Author: Piero Chiara
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931770
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
"Piero Chiara’s novel is at once a murder mystery and a lyrical study of desire, greed, and deception. The ending is simply stunning." —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name Summer 1946. World War Two has just come to an end and there’s a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for dinner with his older wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law. The sailor is intrigued by the elegant waterside mansion, staffed with servants and imbued with mystery, and stays in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host. The two men form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. They soon set sail together, encountering old flames and making new conquests. But tragedy puts an abrupt halt to their revels and shatters the tranquility of the villa. What really happened on the dock? And who was the figure glimpsed cycling around the shore in the dark? A sultry, stylish psychological thriller executed with supreme literary finesse.
The Bishop's Bedroom
Author: Piero Chiara
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931770
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
"Piero Chiara’s novel is at once a murder mystery and a lyrical study of desire, greed, and deception. The ending is simply stunning." —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name Summer 1946. World War Two has just come to an end and there’s a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for dinner with his older wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law. The sailor is intrigued by the elegant waterside mansion, staffed with servants and imbued with mystery, and stays in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host. The two men form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. They soon set sail together, encountering old flames and making new conquests. But tragedy puts an abrupt halt to their revels and shatters the tranquility of the villa. What really happened on the dock? And who was the figure glimpsed cycling around the shore in the dark? A sultry, stylish psychological thriller executed with supreme literary finesse.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931770
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
"Piero Chiara’s novel is at once a murder mystery and a lyrical study of desire, greed, and deception. The ending is simply stunning." —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name Summer 1946. World War Two has just come to an end and there’s a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa who invites him home for dinner with his older wife and beautiful widowed sister-in-law. The sailor is intrigued by the elegant waterside mansion, staffed with servants and imbued with mystery, and stays in a guest room previously occupied by a now deceased bishop related to his host. The two men form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. They soon set sail together, encountering old flames and making new conquests. But tragedy puts an abrupt halt to their revels and shatters the tranquility of the villa. What really happened on the dock? And who was the figure glimpsed cycling around the shore in the dark? A sultry, stylish psychological thriller executed with supreme literary finesse.
Pollak's Arm
Author: Hans von Trotha
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126
Book Description
"Enthralling ... A great read."—Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art October 16, 1943, inside the Vatican as darkness descends upon Rome. Having been alerted to the Nazi plan to round up the city’s Jewish population the next day, Monsignor F. dispatches an envoy to a nearby palazzo to bring Ludwig Pollak and his family to safety within the papal premises. But Pollak shows himself in no hurry to leave his home and accept the eleventh-hour offer of refuge. Pollak’s visitor is obliged to take a seat and listen as he recounts his life story: how he studied archaeology in Prague, his passion for Italy and Goethe, how he became a renowned antiquities dealer and advisor to great collectors like J. P. Morgan and the Austro-Hungarian emperor after his own Jewishness barred him from an academic career, and finally his spectacular discovery of the missing arm from the majestic ancient sculpture of Laocoön and his sons. Torn between hearing Pollak’s spellbinding tale and the urgent mission to save the archaeologist from certain annihilation, the Vatican’s anxious messenger presses him to make haste and depart. This stunning novel illuminates the chasm between civilization and barbarism by spotlighting a now little-known figure devoted to knowledge and the power of artistic creation.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 126
Book Description
"Enthralling ... A great read."—Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art October 16, 1943, inside the Vatican as darkness descends upon Rome. Having been alerted to the Nazi plan to round up the city’s Jewish population the next day, Monsignor F. dispatches an envoy to a nearby palazzo to bring Ludwig Pollak and his family to safety within the papal premises. But Pollak shows himself in no hurry to leave his home and accept the eleventh-hour offer of refuge. Pollak’s visitor is obliged to take a seat and listen as he recounts his life story: how he studied archaeology in Prague, his passion for Italy and Goethe, how he became a renowned antiquities dealer and advisor to great collectors like J. P. Morgan and the Austro-Hungarian emperor after his own Jewishness barred him from an academic career, and finally his spectacular discovery of the missing arm from the majestic ancient sculpture of Laocoön and his sons. Torn between hearing Pollak’s spellbinding tale and the urgent mission to save the archaeologist from certain annihilation, the Vatican’s anxious messenger presses him to make haste and depart. This stunning novel illuminates the chasm between civilization and barbarism by spotlighting a now little-known figure devoted to knowledge and the power of artistic creation.
