My dad doesn't know. The neighbors don't know. My school doesn't know. My mom sure doesn't know. But Ican handle it. Because if people can change one way, they can change the other way, right?
Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.
The protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s shrewdly—and at times devastatingly—observed first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself. The agency o…
For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opule…
Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn't understand people, but apes she gets, especially the bonobos Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Makena, who are capable of reason and communication through American Sign Language. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she's ever felt among humans--until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter writing a huma…
Marno took out a cigarette, then stood and went to the window. Lowering his gaze he looked at the jungle of skyscrapers. They appeared to be asleep. The pale moonlight made them look cold and hard. A feeling of emptiness and loneliness surged within him. from the short story “A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan” ------- Born in Ngawi, East Java, in 1932, Umar Kayam obtained his masters…
Written in 1904 by Soseki Natsume, the foremost novelist of the Meiji period, Botchan is the story of a simple, honest, and direct young man from Tokyo who teaches high school in the provinces.
For 15-year-old Michael Berg, a chance meeting with an older woman leads to far more than he ever imagined. The woman in question is Hanna, and before long they embark on a passionate, clandestine love affair which leaves Michael both euphoric and confused. For Hanna is not all she seems. Years later, as a law student observing a trial in Germany, Michael is shocked to realize that the perso…
Combining a unique setting with universal themes, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is a tear-jerking, beautifully rendered novel about sacrifice, guilt, and the ties of family love. PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is the story of So-nyo, a wife and mother, who has lived a life of sacrifice and compromise. In the past she suffered a stroke, leaving her vulnerable and often confused. Now, travelling from the…