Writers, Readers, and Reputations

Writers, Readers, and Reputations
Author: Philip Waller
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1194
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199541205

Philip Waller explores the literary world in which the modern best-seller first emerged, with writers promoted as stars and celebrities, advertising both products and themselves.

Writers & Lovers

Writers & Lovers
Author: Lily King
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802148557

#ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today Emma Roberts Belletrist Book Club Pick A New York Times Book Review’s Group Text Selection "I loved this book not just from the first chapter or the first page but from the first paragraph... The voice is just so honest and riveting and insightful about creativity and life." —Curtis Sittenfeld An extraordinary new novel of art, love, and ambition from Lily King, the New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman. Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink. Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

Everything You Know

Everything You Know
Author: Zoe Heller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2001-01-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743411951

Ostracized after his conviction of manslaughter in England, Willy Muller leaves everything, including his two young daughters, for Los Angeles. He begins a new life, but not before writing a bestselling tell-all about his miserable marriage and the "accident" that ended it. Years later, Willy's past comes back as news that his daughter committed suicide arrives, and her diaries arrive in the mail.

A Reader's Manifesto

A Reader's Manifesto
Author: B. R. Myers
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Including: A response to critics, and: Ten rules for "serious" writers, the author continues his fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and exposing the literary status quo.

Contest

Contest
Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Pan Australia
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007-11-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1742621937

The thrilling international bestseller from Australia's favourite novelist, author of the Scarecrow series and Jack West Jr series with new novel Mr Einstein's Secretary out now. "Reilly hurls readers into an adrenaline-drenched thrill ride ... impossible to put down." Orlando Sentinel "Reilly ... can inspire awe. Speed demons, take note." Publishers Weekly The New York State Library. A silent sanctuary of knowledge; a 100-year-old labyrinth of towering bookcases, narrow aisles and spiralling staircases. For Doctor Stephen Swain and his eight-year-old daughter, Holly, it is the site of a nightmare. For one night, the State Library is to be the venue for a contest. A contest in which Stephen Swain is to compete - whether he likes it or not. The rules are simple: seven contestants will enter, only one will leave. With his daughter in his arms, Swain is plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. He can choose to run, to hide or to fight - but if he wants to live, he has to win. Because in a contest like this, unless you leave as the victor, you do not leave at all. Fans of Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton will love Matthew Reilly.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Author: Tom Franklin
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2010-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062048740

“The classic trifecta of talent, heart, and a bone-deep sense of storytelling….A masterful performance, deftly rendered and deeply satisfying. For days on end, I woke with this story on my mind.” —David Wroblewski A powerful and resonant novel from the critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town. More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.

Literature and Union

Literature and Union
Author: Gerard Carruthers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2018-01-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192548441

Literature and Union opens up a new front in interdisciplinary literary studies. There has been a great deal of academic work--both in the Scottish context and more broadly--on the relationship between literature and nationhood, yet almost none on the relationship between literature and unions. This volume introduces the insights of the new British history into mainstream Scottish literary scholarship. The contributors, who are from all shades of the political spectrum, will interrogate from various angles the assumption of a binary opposition between organic Scottish values and those supposedly imposed by an overbearing imperial England. Viewing Scottish literature as a clash between Scottish and English identities loses sight of the internal Scottish political and religious divisions, which, far more than issues of nationhood and union, were the primary sources of conflict in Scottish culture for most of the period of Union, until at least the early twentieth century. The aim of the volume is to reconstruct the story of Scottish literature along lines which are more historically persuasive than those of the prevailing grand narratives in the field. The chapters fall into three groups: (1) those which highlight canonical moments in Scottish literary Unionism--John Bull, 'Rule, Britannia', Humphry Clinker, Ivanhoe and England, their England; (2) those which investigate key themes and problems, including the Unions of 1603 and 1707, Scottish Augustanism, the Burns Cult, Whig-Presbyterian and sentimental Jacobite literatures; and (3) comparative pieces on European and Anglo-Irish phenomena.

Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s

Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s
Author: David Carter
Publisher: Sydney University Press
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2018-07-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1743325797

Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s explores how Australian writers and their works were present in the United States before the mid twentieth century to a much greater degree than previously acknowledged. Drawing on fresh archival research and combining the approaches of literary criticism, print culture studies and book history, David Carter and Roger Osborne demonstrate that Australian writing was transnational long before the contemporary period. In mapping Australian literature’s connections to British and US markets, their research challenges established understandings of national, imperial and world literatures. Carter and Osborne examine how Australian authors, editors and publishers engaged productively with their American counterparts, and how American readers and reviewers responded to Australian works. They consider the role played by British publishers and agents in taking Australian writing to America, and how the international circulation of new literary genres created new opportunities for novelists to move between markets. Some of these writers, such as Christina Stead and Patrick White, remain household names; others who once enjoyed international fame, such as Dale Collins and Alice Grant Rosman, have been largely forgotten. The story of their books in America reveals how culture, commerce and copyright law interacted to create both opportunities and obstacles for Australian writers.

The Believers

The Believers
Author: Zoe Heller
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0061971324

“[Zoe Heller] is an extraordinarily entertaining writer, and this novel showcases her copious gifts, including a scathing, Waugh-like wit.”—New York Times Best-selling author Zoe Heller has followed up the critical and commercial success of What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal with another tour-de-force on the meaning of faith, belief, and trust: The Believers. Tragic and comic, witty and intense, The Believers is the story of a dysfunctional family forced by tragedy to confront their own personal demons. In the vein of Claire Messud and Zadie Smith, Zoe Heller has written that rare novel that tackles the big ideas without sacrificing page-turning readability.

A Matter of Obscenity

A Matter of Obscenity
Author: Christopher Hilliard
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691197989

"A popular story about the 1960s and 1970s holds that this was when Britain shook off the vestiges of an oppressive Victorian moralism. Many of those campaigning against censorship saw it this way. But this was also a struggle that pitted Victorian liberalism against supposedly Victorian morals. John Stuart Mill's ideas provided a way of thinking about freedom, personal autonomy, and the social contract for people who otherwise had little in common with Victorian liberals. This book by Chris Hilliard of the University of Syndey will show how readers and editors, lawyers and law enforcement, politicians and philosophers grappled with questions of freedom, authority and order as a famously deferential society became increasingly pluralist. It was in the aftermath of the publication of affordable English language editions of the works of Emile Zola, in the late 19th century, that this essentially Victorian conflict first materialised in recognisable form. It was in 1960, when Penguin were tried for obscenity after the publication, in English, of the first unedited edtion, that this conflict reached both a crescendo and then a settlement. The book is divided into four parts, each tracing the story of a different phase in the history of obscenity law in Britain. There are also three "interludes" examining areas of law that came into tension with the social changes of the modern period-libel, sedition, and blasphemy. The interludes place struggles over obscenity in a larger cultural context and deepen the legal analysis by exploring the conceptual and policy challenges thrown up by other common-law misdemeanors and tort law"--