Where I Am
Author: Dana Shem-Ur
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404158
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
"Establishes Dana Shem-Ur as one of the rising stars of the new Israeli literature."—Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus A piercing novel about life abroad in a cultural setting not one’s own: Reut is an Israeli translator living in Paris with a French husband and their child. She’s made sacrifices for her family but now feels a simmering discontent and estrangement that erupts at a festive dinner party with affluent, intellectual friends. During the sumptuous meal, she navigates a tangle of cultural codes with which she’s never been fully at ease. This is a novel about big life choices that examines a woman’s attitudes toward belonging to a man, to a culture, to a language. Where I Am is an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one’s head, and to feel—if only for a moment—at home.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404158
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
"Establishes Dana Shem-Ur as one of the rising stars of the new Israeli literature."—Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus A piercing novel about life abroad in a cultural setting not one’s own: Reut is an Israeli translator living in Paris with a French husband and their child. She’s made sacrifices for her family but now feels a simmering discontent and estrangement that erupts at a festive dinner party with affluent, intellectual friends. During the sumptuous meal, she navigates a tangle of cultural codes with which she’s never been fully at ease. This is a novel about big life choices that examines a woman’s attitudes toward belonging to a man, to a culture, to a language. Where I Am is an intimate, witty book portraying a profoundly human yearning to stop everything, to lay down one’s head, and to feel—if only for a moment—at home.
The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir
Author: Honor Moore
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344215
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
“An eloquent argument for speaking even the most difficult truths.” —New York Times Book Review Paul Moore’s vocation as an Episcopal priest took him— with his wife, Jenny, and their family of nine children—from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop’s Daughter is his daughter’s story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344215
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
“An eloquent argument for speaking even the most difficult truths.” —New York Times Book Review Paul Moore’s vocation as an Episcopal priest took him— with his wife, Jenny, and their family of nine children—from robber-baron wealth to work among the urban poor, leadership in the civil rights and peace movements, and two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop’s Daughter is his daughter’s story of that complex, visionary man: a chronicle of her turbulent relationship with a father who struggled privately with his sexuality while she openly explored hers and a searching account of the consequences of sexual secrets.
The Lady of the Mine
Author: Sergei Lebedev
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 195440431X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Book Description
"A monumental feat . . . a book of rare elemental power that lays bare the dark forces driving Putin's Russia today."—Catherine Belton, author of Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths. The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the German Wehrmacht in World War II. Then corpses rain from the sky when a jetliner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past. Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 195440431X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Book Description
"A monumental feat . . . a book of rare elemental power that lays bare the dark forces driving Putin's Russia today."—Catherine Belton, author of Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West The mystical laundress at the center of this novel is obsessed with purity. Her task is formidable as she stands guard over a sealed shaft at a Ukrainian coal mine that hides terrible truths. The bodies of dead Jews lying in its depths seem to attract still more present-day crimes. Acclaimed Russian author Sergei Lebedev portrays a ghostly realm riven by lust and fear just as the Kremlin invades the same part of Ukraine occupied by the German Wehrmacht in World War II. Then corpses rain from the sky when a jetliner is shot down overhead, scattering luxury goods along with the mortal remains. Eerie coincidences and gruesome discoveries fill this riveting exploration of an uncanny place where the geography exudes violence, and where the sins of the past are never all that in the past. Lebedev, who has won international praise for his soul-searching prose and unflinching examination of history’s evils, shines light on the fault line where Nazism met Soviet communism, evolving into the new fascism of today’s Russia.
