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The Uncommon Reader: A Novella
From the author of The History Boys and The Clothes They Stood Up In
A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, Bennett describes the Queen’s transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. With the poignant and mischievous wit of The History Boys, England’s best loved author revels in the power of literature to change even the most uncommon reader’s life. .
Price: $8.33
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A Prayer for Owen Meany
Owen Meany is a dwarfish boy with a strange voice who accidentally kills his best friend's mom with a baseball and believes--accurately--that he is an instrument of God, to be redeemed by martyrdom. John Irving's novel, which inspired the 1998 Jim Carrey movie Simon Birch, is his most popular book in Britain, and perhaps the oddest Christian mystic novel since Flannery O'Connor's work. Irving fans will find much that is familiar: the New England prep-school-town setting, symbolic amputations of man and beast, the Garp-like unknown father of the narrator (Owen's orphaned best friend), the rough comedy. The scene of doltish the doltish headmaster driving a trashed VW down the school's marble staircase is a marvelous set piece. So are the Christmas pageants Owen stars in. But it's all, as Highlights magazine used to put it, "fun with a purpose." When Owen plays baby Jesus in the pageants, and glimpses a tombstone with his death date while enacting A Christmas Carol, the slapstick doesn't cancel the fact that he was born to be martyred. The book's countless subplots add up to a moral argument, specifically an indictment of American foreign policy--from Vietnam to the Contras. The book's mystic religiosity is steeped in Robertson Davies's Deptford trilogy, and the fatal baseball relates to the fatefully misdirected snowball in the first Deptford novel, Fifth Business. Tiny, symbolic Owen echoes the hero of Irving's teacher Günter Grass's The Tin Drum--the two characters share the same initials. A rollicking entertainment, Owen Meany is also a meditation on literature, history, and God. --Tim Appelo.
Price: $3.10
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Different Seasons (Signet)
Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity. These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (available as a screenplay, a DVD film, and an audiocassette), "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil (also released in 1998 on audiocassette), and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986). The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection. --Fiona Webster.
Price: $3.93
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Love Is Never Painless: Three Novellas
Three prolific authors bring truth to the title of thisheart-wrenching book, Love Is Never Painless, with acollection of novellas that explores the deeper side oflove -- the side rarely explored in love stories In Eileen M. Johnson's "How the Other Half Lives," longtime friends Jamellah andFernecia are having trouble with the men in their lives. And as their worlds seem tocrumble, they must count on their friendship to keep it together. In "Love Is 2 Blame," by V. Anthony Rivers, Malcolm is devastated after histwo-year relationship with Shaylisa ends. And trying to move on will not be easy -- but the lovely Zahara may be the perfect woman to show Malcolm what true love isall about. In Zane's "Staring Evil in the Face," Robier has everything: a successful career,beautiful children, and the woman of his dreams. Having loved Tiphanie sincecollege, he is determined to keep his marital vows -- until Tiphanie is involved in ahorrible car accident that changes the entire course of their lives. From nervous breakdowns to drug addiction, in Love Is Never Painless, Zane,Johnson, and Rivers have penned powerful stories that not only will have readerstalking, but will bring a new perspective to their own relationships..
Price: $2.53
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The Elephanta Suite: Three Novellas
A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India. This startling, far-reaching book captures the tumult, ambition, hardship, and serenity that mark today's India. Theroux's Westerners risk venturing far beyond the subcontinent's well-worn paths to discover woe or truth or peace. A middle-aged couple on vacation veers heedlessly from idyll to chaos. A buttoned-up Boston lawyer finds succor in Mumbai's reeking slums. And a young woman befriends an elephant in Bangalore. We also meet Indian characters as singular as they are reflective of the country's subtle ironies: an executive who yearns to become a holy beggar, an earnest young striver whose personality is rewired by acquiring an American accent, a miracle-working guru, and others. As ever, Theroux's portraits of people and places explode stereotypes to exhilarating effect. The Elephanta Suite urges us toward a fresh, compelling, and often inspiring notion of what India is, and what it can do to those who try to lose--or find--themselves there..
