A Parallel Life

In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor: Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and George Eliot--née Marian Evans.

This collects six wildly inventive short comics stories that might collectively be dubbed “speculative memoir.” Schrauwen’s deadpan depictions of his and his offspring's upcoming lives include alien abduction, dialogue with future agents, and coded messages in envelopes at breakfast.

“Dan Gerber tenderly reels his readers through the ‘beautiful movie’ he calls the passing of time on earth in a language completely unadorned and Zen-like in its quietude. The thing itself carries the weight of these poems, which recall the deep imagery of Vallejo, Neruda and Wright.”—Rain Taxi Dan Gerber is a master of layered, bittersweet imagery. In his seventh book of poems, he writes of childhood misgivings and fears, the oak savannah landscape of California’s central coast, and a near-mystical relationship with nature. As novelist John Nichols once wrote of Gerber’s poetry, “Dan Gerber has an exquisitely muted, yet profound understanding of tragedy, love, family, and the haunting vagaries of nature.” “Some Distance” I wanted to be a stone in the field, simply that, and then I wanted to be the grass around it, and then the cattle grazing under the too blue sky, and then the blue, which has of itself no substance, and yet goes on and on and on. Dan Gerber is the author of a dozen books of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoir. He has earned the Mark Twain Award, Book of the Year honors from ForeWord Magazine, and inclusion in The Best American Poetry. He lives in Santa Ynez, California.

In a split-second, Patrick was gone; that moment would haunt Alexander forever. "Parallel Lives" is an enthralling novel that tells the story of Alexander Eastgard and his best friend, Patrick Close. Alexander is an athlete and a scholar with an adventurous spirit and an intense fascination with the past. When Alexander's rival, Hector Gonzalez, causes Patrick's death, the tragedy torments Alexander for the rest of his life and sets in motion a chain of events that darkens the lives of those around him- Helen, a woman of great beauty and astonishingly poor judgment; Mark, her devoted son; Julia, the Harvard undergrad whose romance with Mark proves unexpectedly dangerous; and Giulietta, the prescient but lovelorn fortune-teller- across two generations. This is an unforgettable novel filled with compelling characters. It is the story of a passionate, illicit affair, the apprehension and imprisonment of a drug lord, the descent of his son into addiction, a suicide with no body, and a hidden gun that falls into the wrong hands.

"Increasingly dissatisfied with the humdrum routine of corporate life, Jennifer Andrewes does what many of us can only dream about when in 2014 she and her family pack up and spend two seasons living in a French village in the south-west region of France. But it's not just any region as Jennifer discovers - the Aude region is on the 42nd parallel north. Wellington, her home city here in New Zealand, is on the 42nd parallel south, and is the nearest thing the Aude has to an antipodal sister city. Was it a coincidence then that for so many years this long-time Francophile had a sense of living her life in parallel? On the one hand, very much present in the minutiae of her family's everyday lives in New Zealand - and yet always with half a mind thousands of kilometres away in the perfect French village. A family that shares a love of travel and a passion for language and culture, they find they enjoy the experience so much that they repeat it two years later. And then become dedicated to finding their very own long-term pied-à-terre. Parallel Lives tells the story of their time in a small town in the south of France in the foothills of the Pyrenees: how they came to live there, the experiences gained and life lessons learned while living - on two separate occasions - on two sides of the same historic square"--Back cover.

Award-winning playwright, author and critic Bonnie Greer's touching, funny and thought-provoking memoir is a voyage into the making of a woman who set out to unmake what she'd been born and brought up to be: 'a proper girl' - a precious definition in a segregate and racist America where black life was deemed only three-fifths of white life ... and the life of a black woman even less.

An “emotion-filled story of family dynamics and self-discovery . . . brimming with interesting characters” from the bestselling author of The Liverpool Trilogy (Booklist). The members of the eccentric Compton-Milnes household act more like strangers than family. Despite having multiple sclerosis, the elder matriarch, Hermione, controls the household and insists on a Tuesday morning family breakfast. Her son, Gus, a reclusive but brilliant professor, and daughter-in-law Lisa, a foolishly promiscuous cosmetic surgery addict, remain married, but without much of a relationship. Their two grown children, Ben and Harriet, are also under the same roof, yet miles apart from the rest of the family. Ben’s OCD keeps him from facing the world, while his sister Harriet sacrifices her own desires in order to take care of him. Lisa’s series of poorly chosen affairs finally catches up to her when she accidentally becomes friends with her latest lover’s wife. When he turns on her, the family is forced to pull together for the very first time if they are to survive with any degree of sanity.

The acclaimed author of The Lost Art of Desire explores grief and longing in the face of illness in this “delicate, atmospheric” story collection (Kirkus). In the ten spare yet surprising stories in this collection, Robin Beeman delves into the inner lives of ordinary women, revealing their passions and frustrations with the limitations of life. In “Life Signs,” a dying woman spends her final days camping on a beach with her husband. A man facing the death of his dog relives the traumatic loss of his father in “Secrets.” And in the title novella, a married librarian gets romantically involved with an insurance salesman whose wife is struggling with cancer.