put down.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Intense, riveting . . . The story is a long, slow burn with a lingering sizzle.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “A modern-day tale of terror rooted in ancient myth and folklore, brimming with magical revelation and emotional truth.”—San Francisco Chronicle




The Forrests


Book Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013Dorothy Forrest is immersed in the sensory world around her; she lives in the flickering moment. From the age of seven, when her odd, disenfranchised family moves from New York City to the wide skies of Auckland, to the very end of her life, this is her great gift and possible misfortune.Through the wilderness of a commune, to falling in love, to early marriage and motherhood, from the glorious anguish of parenting to the loss of everything worked for and the unexpected return of love, Dorothy is swept along by time. Her family looms and recedes; revelations come to light; death changes everything, but somehow life remains as potent as it ever was, and the joy in just being won't let her go.In a narrative that shifts and moves, growing as wild as the characters, The Forrests is an extraordinary literary achievement. A novel that sings with colour and memory, it speaks of family and time, dysfunction, ageing and loneliness, about heat, youth, and how life can change if 'you're lucky enough to be around for it'.




The Ballad of Frankie Silver


Book Description

The New York Times Bestseller Set in the Appalachian wilderness and blending legends and folklore with high suspense, this stellar novel, The Ballad of Frankie Silver, is considered one of McCrumb's crowning achievements. In 1833 Frankie Silver was an eighteen-year-old girl convicted of murder in Burke County, North Carolina. Through a detailed investigation, the local sheriff, and soon all the townsfolk, discover reason to question her guilt---but the wheels of justice were mercilessly unstoppable, and she was hanged. Now, more than a century later, another woman is convicted of murder in the lush hills of Tennessee. Her life is in the hands of Spencer Arrowood, a man who begins to discover that the convictions of these two women have deep and haunting parallels. Although Frankie's fate cannot be changed, there is still time to alter the fate of another innocent woman. In a voice that could only be Sharyn McCrumb's, the worlds of these two murders, these two women, intersect in this densely plotted and lyrical novel—and characters, generations, and history are breathlessly painted against an Appalachian canvas.




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