Price: $12.26
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The Best Man: Four Sensuous Novellas
He'll leave you begging for more... THE BEST MAN Brenda Jackson's "Strictly Business" Houston freelance writer Gina Grant Farrell just got a job offer too good to refuse-a week on a Texas ranch to interview the ruthless, ambitious, and very handsome millionaire Mitch Farrell, who happens to be none other than her ex-husband! Is Mitch's proposal strictly business? Or is he planning a sizzling seduction and nights filled with strictly pleasure...? Kayla Perrin's "Kidnapped!" Nia Copeland's wedding in Fort Lauderdale is just perfect until her gorgeous, hardbody ex-boyfriend Jamal Simpson races in on his motorcycle and carries her off to prove he's the better lover. Now they're on the way to Key West headed toward the most irresistible passion-and maybe even true love... Felicia Mason's "Promises and Vows" Elise Gregory's marriage is cold as ice with her husband Jerome sleeping in the guestroom. Then his favorite aunt, a high priestess of New Orleans voodoo, arrives for a prolonged visit. That means Jerome has to move back to their bed. With the help of some magic, it's not long before the sparks are ignited, and desire is rediscovered... Cindi Louis' "Catch Me If You Can!" At 6'2" and a player for the Dallas Cowboys, no one can miss sexy Lonzell Jenkins, the best man at the wedding, especially wedding planner Leesa Fairchild. She shared an intense affair with Lonzell before he left without even a goodbye. Now, after four long years, she intends to show him what he's been missing-a searing passion that only she can fulfill... .
Price: $6.99
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PLEASURE OF MY COMPANY, THE: A NOVELLA
Readers expecting something zany, something crudely humorous from Steve Martin's second novel, The Pleasure of My Company, will discover much greater riches. While the book has a sense of humor, Martin moves everywhere with a gentler, lighter touch in this elegant little fiction that verges on the profound and poetic. Daniel Pecan Cambridge is the narrator and central consciousness of the novel (actually a novella). Daniel, an ex-Hewlett-Packard communiqué encoder, is a savant whose closely proscribed world is bounded on every side by neuroses and obsessions. He cannot cross the street except at driveways symmetrically opposed to each, and he cannot sleep unless the wattage of the active light bulbs in his apartment sums to 1,125. Daniel's starved social life is punctuated by twice-weekly visits from a young therapist in training, Clarissa; by his prescription pick-ups from a Rite Aid pharmacist, Zandy; and by his "casual" meetings with the bleach-blond real estate agent, Elizabeth, who is struggling to sell apartments across the street. But Daniel's dysfunctional routines are shattered one day when he becomes entangled in the chaos of Clarissa's life as a single mother. Taking care of Clarissa's tiny son, Teddy, Daniel begins to emerge from the safety of logic, magic squares, and obsessive counting. Martin's craftsmanship is remarkable. The tightly packed novella paints rich portraits with restraint and balance, including nothing extraneous to Daniel's world. The book does not try for pyrotechnics but is contented with a Zen-like simplicity in both prose and plot. Avoiding the crushing bleakness of much contemporary fiction, Martin insists through Daniel--a man haunted by horrors of his own making--that there is possibility for compassion, that broken lives can actually be healed. --Patrick O'Kelley.
Price: $3.99
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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two B: The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SF Hall of Fame)
This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas between 1929 to 1964 and contains eleven great classics There is no better anthology that captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field. Published in 1973 to honor stories that had come before the institution of the Nebula Awards, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country. This volume contains novellas by: Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Theodore Cogswell, E. M. Forster, Frederik Pohl, James H. Schmitz, T. L. Sherred, Wilmar H. Shiras, Clifford D. Simak, and Jack Vance. .
Price: $13.50
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