The Words That Remain
Author: Stênio Gardel
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404131
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER "Disarmingly tender and feverishly sad, Gardel's love story is a delirium of a novel that reminds its readers of an uncomfortable truth: that even a life of regret can be a beautiful one."—Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cicero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where the demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has long been unable to read. As young men, he and Cicero fell in love, only to have Raimundo’s father brutally beat his son when he discovered their affair. Even after Raimundo succeeds in making a life for himself in the big city, he continues to be haunted by this secret missive full of longing from the distant past. Now at age seventy-one, he at last acquires a true education and the ability to access the letter. Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with their flip side: survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404131
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER "Disarmingly tender and feverishly sad, Gardel's love story is a delirium of a novel that reminds its readers of an uncomfortable truth: that even a life of regret can be a beautiful one."—Patrick Nathan, author of Some Hell A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cicero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where the demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has long been unable to read. As young men, he and Cicero fell in love, only to have Raimundo’s father brutally beat his son when he discovered their affair. Even after Raimundo succeeds in making a life for himself in the big city, he continues to be haunted by this secret missive full of longing from the distant past. Now at age seventy-one, he at last acquires a true education and the ability to access the letter. Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with their flip side: survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.
Professor Schiff's Guilt
Author: Agur Schiff
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404174
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
"A writer contends with slavery's legacy, and his own link to it . . . Daring in both scope and imagination." —The New York Times A stellar novel rendered into a darkly comic, unforgettable narrative by Booker International Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen. An Israeli professor travels to a fictitious West African nation to trace a slave-trading ancestor, only to be imprisoned under a new law barring successive generations from profiting off the proceeds of slavery. But before departing from Tel Aviv, the protagonist falls in love with Lucile, a mysterious African migrant worker who cleans his house. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this satire of contemporary attitudes toward racism and the legacy of colonialism examines economic inequality and the global refugee crisis, as well as the memory of transatlantic chattel slavery and the Holocaust. Is the professor’s passion for Africa merely a fashionable pose and the book he’s secretly writing about his experience there nothing but a modern version of the slave trade?
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404174
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
"A writer contends with slavery's legacy, and his own link to it . . . Daring in both scope and imagination." —The New York Times A stellar novel rendered into a darkly comic, unforgettable narrative by Booker International Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen. An Israeli professor travels to a fictitious West African nation to trace a slave-trading ancestor, only to be imprisoned under a new law barring successive generations from profiting off the proceeds of slavery. But before departing from Tel Aviv, the protagonist falls in love with Lucile, a mysterious African migrant worker who cleans his house. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this satire of contemporary attitudes toward racism and the legacy of colonialism examines economic inequality and the global refugee crisis, as well as the memory of transatlantic chattel slavery and the Holocaust. Is the professor’s passion for Africa merely a fashionable pose and the book he’s secretly writing about his experience there nothing but a modern version of the slave trade?
The Vanished Collection
Author: Pauline Baer de Perignon
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
"Engrossing ... The book reads like a detective story."―The Washington Post It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents’ elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1939931991
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
"Engrossing ... The book reads like a detective story."―The Washington Post It all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo, and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection. But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents’ elegant Parisian apartment? The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.
