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A SELECTION OF THE LOST BOOKS CLUB An exhilarating, fiercely honest, ultimately devastating book, The Furies confronts the claims of family and the lure of desire, the difficulties of independence, and the approach of death. Janet Hobhouse's final testament is beautifully written, deeply felt, and above all utterly alive.
"For centuries, they have lived among us. When they were discovered, they were called witches, vampires, or devils and sentenced to a quick death. They are human just like us, except for a rare genetic quirk that has granted them immortality. Now, a chance encounter with a beautiful woman has led John Rogers into the middle of a secret war between the immortals. She needs his help in the battle between a rebellious group and their elders. The grand prize in this war is eternal life. The Furies weaves cutting-edge science into a far-ranging thriller, showing how a simple genetic twist could have inspired tales of witchcraft and sorcery, and how the paranormal could be possible"--
Moving from London to Edinburgh after tragically losing her fiancée, former actress Alex Morris accepts a drama-therapy teaching job for troubled teens and bonds with them over the Greek tragedies in ways that help her heal but inspire the teens in disturbing ways.
By training his eye on the ways that people outside the halls of power reacted to the rapid onset and escalation of the fighting in 1914, Neiberg dispels the notion that Europeans were rabid nationalists intent on mass slaughter. He reveals instead a complex set of allegiances that cut across national boundaries.
In a tale of sexual obsession gone wrong, Gwen Lewis finds herself unable to be a mother without driving away Gideon, the father of her child, while he--determined to save their daughter from Gwen's moneyed values--is driven to spectacular self-destruction.
A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE “Lauren Groff is a writer of rare gifts, and Fates and Furies is an unabashedly ambitious novel that delivers – with comedy, tragedy, well-deployed erudition and unmistakable glimmers of brilliance throughout.” —The New York Times Book Review (cover review) From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Florida and Matrix, an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception. Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation. Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
In this extraordinary fantasy epic, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Dresden Files leads readers into a world where the fate of the realm rests on the shoulders of a boy with no power to call his own... For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies—elementals of earth, air, fire, water, wood, and metal. But in the remote Calderon Valley, the boy Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. At fifteen, he has no wind fury to help him fly, no fire fury to light his lamps. Yet as the Alerans’ most savage enemy—the Marat horde—return to the Valley, Tavi’s courage and resourcefulness will be a power greater than any fury, one that could turn the tides of war...
The great romance and fear of bloody revolution--strange blend of idealism and terror--have been superseded by blind faith in the bloodless expansion of human rights and global capitalism. Flying in the face of history, violence is dismissed as rare, immoral, and counterproductive. Arguing against this pervasive wishful thinking, the distinguished historian Arno J. Mayer revisits the two most tumultuous and influential revolutions of modern times: the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although these two upheavals arose in different environments, they followed similar courses. The thought and language of Enlightenment France were the glories of western civilization; those of tsarist Russia's intelligentsia were on its margins. Both revolutions began as revolts vowed to fight unreason, injustice, and inequality; both swept away old regimes and defied established religions in societies that were 85% peasant and illiterate; both entailed the terrifying return of repressed vengeance. Contrary to prevalent belief, Mayer argues, ideologies and personalities did not control events. Rather, the tide of violence overwhelmed the political actors who assumed power and were rudderless. Even the best plans could not stem the chaos that at once benefited and swallowed them. Mayer argues that we have ignored an essential part of all revolutions: the resistances to revolution, both domestic and foreign, which help fuel the spiral of terror. In his sweeping yet close comparison of the world's two transnational revolutions, Mayer follows their unfolding--from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Bolshevik Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited Masses; the escalation of the initial violence into the reign of terror of 1793-95 and of 1918-21; the dismemberment of the hegemonic churches and religion of both societies; the "externalization" of the terror through the Napoleonic wars; and its "internalization" in Soviet Russia in the form of Stalin's "Terror in One Country." Making critical use of theory, old and new, Mayer breaks through unexamined assumptions and prevailing debates about the attributes of these particular revolutions to raise broader and more disturbing questions about the nature of revolutionary violence attending new foundations.
A forefront Italian Renaissance historian and author of Fire in the City evaluates darker aspects of the Renaissance including the military forces that ravaged Europe and shaped the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity, exploring how massive, mobile armies consumed resources, spread disease and innovated violent new weapons.
'beautiful and lyrical' The Conversation Cynthia was just about to turn sixteen when the unthinkable happened. Her mother was taken away by the police, and her father left without a word three months later. After that night, Cynthia began to walk in slow circles outside the family home looking for traces of her sister Mallory - she's sure that she must be somewhere else now, wherever that is. Cynthia knows that she doesn't belong here. Her mother never belonged here either. This is the place of violence. Despair. The long dry. Blood caked under the nails. Desperate men. Long silences. The place where mothers go mad in locked bedrooms, where women like Cynthia imagine better futures. As a threatening wind begins to dry-whirl around her, seldom seen black clouds form above, roll over the golden-brown land - is that Mallory she can hear in the growling mass? In the harsh drought-stricken landscape of outback Queensland a woman can be lost in so many ways. The question is, will Cynthia be one of them? Defiant, ferocious and unyielding - The Furies is a debut novel by Mandy Beaumont that explores the isolation felt by so many women, and how powerful we can be when we join together. It puts her firmly on the literary map, blazing forth from the terrain of Charlotte Wood, Margaret Atwood and Carmen Maria Machado, with a unique and breathtaking power. 'Expect this debut novel to collect a swag of awards' Courier Mail 'a rallying cry . . . vivid, visceral, ferocious' Carmel Bird, The Age 'stays with you . . . Beaumont's prose shines' The Saturday Paper 'The Furies is unapologetically feminist in its preoccupations' The Conversation 'Mandy Beaumont . . . firmly places herself in the same league as Australian contemporaries such as Charlotte Wood, Sophie Laguna and Hannah Kent. As beautiful as it is gut-wrenching, this is a debut that pulls no punches' Newcastle Herald
