Showing results for "leon rooke"

From one of Canada's most compelling and imaginative writers of short fiction comes a new collection of eleven stories and a novella.With stories both magical and unexpected, Leon Rooke astounds with his approach to the art of storytelling.From the novella about the surreal adventures of Prissy Thibidault in the deep south watching alligator wrestling while white racists turn into blacks; to stories that include the strange wanderings of a boy called Dark in search of his m...

According to Russell Banks, North Carolina ex-pat Leon Rooke's work charts "what the short story form can and cannot do, for he works out there in the terra incognita mapping limits." Hitting the Charts, a nineteen story Best-Of compilation, offers stories as free from constraint as a Monk solo, and as disquieting and resonant as a southern Baptist preacher at a big-tent revival. Dancing is not forbidden.

During the night of a storm, an Appalachian girl delivers a baby and disappears. Next morning, Raymond Toker finds the baby under a bush and takes to the mountain roads to find her a home. While Turner carries out his quest, the child's father, Truman, with teeth as rotten as his soul, drives his battered car along the same paths.

The two novellas and three short stories in this new collection by the critically-acclaimed, North Carolina-born author Leon Rooke are united by place and mood. Set largely in the post-WWII American South, peopled by Watermelon Queens and ten-year-old business men, these joyful, touching, brilliantly crafted pieces speak to a time and sensibility long forgotten.

Subversive, edgy, and wildly entertaining, this short story collection is a unique encounter with fiction in Leon Rooke's characteristic style as he peels back the skin of social convention and embraces the chaos of life with characters and themes as unpredictable as an assassin who murders the words in your memory; Egi Balducchi who is either a recording angel or a mad old man with a wheelbarrow; Eli's daughter, Frannie, who may just be a gentle two-bit hooker, or the Virgin herself; and ...

Presented in a stark dystopian setting, this extraordinary novella follows a lesbian couple on their journeys through the nightmarish reality of the disenfranchised. Peppered with Scottish slang and populated with a wide range of misfits, this book empowers the protagonists living on Glasgow's grim streets and offers a strong feminist perspective.

A compelling collection exploring the lives of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Canada. These eight short stories delve into the experiences of displaced persons living in contemporary society, marked by a richness of language and rhythm that is authentically urban.Austin Clarke masterfully explores themes of displacement, identity, and the search for belonging through vivid characters and evocative settings. From the bustling streets of Toronto to the nostalgic landsc...

A groundbreaking history of the Black Joke, the most famous member of the British Royal Navy’s anti-slavery squadron, and the long fight to end the transatlantic slave trade.The most feared ship in Britain’s West Africa Squadron, His Majesty’s brig Black Joke was one of a handful of ships tasked with patrolling the western coast of Africa in an effort to end hundreds of years of global slave trading. Sailing after the spectacular fall of Napoleon ...

A classic in the Bukowski poetry canon, Love Is a Dog from Hell is a raw, lyrical, exploration of the exigencies, heartbreaks, and limits of love.A book that captures the Dirty Old Man of American letters at his fiercest and most vulnerable, on a subject that hits home with all of us. Charles Bukowski was a man of intense emotions, someone an editor once called a “passionate madman.” Alternating between tough and gentle, sensitive and gritty, Bukowski lays bare the myriad facets of...

The acclaimed first novel from one of America's most celebrated novelists, the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • Set is a remote community in rural Tennessee in the years between the two world wars, it is the story of a young boy and a bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father.The boy, John Wesley Rattner, and the outlaw, Marion Sylder–together with Rattner's Uncle ...

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I’m telling lies.I say,It’s in the reach of my arms,The span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl o...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE'A literary masterpiece for all ages . . . a tale of growing up, of love and laughter, of tragedy and loss and grief - a tale that is so compelling that it turns the page for you: The Yearling leaves you tearful, breathless, exhilarated' MICHAEL MORPURGO'An unsentimental, stone-cold classic that should be spoken of in the same breath - and read as religiously - as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbi...