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America America: A Novel
From Ethan Canin, bestselling author of The Palace Thief, comes a stunning novel, set in a small town during the Nixon era and today, about America and family, politics and tragedy, and the impact of fate on a young man’s life. In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president of the United States. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with one of the Metarey daughters as well, and he begins to leave behind the world of his upbringing. As the Bonwiller campaign gains momentum, Corey finds himself caught up in a complex web of events in which loyalty, politics, sex, and gratitude conflict with morality, love, and the truth.
America America is a beautiful novel about America as it was and is, a remarkable exploration of how vanity, greatness, and tragedy combine to change history and fate. PRAISE FOR AMERICA AMERICA
“A brilliant, serious book for serious readers.” —San Diego Union Tribune
“A complicated, many-layered epic of class, politics, sex, death, and social history…Its reach is wide and its touch often masterly.” —John Updike in The New Yorker
“Though I’ve always loved Ethan Canin’s work, I still wasn’t prepared for America America, as rich, ambitious, intelligent, emotionally satisfying and important a work of fiction as we’re likely to get this year.” —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls
“We’ve waited a long time for a worthy successor to Robert Penn Warren’s All the King's Men, and it couldn't have arrived at a more auspicious moment." —Washington Post
“The beginning of June heralds the arrival of the fat summer read, meant for the porch, the hammock, the beach. Ethan Canin’s America America is just such a book, the satisfying, compulsively readable saga of a northeastern coal dynasty…What a story it is.” —Entertainment Weekly
“A big, ambitious, old-fashioned, quintessentially American novel about politics, power, ambition, class, ethics and loyalty… Bravo to Canin for tackling the American Dream, which we're forever running off the road and then trying to resuscitate.” —Los Angeles Times
“Status, money, and politics intersect in this ambitious tale of a 1970s yard boy who becomes entangled in the web of a powerful New York family. Canin is at the top of his game.” —People
“Beautifully written. . .Heartbreaking.” —USA Today
“Gooily satisfying…intelligently observed, elegantly written…much more than a novel about politics. It’s both a coming-of-age story and a melancholy look back at a small town and a time when cynicism about politicians and journalists hadn’t yet become accepted shorthand. It’s a perfect story for an election year, but one that will be read long after November.” —Christian Science Monitor
“ America America is a grand novel, with a wide scope and small anguishes…The writing is exquisite, the depiction of the fading days of a certain American dream haunting.” —The Miami Herald“Between the Covers” A very ambitious take on the great American novel—about class, wealth, politics, history, power, innocence and corruption, all the things that ought to be in a great American novel. It’s beautiful to read, filled with Ethan Canin’s brilliant small summaries of a time or a place. It’s complicated, at times triumphant, at times sad. —Linda Wertheimer, National Public Radio
“Even the title is invigorating, a splash of nostalgia and hope…Take this to the beach.” —O Magazine
“A magnificent new novel with enormous sweep and power. I’ve been following Ethan Canin’s career since his first book. America America is the crowning glory of his writing life. I love this book.” —Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides
“A summer novel that will have you turning pages faster than Barack Obama is pocketing delegates... America America is a timely, engaging novel about power and influence in the land of opportunity. . . An epic look at life, love and legacy.” —Rocky Mountain News
“A superb novel that beautifully illustrates the fundamental unknowability of our loved ones.” —Paste Magazine
“Ethan Canin could hardly wish for higher praise than this: His big, carefully crafted novel earns the right to its name.” –The New York Observer
“A serious, sweeping, generations-spanning epic…An ambitious work that excels in imagining — rather than revisiting — this America on the verge.” –New York Sun
“At year's end, America America might not have won the National Book Award, but it should have.” —Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star “An arresting American political legend, intricately—and suspensefully—structured, gracefully written, and enhanced by thoughtful insights and intuitions in regard to its strong idiosyncratic characters. Altogether an admirable book.” —Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country
“[A] riveting and thought-provoking political novel . . ., a pointed history lesson and a timeless meditation on fate and self-determination. [Canin’s] best and most affecting work. “ —The Miami Herald “A powerful lament that haunts us like a latter-day ghost of The Great Gatsby. [A] splendid novel.” —Publishers Weekly, Signature Review
“It is always a deep pleasure to read Ethan Canin’s fine, calm, illuminating prose, and how well that prose serves this sweeping story of ambition and treachery. Canin is a writer who so quietly seems to know everything.” —Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World
“Captures that lovely green light of endless possibility that so entranced Fitzgerald, and also entrances Ethan Canin, his successor in the nuanced portrayal of man’s endless capacity for regret.” —Cox News Service "One of the best writers at work today." —Lorrie Moore, author of Birds of America
“Powerful and haunting, a major work.” –Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review .