The Italian Boy
Author: Sarah Wise
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466867809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
A thrilling history of England's great metropolis at a point of great change, told through the story of a young vagrant murdered by "resurrection men" Before his murder in 1831, the "Italian boy" was one of thousands of orphans on the streets of London, moving among the livestock, hawkers, and con men, begging for pennies. When his body was sold to a London medical college, the suppliers were arrested for murder. Their high-profile trial would unveil London's furtive trade in human corpses carried out by body-snatchers--or "resurrection men"--who killed to satisfy the first rule of the cadaver market: the fresher the body, the higher the price. Historian Sarah Wise reconstructs not only the boy's murder but the chaos and squalor of London that swallowed the fourteen-year-old vagrant long before his corpse appeared on the slab. In 1831, the city's poor were desperate and the wealthy were petrified, the population swelling so fast that old class borders could not possibly hold. All the while, early humanitarians were pushing legislation to protect the disenfranchised, the courts were establishing norms of punishment and execution, and doctors were pioneering the science of human anatomy. Vivid and intricate, The Italian Boy restores to history the lives of the very poorest Londoners and offers an unparalleled account of the sights, sounds, and smells of a city at the brink of a major transformation.
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466867809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
A thrilling history of England's great metropolis at a point of great change, told through the story of a young vagrant murdered by "resurrection men" Before his murder in 1831, the "Italian boy" was one of thousands of orphans on the streets of London, moving among the livestock, hawkers, and con men, begging for pennies. When his body was sold to a London medical college, the suppliers were arrested for murder. Their high-profile trial would unveil London's furtive trade in human corpses carried out by body-snatchers--or "resurrection men"--who killed to satisfy the first rule of the cadaver market: the fresher the body, the higher the price. Historian Sarah Wise reconstructs not only the boy's murder but the chaos and squalor of London that swallowed the fourteen-year-old vagrant long before his corpse appeared on the slab. In 1831, the city's poor were desperate and the wealthy were petrified, the population swelling so fast that old class borders could not possibly hold. All the while, early humanitarians were pushing legislation to protect the disenfranchised, the courts were establishing norms of punishment and execution, and doctors were pioneering the science of human anatomy. Vivid and intricate, The Italian Boy restores to history the lives of the very poorest Londoners and offers an unparalleled account of the sights, sounds, and smells of a city at the brink of a major transformation.
Of Saints and Miracles
Author: Manuel Astur
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404077
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 155
Book Description
"Poetic and magical ... Astur's language is meticulous and vivid."—Asymptote A literary crime novel about family conflict in the Spanish countryside: breathtaking, tragic, sensuous and magical. Marcelino lives alone on his parents’ farm, set deep in the beautiful but impoverished countryside of northern Spain. It’s the place where he grew up, the place where he doted on his baby brother, the place where he protected his mother from their father’s drunken rages. But when Marcelino’s brother tricks him out of his house and land, a moment of anger sparks a chain of events that can’t be reversed. Marcelino flees to the wild peaks of rural Asturias, becoming a cult hero as he evades the authorities. Into this, author Manuel Astur interweaves family tales and fables about the sun and the moon, about death and love, and offers glimpses into the lives of other villagers and the history of their community. Astur’s poetic language and seamless blend of lyricism with the grotesque renders this book a treasure for the reader. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous portrayal of an outcast’s struggle to survive in a chaotic world of both tragedy and magical splendor.
Publisher: New Vessel Press
ISBN: 1954404077
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 155
Book Description
"Poetic and magical ... Astur's language is meticulous and vivid."—Asymptote A literary crime novel about family conflict in the Spanish countryside: breathtaking, tragic, sensuous and magical. Marcelino lives alone on his parents’ farm, set deep in the beautiful but impoverished countryside of northern Spain. It’s the place where he grew up, the place where he doted on his baby brother, the place where he protected his mother from their father’s drunken rages. But when Marcelino’s brother tricks him out of his house and land, a moment of anger sparks a chain of events that can’t be reversed. Marcelino flees to the wild peaks of rural Asturias, becoming a cult hero as he evades the authorities. Into this, author Manuel Astur interweaves family tales and fables about the sun and the moon, about death and love, and offers glimpses into the lives of other villagers and the history of their community. Astur’s poetic language and seamless blend of lyricism with the grotesque renders this book a treasure for the reader. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous portrayal of an outcast’s struggle to survive in a chaotic world of both tragedy and magical splendor.