Strange as This Weather Has Been

Strange as This Weather Has Been PDF Author: Ann Pancake
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582439915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
A West Virginia family struggles amid the booms and busts of the Appalachian coal industry in this “powerful, sure-footed, and haunting” novel with echoes of John Steinbeck (New York Times Book Review). Set in present day West Virginia, this debut novel tells the story of a coal mining family—a couple and their four children—living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their hometown. As the mine turns the mountains “to slag and wastewater,” workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters. Strange as This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen–year–old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more frequently outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows—the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong–willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.

Strange as This Weather Has Been

Strange as This Weather Has Been PDF Author: Ann Pancake
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1582439915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Get Book Here

Book Description
A West Virginia family struggles amid the booms and busts of the Appalachian coal industry in this “powerful, sure-footed, and haunting” novel with echoes of John Steinbeck (New York Times Book Review). Set in present day West Virginia, this debut novel tells the story of a coal mining family—a couple and their four children—living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is left of their hometown. As the mine turns the mountains “to slag and wastewater,” workers struggle with layoffs and children find adventure in the blasted moonscape craters. Strange as This Weather Has Been follows several members of the family, with a particular focus on fifteen–year–old Bant and her mother, Lace. Working at a motel, Bant becomes involved with a young miner while her mother contemplates joining the fight against the mining companies. As domestic conflicts escalate at home, the children are pushed more and more frequently outside among junk from the floods and felled trees in the hollows—the only nature they have ever known. But Bant has other memories and is as curious and strong–willed as her mother, and ultimately comes to discover the very real threat of destruction that looms as much in the landscape as it does at home.

Given Ground

Given Ground PDF Author: Ann Pancake
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584651185
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Get Book Here

Book Description
Short stories explore cultural change and class conflict in contemporary West Virginia.

Strange Weather

Strange Weather PDF Author: Joe Hill
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062663135
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman, Joe Hill. "One of America’s finest horror writers" (Time magazine), Joe Hill has been hailed among legendary talents such as Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, and Jonathan Lethem. In Strange Weather, this "compelling chronicler of human nature’s continual war between good and evil," (Providence Journal-Bulletin) who "pushes genre conventions to new extremes" (New York Times Book Review) deftly expose the darkness that lies just beneath the surface of everyday life. "Snapshot" is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by "The Phoenician," a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap. A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in "Aloft." On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. "Rain" explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world. In "Loaded," a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning. Masterfully exploring classic literary themes through the prism of the supernatural, Strange Weather is a stellar collection from an artist who is "quite simply the best horror writer of our generation" (Michael Kortya).

Strange Weather in Tokyo

Strange Weather in Tokyo PDF Author: Hiromi Kawakami
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1640090177
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a story of loneliness and love that defies age. Tsukiko, thirty–eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei," in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love. As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time's passing is marked by Kawakami's gentle hints at the changing seasons: from warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms. Strange Weather in Tokyo is a moving, funny, and immersive tale of modern Japan and old–fashioned romance.

What Strange Paradise

What Strange Paradise PDF Author: Omar El Akkad
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525657916
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the widely acclaimed, bestselling author of American War—a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child. "Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves to be an instant classic." —The New York Times Book Review More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vänna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don’t speak a common language, Vänna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy. In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir’s life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair—and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.

The Book of Strange New Things

The Book of Strange New Things PDF Author: Michel Faber
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0553418858
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Get Book Here

Book Description
A monumental, genre-defying novel that David Mitchell calls "Michel Faber’s second masterpiece," The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents. It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter. Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us. Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.

Strange Weather

Strange Weather PDF Author: Becky Hagenston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780982576076
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117

Get Book Here

Book Description
Becky Hagenston's debut collection of short stories, is the 2009 winner of the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction that Antonya Nelson, author of Nothing Right and Some Fun, calls "curious, clever, quick, hilarious, and heartbreaking"; Brock Clark, author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, says, "Just when you think you've got these characters and their messed-up lives pegged, they do something wonderful, or awful, or both, to utterly surprise you, and often themselves. A wonderful book"; and Janet Peery, author of What the Thunder Said, says, "With extraordinary wit and understanding and stunning emotional accuracy, not to mention an uncanny ability to track which way the wind blows, Becky Hagenston trains a weather eye on those most unstable of fronts-human beings in their dealings with each other. Smart work from a smart writer."

Big Weather

Big Weather PDF Author: Mark Svenvold
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805080148
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
The author profiles real tornadoes and severe weather patterns over six thousand miles of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, known as Tornado Alley.

Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley

Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley PDF Author: Ann Pancake
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619025108
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ann Pancake's 2007 novel Strange As This Weather Has Been exposed the devastating fallout of mountaintop removal mining on a single West Virginia family. In Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley, a follow–up collection of eleven astonishing novellas and short stories, Pancake again features characters who are intensely connected to their land––sometimes through love, sometimes through hate––and who experience brokenness and loss, redemption and revelation, often through their relationships to places under siege. Retired strip miners find themselves victimized by the industry that supported them; a family breaks down along generation lines over a fracking lease; children transcend addict parents and adult suicide; an urban woman must confront her skepticism about worlds behind this one when she finds bones through a mysterious force she can't name. Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley explores poverty, class, environmental breakdown and social collapse while also affirming the world's sacredness. Ann Pancake's ear for the Appalachian dialect is both pitch–perfect and respectful, that of one who writes from the heart of this world. Her firsthand knowledge of her rural place and her exquisite depictions of the intricacies of families may remind one of Alice Munro.

Storming Heaven: A Novel

Storming Heaven: A Novel PDF Author: Denise Giardina
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393076261
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 360

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the story of the miners and the union they wanted, of the people who loved them and the people who wanted to kill their dreams. Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy—land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women. Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C. J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines. They all bear witness to nearly forgotten events of history, culminating in the final, tragic Battle of Blair Mountain—when the United States Army greeted ten thousand unemployed pro-union miners with airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. It was the first crucial battle of a war that has yet to be won.