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The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díaz.
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339 p. ; 22 cm.
This is the long-awaited first novel from one of the most original and memorable writers working today. Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the FukS-the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. D’az immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot D’az as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.
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Broccoli and other tales of food and love
Lara Vapnyar.
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v, 148 p. ; 21 cm.
In a triumphant return to the short story, the form in which she made her extraordinary debut withThere Are Jews in My House, Lara Vapnyar gives us a delightful new collection in which food and love intersect, along with their overlapping pleasures, frustrations, and deep associations in the lives of her unforgettable characters. From "Broccoli" to "Borscht" to "Puffed Rice and Meatballs," each of these new stories invites us into the uniquely captivating private worlds of Vapnyar's Eastern European émigrés. There's Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom the colorful abundance of the vegetable markets in New York represents her own fresh hopes and dreams. . . Luda and Milena, who battle over a widower in their English class with competing recipes for cheese puffs, spinach pies, and meatballs . . . Sergey, who finds more comfort in the borscht made by a paid female companion than in her sexual ministrations. Each of the women and men who inhabit these witty, tender, and beautifully observed stories needs and longs for the taste and smell of home, wherever--and with whomever--that may turn out to be. Russian in its wit and in many of its rich details, but American in its insistence on the quest for personal happiness, however provisional and however high the cost,Broccoli and Other Talesof Food and Lovemasterfully illuminates a very particular facet of desire with entirely charming results. From the Hardcover edition.
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Brooklyn : a novel
Colm Tóibín.
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262 p. ; 23 cm.
From the award-winning author of The Master , a hauntingly compelling novel--by far T ib n’s most accessible book--set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s about a young woman torn between her family in Ireland and the american who wins her heart. Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, Eilis cannot find a proper job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn visits the household and offers to sponsor Eilis in America--to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland"--she realizes she must go, leaving her fragile mother and sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and studies accounting at Brooklyn College, and, when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian, slowly wins her over with persistent charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. Eilis is in love. But just as she begins to consider what this means, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her new life. With the emotional resonance of Alice McDermott’s At Weddings and Wakes , Brooklyn is by far T ib n’s most inviting, engaging novel.
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The Brooklyn follies
by Paul Auster.
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461 p. ; 21 cm.
From the bestselling author of "Oracle Night and "The Book of Illusions, an exhilarating, whirlwind tale of one man's accidental redemption Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore--a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances--not to mention a stray relative or two--and leads him to a reckoning with his past. Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of "The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls "The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others. " The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.
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Brother, I'm dying
Edwidge Danticat.
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x, 272 p. ; 22 cm.
Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her "second father" when she was placed in his care at age four when her parents left Haiti for America. So she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City, whom she struggles to remember--she has left behind Joseph and the only home she's ever known. The story of a new life in a new country while fearing for those still in Haiti soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. In 2004, his life threatened by a gang, the frail, 81-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world.--From publisher description.
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By fire, by water : a novel
Mitchell James Kaplan.
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284 p. : map ; 22 cm.
Luis de Santangel, chancellor to the court and longtime friend of the lusty King Ferdinand, has had enough of the Spanish Inquisition. As the power of Inquisitor General Tomas de Torquemada grows, so does the brutality of the Spanish church and the suspicion and paranoia it inspires. When a dear friend's demise brings the violence close to home, Santangel takes retribution into his own hands, though the risk is great. Santangel is from a family of conversos, and his Jewish heritage makes him an easy target. Soon, he finds himself implicated in the murder of the first Chief Inquisitor of Aragon and in possession of a mysterious text that has spelled death for Jews for centuries. As he witnesses the horrific persecution of his loved ones, he begins slowly to reconnect with the Jewish faith his family left behind. Feeding his curiosity about his past is his growing love for Judith Migdal, a clever and beautiful Jewis woman navigating the mounting tensions in Granada. While he struggles to decide what his reputation is worth and what he can sacrifice, one man offers him a chance he thought he'd lost ... the chance to hope for a better world. Chistopher Columbus has plans to discover a route to paradise, and only Luis de Santangel can help him.
