We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by
Named a Best of 2013 pick by: "The New York Times Book Review," "Slate," "Newsday," "Chicago Tribune," "San Jose Mercury News," "The Christian Science Monitor," "Library Journal," and "BookPage" "I thought this was a gripping, big-hearted book . . . through the tender voice of her protagonist, Fowler has a lot to say about family, memory, language, science, and indeed the question of what constitutes a human being."--Khaled Hosseini From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Jane Austen Book Club," the story of an American family, middle class in middle America, ordinary in every way but one. But that exception is the beating heart of this extraordinary novel. Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and our narrator, Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I spent the first eighteen years of my life defined by this one fact: that I was raised with a chimpanzee," she tells us. "It's never going to be the first thing I share with someone. I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren't thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern's expulsion, I'd scarcely known a moment alone. She was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half, and I loved her as a sister." Rosemary was not yet six when Fern was removed. Over the years, she's managed to block a lot of memories. She's smart, vulnerable, innocent, and culpable. With some guile, she guides us through the darkness, penetrating secrets and unearthing memories, leading us deeper into the mystery she has dangled before us from the start. Stripping off the protective masks that have hidden truths too painful to acknowledge, in the end, "Rosemary" truly is for remembrance.
Sister Noon by
By dint of birth, Lizzie Hayes is part of San Francisco's social elite. But Lizzie, so seemingly docile, hides within her a rebellious heart. All she needs is the spark that will liberate her from the ruling conventions. And that spark is Mary Ellen Pleasant. With her appearance on Lizzie's doorstep, she brings with her not only mystery and a whiff of disrepute but also the key that will unlock Lizzie's passionate nature. "You can be anything you want," she tells Lizzie. "You don't have to be the same person your whole life."Lizzie Hayes is the perfect foil for Fowler's sly and insidious skewering of social pretensions, her outward placidity concealing a mind quick to note the disingenuousness of the world she observes. It's as if Jane Austen were writing of the follies of our Gilded Age. Not surprising coming from the novelist hailed by The New York Times Book Review for her "willingness to take detours, her unapologetic delight in the odd historical fact, her shadowy humor and the elegant unruliness of her language."
The Jane Austen Book Club by
In California's central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behaviour and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
What I Didn't See by
2011 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Collection Praise for Karen Joy Fowler: "No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness."--Michael Chabon "Fowler's witty writing is a joy to read."--USA Today In her moving and elegant new collection,New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth's younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can. The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in "Halfway People"; for Edwin Booth in "Edwin's Ghost," haunted by his fame as "America's Hamlet" and his brother's terrible actions; for Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in "The Pelican Bar" as she confronts Mama Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator recounting her descent in "What I Didn't See." With clear and insightful prose, Fowler's stories measure the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners, is sure to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath them. Karen Joy Fowler (karenjoyfowler.com) is the author of five novels, includingWit's End, PEN/Faulkner finalistSister Noon, andNew York Times bestsellerThe Jane Austen Book Club. Her collectionBlack Glass won the World Fantasy Award. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children, live in Santa Cruz, California.
Sarah Canary by
It's the winter of 1873 in the Washington Territory, and a mysterious, hugely ugly woman dressed all in black has suddenly appeared in a forest clearing. Chin Ah Kin is commissioned to return her to the white world.
Wit's End by
The author of The Jane Austen Book Club presents another highly inventive novel--one that ensnares readers in cunning deceptions, challenging them to separate the truth from fiction.
Black Glass by
Fifteen short stories rife with irony, historical overtones, and a feeling for the picaresque include accounts of Carry Nation's fight against topless bars and Tonto's fortieth birthday, which passes without well wishes from the Lone Ranger.
The Sweetheart Season by
"It's 1947 and America has once again made the world safe for democracy. A can-do optimism governs the land - nowhere more so than in America's heartland, the picture-perfect town of Magrit, Minnesota. Headquarters of one of the nation's largest manufacturers of breakfast cereal, Magrit is also home base to the company's mass-circulation magazine, which each week dispenses kitchen wisdom and housewifely advice to millions of women across the country." "It is 1947 and a woman's place is once more in the home. But in rural Magrit, the boys who marched off to war don't seem to want to come back to make a home. For Magrit's young women, the future is decidedly uncertain." "Until the company founder (and town benefactor) decides to form them into a ball team. What could be better for business than a group of lovely young women wearing the company logo and playing the great American pastime? And if, while on the road, the players should happen to meet up with eligible young men, so much the better." "And so the Sweetwheat Sweethearts were born." "This is the story of that team." "But is it?" "Told many years after the events by a team member's grown but rebellious daughter, it is a tale of the buoyant forties as reconstructed by a child of the suspicious sixties, a young woman who finds the world of her mother's youth to good to be true: too generous, too innocent, too wedded to happy endings." "Who are we to credit, then, for the odd spins and curious twists that surface in her story - the mother, or her doubting daughter? Little by little as the tale is told, Magrit's slow and steady ways come a cropper. Ghosts are seen. Mistrust is sown. And hearts break."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved