Blue by
“I was taken from the beginning by the subtle, propulsive mix of lyrical and analytical prose in this compact but deep novel about identity and loss, memory and the moment, dream and the everyday life. Blue deals with the mystery of normal experience without clouding the events with so much misty plotting that the reader loses his way. At the same time, it moves along with ease without giving up its claims to seriousness. Best of all, it is a novel that rewards you immediately by its engaging story that rewards you after you read it by its pensive (and memorable) approach to the lives we live.” - Alan Cheuse On a rainy night in Intervale, Maine, and unknown woman appears on a bridge. “Blue,” as she comes to be known, has complete retrograde amnesia. Trying to recover fragments of her memory, she becomes the focus of the obsessions of local resident Rita LaPlatte, who attempts to prove that Blue is her “missing” twin. The amnesiac comes under care or Robert Reichman, a psychiatrist who is grappling with his own lost identity as a Jew. Also under the care of Dr. Reichman in Annie Blaise, a psychotic woman who holds the key to the question of both her own identity and Blue’s, and answer not revealed until the book’s last pages. The Author: Sarah Van Arsdale, who holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College, teaches with the New York Writers Workshop at the Jewish Community Center in New York City and is senior staff writer at Designer Monthly Magazine. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia, was published in 1996 by Riverhead/Putnam. She lives in New York City and Vermont.
Blind Spot by
Good news doesn't come at 4 A.M. The call that comes in the predawn stillness of a warm Los Angeles night shocks Ariel Gold awake. A friend has been blinded. The assualt on Laya is brutal, the result tragic, the method insidious. The LAPD thinks it's a case of product tampering, with the unlucky Laya a random victim. Ariel's not so sure. As a correspondent for the TV newsmagazine Open File, she is in a unique position to satisfy her doubts. As a friend, she won't quit until she has. But the claims of friendship, Ariel soon finds out, can prove complicated -- and dangerous....
Code to Zero by
In this classic Cold War thriller, #1 "New York Times" bestselling author Ken Follett puts his own electrifying twist on the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Cry Uncle by
In the darkness of a May night in the middle of rural Ohio, Ray Stanton is thrown, naked and injured, from a pickup truck. For hours, he struggles to get back to town, unable to make sense of what has just happened until, half-conscious and in pain, he collapses at the door of his neighbor, Mae Reeves. So begins Cry Uncle, a novel of small-town politics, racism, and love, the soul-searching story of a man who learns what really matters in life. A "re-engineer," Ray has recently moved to Brighton and just begun his new job firing workers at the local textile mill as he undertakes to modernize the plant. For Ray, the job seems ethical if not noble. If he does well, the Windy Oaks shirt factory might have a chance to survive NAFTA and outsourcing, and so might the mill town of Brighton. But many think otherwise. Part mystery, part love story, the tale hinges on both revenge and redemption. Cry Uncle introduces us to Ray, a white man newly separated and unfettered, and the Reeves women, Mae and Kayla, mother and daughter, one black and the other biracial. These three characters, dogged by a cop who is always one step ahead of everyone, confront the leader of the "punks" who tortured Ray. As Ray's behavior becomes-even to himself-new and unpredictable, this suspenseful and meditative novel asks telling questions: Who do we choose to be when no one is looking? Do we fight? Or do we cry uncle? A prize-winning poet, Alan Michael Parker, Davidson, North Carolina, is associate professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Davidson College. He is the author of Love Song with Motor Vehicles, The Vandals, and Days Like Prose.
Pharos by
Set in the early nineteenth century, Pharos is a dazzling ghost story from an award-winning author. A young woman is washed up on the shores of Jacob's Rock, a remote lighthouse island off the coast of Scotland. She does not know who she is or how she got there. She has no memory. The keeper of the lighthouse and his assistant take her in and feed and clothe her. But this mysterious woman is not all that she seems, and neither is the remote and wind-swept island. Eerily reminiscent of Turn of the Screw and The Others, Pharos is a breathless tale of the supernatural.
The Rape of Sita by
Banned within hours of publication in her native Mauritius for enraging fundamentalists, Lindsey Collen's pathbreaking "The Rape of Sita" went on to win the prestigious Commonwealth Prize for Best Novel in Africa. A powerful and stylistically innovative work, Collen's novel exemplifies the brilliant creative possibilities of postcolonial literature. Deftly blending oral and literary traditions, this masterpiece reveals the history, repression and resistance of an entire people through the story of one woman, and introduces to American readers a major literary voice.
Remainder by
A man is severely injured in a mysterious accident, receives an outrageous sum in legal compensation, and has no idea what to do with it. Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can’t quite place. How he goes about bringing his visions to life–and what happens afterward–makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory. Remainder is about the secret world each of us harbors within, and what might happen if we were granted the power to make it real.
Theater of the Stars by
From the critically acclaimed author of "In the Company of Angels" comes a novel of physics, memory, and the mystery of a mother's forgotten past.