Price: $15.20
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Brideshead Revisited
One of Waugh's most famous books, Brideshead Revisited tells the story of the difficult loves of insular Englishman Charles Ryder, and his peculiarly intense relationship with the wealthy but dysfunctional family that inhabited Brideshead. Taking place in the years after World War II, Brideshead Revisited shows us a part of upper-class English culture that has been disappearing steadily..
Price: $5.97
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The House at Riverton: A Novel
Amazon Best of the Month, April 2008: In her cinematic debut novel, Kate Morton immerses readers in the dramas of the Ashbury family at their crumbling English country estate in the years surrounding World War I, an age when Edwardian civility, shaken by war, unravels into the roaring Twenties. Grace came to serve in the house as a girl. She left as a young woman, after the presumed suicide of a famous young poet at the property's lake. Though she has dutifully kept the family's secrets for decades, memories flood back in the twilight of her life when a young filmmaker comes calling with questions about how the poet really died--and why the Ashbury sisters never again spoke to each other afterward. With beautifully crafted prose, Morton methodically reveals how passion and fate transpired that night at the lake, with truly shocking results. Her final revelation at the story's close packs a satisfying (and not overly sentimental) emotional punch. --Mari Malcolm.
Price: $12.15
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Master of the Delta
In 1954 Mississippi, Jack Branch returns to his father’s Delta estate, Great Oaks, to perform an act of noblesse oblige: teaching at the local high school. Conducting a class on historical evil, Jack is shocked to discover that his unassuming student Eddie is the son of the Coed Killer, a notorious local murderer. Jack feels compelled to mentor the boy, encouraging Eddie to examine his father’s crime and using his own good name to open the doors that Eddie’s lineage can’t. But when Eddie’s investigation leads him to Great Oaks and to Jack’s own father, Jack finds himself questioning Eddie’s motives—and his own. As the deadly consequences of Jack’s actions fall inescapably into place, Thomas H. Cook masterfully reveals the darker truths that lurk in the recesses of small-town lives and in the hearts of even well-intentioned men. .
Price: $11.90
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A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living: A Novel
In this darkly hilarious and moving novel, a bumbling Manhattan blueblood must rebuild his life after his marriage and business fail.Arthur Camden's greatest talents are for packing and unpacking suitcases, making coleslaw, and second-guessing every decision in his life. When his business fails and his wife leaves him—to pursue more aggressive men—Arthur finds that he has none of the talents and finesse that everyone else seems to possess for navigating New York society. Arthur tries to reinvigorate his life with comic and tragic results: He dates women with no interest in him, burns down his Catskills fly-fishing club, runs afoul of the law in France, and disgraces himself before family members. Just when Arthur hits the depths of despair, an eccentric suitor (a woman who happens to resemble the model on Arthur's vitamin bottles) helps him take a leap into a wonderful unknown. Michael Dahlie's novel digs into the consciousness of a self-doubting everyman—a man who, with a little inspiration, just might become something of a brilliant success..
Price: $10.99
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The Back Passage
Agatha Christie, move over! Hard-core sex and scandal meet in this brilliantly funny whodunit A seaside village, an English country house, a family of wealthy eccentrics and their equally peculiar servants, a determined detective — all the ingredients are here for a cozy Agatha Christie-style whodunit. But wait — Edward “Mitch” Mitchell is no Hercule Poirot, and The Back Passage is no Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Mitch is a handsome, insatiable 22-year-old hunk who never lets a clue stand in the way of a steamy encounter, whether it’s with the local constabulary, the house secretary, or his school chum and fellow athlete Boy Morgan, who becomes his Watson when they’re not busy boffing each other. When Reg Walworth is found dead in a cabinet, Sir James Eagle has his servant Weeks immediately arrested as the killer. But Mitch’s observant eye pegs more plausible possibilities: polysexual chauffeur Hibbert, queenly pervert Leonard Eagle, missing scion Rex, sadistic copper Kennington, even Sir James Eagle himself. Blackmail, police corruption, a dizzying network of spyholes and secret passages, watersports, and a nonstop queer orgy backstairs and everyplace else mark this hilariously hard-core mystery by a major new talent. .
