Last Notes from Home

Last Notes from Home
Author: Frederick Exley
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2012-04-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307800733

"Of his generation's metafictioneers, Fred Exley has created the richest and most American body of work .... LAST NOTES tells tales about corruption, confession, and the often terrible beauty of the bonds of love." - VILLAGE VOICE Frederick Exley, the splenetic and prodigiously self-destructive narrator and protagonist of A FAN'S NOTES and PAGES FROM A COLD ISLAND, is alive, if not exactly well. In this exhilarating, scalding new novel, Ex recounts his death watch for his older brother, his imprisonment by a nightmarish Irishman, and his sexual enthrallment to a beautiful flight attendant whose lies are even more inventive than his own. Searching compulsively for love and inevitably betraying it, lashing out at the country in which he is perpetually an alien, Exley remains one of the most riveting characters- and mesmerizing writers - in contemporary American fiction. "[Exley] can weave a number of seemingly unrelated incidents into a single, allusive narrative leading to an unexpected, usually prickly epiphany. His books seem like the loquacious meanderings of one of the more literary and entertainingly cynical, if often terrifyingly frank, guys one might meet in a neighborhood bar.... They reveal themselves as structurally complex, thoroughly imagined, consummate works of art." -BOSTON GLOBE

A Fan's Notes

A Fan's Notes
Author: Frederick Exley
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1988-08-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679720766

This fictional memoir, the first of an autobiographical trilogy, traces a self professed failure's nightmarish decent into the underside of American life and his resurrection to the wisdom that emerges from despair.

The Whalestoe Letters

The Whalestoe Letters
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2000-10-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375714413

Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.

Last Notes and Other Stories

Last Notes and Other Stories
Author: Tamas Dobozy
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2006
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781559708081

"Shot through with wit, a strong sense of the bonds of history, and a love of the absurd, Last Notes gives a virtuoso performance that will dazzle the imagination and touch the heart as it explores the ways in which we come together and are pulled apart. With stories such as "Tales of Hungarian Resistance" and "Four Uncles," Tamas Dobozy reveals the cultural no-man's-land that many children of immigrants are trapped within. Others, such as the title piece, the story of a dying composer and his legacy, probe the connections between artistic vision and madness. "The Man Who Came Out of the Corner of My Eye" is an Ambrose Bierce-like story with an unsettling end, "Into the Ring" delivers a satirical punch to the institution of marriage, as a couple learns to settle their conflicts in the boxing ring."--BOOK JACKET.

The Bridge Home

The Bridge Home
Author: Padma Venkatraman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1524738131

"Readers will be captivated by this beautifully written novel about young people who must use their instincts and grit to survive. Padma infuses her story with hope and bravery that will inspire readers."--Aisha Saeed, author of the New York Times Bestseller Amal Unbound Four determined homeless children make a life for themselves in Padma Venkatraman's stirring middle-grade debut. Life is harsh on the teeming streets of Chennai, India, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter--and friendship--on an abandoned bridge that's also the hideout of Muthi and Arul, two homeless boys, and the four of them soon form a family of sorts. And while making their living scavenging the city's trash heaps is the pits, the kids find plenty to take pride in, too. After all, they are now the bosses of themselves and no longer dependent on untrustworthy adults. But when illness strikes, Viji must decide whether to risk seeking help from strangers or to keep holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.

Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Author: Bronnie Ware
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2019-08-13
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1401956009

Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.

Exley

Exley
Author: Brock Clarke
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616201142

“The literary equivalent of a half-court shot . . . Extraordinary.”—NPR For young Miller Le Ray, life has become a search. A search for his dad, who may or may not have joined the army and gone to Iraq. A search for a notorious (and, unfortunately, deceased) writer, Frederick Exley, author of the “fictional memoir” A Fan’s Notes, who may hold the key to bringing Miller’s father back. But most of all, his is a search for truth. As Miller says, “Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you’ve done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven’t done.” In Exley as in his previous bestselling novel, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, Brock Clarke takes his reader into a world that is both familiar and disorienting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining. Told by Miller and Dr. Pahnee, both unreliable narrators, it becomes an exploration of the difference between what we believe to be real and what is in fact real.

House of Leaves

House of Leaves
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 738
Release: 2000-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375420525

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Foster

Foster
Author: Claire Keegan
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 73
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802160158

An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.