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Literary Presses

Lost Daughter

Lost Daughter

Ferrante, Elena; Goldstein, An
$16.00

NOW A MOTION PICTURE NOMINATED FOR THREE OSCARS--Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay--Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman, Jesse Buckley, Paul Mescal, and Dakota Johnson

Another penetrating Neapolitan story from New York Times best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lying Life of Adults

Leda, a middle-aged divorcée, is alone for the first time in years after her two adult daughters leave home to live with their father in Toronto. Enjoying an unexpected sense of liberty, she heads to the Ionian coast for a vacation. But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina's family in this "arresting" novel by the author of the New York Times-bestselling Neapolitan Novels, which have sold millions of copies and been adapted into an HBO series (Publishers Weekly).

"Although much of the drama takes place in [Leda's] head, Ferrante's gift for psychological horror renders it immediate and visceral."--The New Yorker

"Ferrante's prose is stunningly candid, direct and unforgettable. From simple elements, she builds a powerful tale of hope and regret."--Publishers Weekly

Roxanne says: The Lost Daughter is perfect for all mothers, but especially those with more than one daughter as offspring.  While most boys are transparent, female relationships can be fraught with murky emotions and long held grudges.  Much like my description, Ferrante captures an independent woman who faces extreme psychological difficulties during her child rearing years. 


World is a Wedding

World is a Wedding

Jones, Wendy
$16.00

The sequel to The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals: "It was a pleasant delight to be invited back into this world" (The Bookbag).

Set in 1926, two years after the end of The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals, Wendy Jones's The World Is a Wedding finds Wilfred Price married to Flora Myffanwy and trying to be the perfect husband. His efforts only intensify when he learns that Flora is expecting. But something doesn't feel right to Flora: she doesn't feel at home.
Meanwhile, Grace (to whom Wilfred was very briefly married before he met Flora) has fled Narberth for London, trying to escape what has happened to her and the secret she carries because of it. But secrets are not so easily escaped--and Grace's will affect Wilfred and Flora, too.
A sophisticated comedy of manners, The World Is a Wedding captures life in a small town in Wales and explores the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and masculinity and femininity with equal wit and insight.

"Sometimes it's just really nice to find a book that is well-written, straightforward and tells a relatively simple story . . . There are touches of Dylan Thomas in the villagers' characters, with their whispered gossip and nightly drunkenness, but they're not a bad lot. Naturally, there's some tragedy and some joy, and good things that come out of bad situations. Thoroughly enjoyable."--The Irish Times

"The book is humorous throughout, often hilariously funny."--Star Tribune

Nora says: A warm, humorous, beautifully written comedy of manners set in a Welsh town in the 1920s. Jones describes village life and in particular the new marriage of the village undertaker and his wife in generous, sweet terms. Lovely and highly readable!


Winter's Night

Winter's Night

Manfredi, Valerio Massimo
$18.00
Set during the first half of the twentieth century, this is the story of the Brunis, a family of farmers from the Italian Padan Plain who have worked the land since time immemorial. And it is a story about the homeless multitudes, travelers, and tinkers, roaming Europe during the hardscrabble nineteen-twenties and thirties. In this expansive novel, reminiscent of Bertolucci's masterpiece 1900 in its scope and subject matter, these two worlds meet when the Brunis open their great barn and offer it as a refuge for those in need of a warm, dry, and safe place to sleep and eat.

The barn becomes font and inspiration for a series of vivid stories involving sundry strangers, the Bruni parents themselves, and their nine children--seven boys and two girls--who will grow into young men and women during World War I and its aftermath. Told in the tradition of country folktales and framed by the devastating years of strife--two world wars and the years of fascism--these stories will delight readers from the first page to the last. Manfredi's A Winter's Night provides a timely reminder that simple values and a sense of solidarity with our fellow human beings remain of vital importance, above all in a world undergoing momentous and rapid change.

Natural Way of Things

Natural Way of Things

Wood, Charlotte
$17.00
"A Handmaid's Tale for the 21st century" (Prism Magazine), Wood's dystopian tale about a group of young women held prisoner in the Australian desert is a prescient feminist fable for our times. As the Guardian writes, "contemporary feminism may have found its masterpiece of horror."

Drugged, dressed in old-fashioned rags, and fiending for a cigarette, Yolanda wakes up in a barren room. Verla, a young woman who seems vaguely familiar, sits nearby. Down a hallway echoing loudly with the voices of mysterious men, in a stark compound deep in the Australian outback, other captive women are just coming to. Starved, sedated, the girls can't be sure of anything--except the painful episodes in their pasts that link them.

Drawing strength from the animal instincts they're forced to rely on, the women go from hunted to hunters, along the way becoming unforgettable and boldly original literary heroines that readers will both relate to and root for.

The Natural Way of Things is a lucid and illusory fable and a brilliantly plotted novel of ideas that reminds us of mankind's own vast contradictions--the capacity for savagery, selfishness, resilience, and redemption all contained by a single, vulnerable body.

Winner
2016 Stella Prize
2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award in Fiction

An Australian Indie Best Fiction Book & Overall Book of the Year Winner

Finalist
2017 International Dublin Literary Award
2016 Voss Literary Prize
2016 Victorian Premier's Award
2016 The Miles Franklin Award

Nora says: Wood won the 2016 Stella Prize for this wholly original, terrifying and truly unforgettable novel. The Handmaid's Tale meets Mad Max, this brilliant novel will make you think and ask hard questions about women and their role in society.