Price: $8.04
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House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family
The James family, one of America’s most memorable dynasties, gave the world three famous children: a novelist of genius (Henry), an influential philosopher (William), and an invalid (Alice) who became a feminist icon, despite her sheltered life and struggles with mental illness. Although much has been written on them, many truths about the Jameses have long been camouflaged. The conflicts that defined one of American’s greatest families— homosexuality, depression, alcoholism, female oppression—can only now be thoroughly investigated and discussed with candor and understanding. Paul Fisher’s grand family saga, House of Wits, rediscovers a family traumatized by the restrictive standards of their times but reaching out for new ideas and ways to live. He follows the five James offspring (“hotel children,” Henry called them) and their parents through their privileged travels across the Atlantic; interludes in Newport and Cambridge; the younger boys’ engagement in the Civil War; and William and Henry’s later adventures in London, Paris, and Italy. He captures the splendor of their era and all the members of the clan—beginning with their mercurial father, who nurtured, inspired, and damaged them, setting the stage for lives of colorful passions, intense rivalries, and extraordinary achievements. House of Wits is a revealing cultural history that revises and completes our understanding of its remarkable protagonists and the changing world where they came of age. .
Price: $17.95
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Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
You've seen them: They sip double-tall, nonfat lattes, chat on cell phones, and listen to NPR while driving their immaculate SUVs to Pottery Barn to shop for $48 titanium spatulas. They tread down specialty cheese aisles in top-of-the-line hiking boots and think nothing of laying down $5 for an olive-wheatgrass muffin. They're the bourgeois bohemians--"Bobos"--an unlikely blend of mainstream culture and 1960s-era counterculture that, according to David Brooks, represents both America's present and future: "These Bobos define our age. They are the new establishment. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we all breathe. Their status codes now govern social life." Amusing stereotypes aside, they're an "elite based on brainpower" and merit rather than pedigree or lineage: "Dumb good-looking people with great parents have been displaced by smart, ambitious, educated, and antiestablishment people with scuffed shoes." Bobos in Paradise is a brilliant, breezy, and often hilarious study of the "cultural consequences of the information age." Large and influential (especially in terms of their buying power), the Bobos have reformed society through culture rather than politics, and Brooks clearly outlines this passing of the high-class torch by analyzing nearly all aspects of life: consumption habits, business and lifestyle choices, entertainment, spirituality, politics, and education. Employing a method he calls "comic sociology," Brooks relies on keen observations, wit, and intelligence rather than statistics and hard theory to make his points. And by copping to his own Bobo status, he comes across as revealing rather than spiteful in his dead-on humor. Take his description of a typical grocery store catering to discriminating Bobos: "The visitor to Fresh Fields is confronted with a big sign that says 'Organic Items today: 130.' This is like a barometer of virtue. If you came in on a day when only 60 items were organic, you'd feel cheated. But when the number hits the three figures, you can walk through the aisles with moral confidence." Like any self-respecting Bobo, Brooks wears his erudition lightly and comfortably (not unlike, say, an expedition-weight triple-layer Gore-Tex jacket suitable for a Mount Everest assault but more often seen in the gym). But just because he's funny doesn't mean this is not a serious book. On the contrary, it is one of the more insightful works of social commentary in recent memory. His ideas are sharp, his writing crisp, and he even offers pointed suggestions for putting the considerable Bobo political clout to work. And, unlike the classes that spawned them--the hippies and the yuppies--Brooks insists the Bobos are here to stay: "Today the culture war is over, at least in the realm of the affluent. The centuries-old conflict has been reconciled." All the more reason to pay attention. --Shawn Carkonen.
Price: $1.99
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Brideshead Revisited (MTI) (Everyman's Library (Cloth))
Soon to be a major motion picture from Miramax Films, starring Emma Thompson, Michael Gambon, Ben Whishaw, and Matthew Good, and directed by Julian Jarrold. Opens July 2008.
Evelyn Waugh’s most celebrated novel is a memory drama of extraordinary richness and depth. The novel Waugh thought of as his magnum opus, it is the story of the intense entanglement of a young, middle-class Englishman, Charles Ryder, with a wealthy, eccentric Anglo-Catholic family, the Marchmains: in particular, with Sebastian, the flamboyant young man Charles meets at Oxford in the 1920s; and Sebastian’s sister Julia, who will become the great and unrequited love of Charles’s life.
Written during World War II, the novel mourns the passing of the world of Waugh’s own youth, but it is also a story about religious and secular love, about the notions of sin and judgment, guilt and punishment and how, almost unaccountably, they can give shape to one’s life. By turns romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh’s familiar satiric exploration of English society and mores, revealing an elegiac, lyrical writer of the most lucid and profound feeling. .
Price: $10.75
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