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Call it sleep
Henry Roth ; with an introduction by Alfred Kazin and an afterword by Hana Wirth-Nesher.
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xx, 462 p. ; 21 cm.
When Henry Roth published his debut novel Call It Sleep in 1934, it was greeted with considerable critical acclaim though, in those troubled times, lackluster sales. Only with its paperback publication thirty years later did this novel receive the recognition it deserves----and still enjoys. Having sold-to-date millions of copies worldwide, Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the "dangerously imaginative" child coming of age in the slums of New York.
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Call me by your name
André Aciman.
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248 p. ; 22 cm.
Call Me by Your Nameis the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion.Call Me by YourNameis clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable. AndréAcimanis the author ofOut of Egypt(FSG, 1995) andFalse Papers(FSG, 2000),and the editor ofThe Proust Project(FSG, 2004). He teaches comparative literature at theGraduate Center of the City University of NewYork. He lives with his family in Manhattan. ANew York TimesNotable Book of the Year ASan Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of the Year AChicago TribuneFavorite Book of the Year ASeattle TimesFavorite Book of the Year Call Me by Your Nameis the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. What the two discover on the Riviera and during an evening together in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. "A coming-of-age story, coming-out story, a Proustian meditation on time and desire, a love letter, an invocation and something of an epitaph,Call Me by Your Nameis also an open question. It is an exceptionally beautiful book that cannot quite bring itself to draw the inevitable conclusion about axis-shifting passion that men and women of the world might like to think they will always reach--that that obscure object of desire is, by definition, ungraspable, indeterminate and already lost at exactly the moment you rush so fervently to hold him or her . . . Aciman, who has written so exquisitely about exile, loss and Proust in his book of essays,False Papers, and his memoir,Out of Egypt, is no less exquisite here."--Stacey D'Erasmo,The New York Times Book Review "Aciman's first novel shows him to be an acute grammarian of desire. When Oliver, a handsome young American philosopher, arrives in a seaside town in Italy . . . the son of the house, Elio--seventeen, studious, moody, and ravenous--falls for him. Elio's edgy rapture as he forms himself in relation to another plays out against the background of a scorching Mediterranean summer, and Aciman introduces a small universe of characters who are themselves a
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Camarades de classe : roman
Didier Daeninckx.
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167 p. ; 21 cm.
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The careful use of compliments
Alexander McCall Smith.
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247 p. ; 22 cm.
Isabel Dalhousie is back, in the latest installment of this enchanting, already beloeved, best-selling series. In addition to being the nosiest and most sypathetic philosopher you are likely to meet, Isabel is now a mother. Charlies, her newborn son, presents her with a myriad wonders of a new life, and doting father Jamie presents her with an intriguing proposal: marriage. In the midst of all this, she receives a disturbing letter announcing that she has been ousted as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics by the ambitious Professor Dove. None of these things, however, in any way diminshes Isabel's curiosity. And when she attends an art auction, she finds an irresistable puzzle: two paintings attributed to a now-deceased artist appear on the market at the same time, and both of them exhibit some unusual characteristics. Are these paintings forgeries? This proves to be sufficient fodder for Isabel's inquisitiveness. So she begins an investigation... and soon finds herself diverging from her philosophical musings about fatherhood onto a path that leads her into the mysteries of the art world and the soul of an artist. From the Hardcover edition.
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A carrion death : introducing Detective Kubu
Michael Stanley.
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x, 467 p. : maps, ; 24 cm.
In the aftermath of the murder of an anonymous victim, assistant superintendent David Bengu begins his career in Botswana, where his convivial passions and determined methods earn him a local nickname that likens him to a hippopotamus.
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Cartas a mi vecina de arriba
Ariel Magnus.
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146 p. ; 23 cm.
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