The Blue Suit

Richard Rayner had a peripatetic childhood, and it seemed he found some sense of place when he attended Cambridge University. The study of philosophy combined with an obsession with books, however, served as the catalyst for a bizarre life of crime. Mounting debts propelled the author into a series of adventures, as he plundered bookstores for elusive first editions, forged checks, and acted as an accomplice in a Keystone Kops-like attempted bank robbery. In a memoir that's "compelling, edgy, painfully alive" (Times Literary Supplement), like "stripped-down Dostoevsky" (Time), this is the personal story, both tragic and comic, of an absence of identity and a long checkered past of crimes and misdemeanors.

The Man in the Blue Suit owns an art gallery in the city centre of Glasgow. For some unknown reason he gets involved in a spy network. He has been asked to go to the south of France and there meet a contact named Olga. He knows that he is being watched, and that his mission may be a dangerous one. To protect himself he takes along a woman from his native city of Glasgow, the Two Tattooed Woman, surely no one will be brave enough to interfere with him when she is by his side.

A ghost story with a difference from the WORLD FANTASY and multiple BRITISH FANTASY AWARD-winning author of SOME KIND OF FAIRY TALE It is the summer of 1976, the hottest since records began and a young man leaves behind his student days and learns how to grow up. A first job in a holiday camp beckons. But with political and racial tensions simmering under the cloudless summer skies there is not much fun to be had. And soon there is a terrible price to be paid for his new found freedom and independence. A price that will come back to haunt him, even in the bright sunlight of summer. As with SOME KIND OF FAIRY TALE, Graham Joyce has crafted a deceptively simple tale of great power. With beautiful prose, wonderful characters and a perfect evocation of time and place this is a novel that transcends the boundaries between the everyday and the supernatural while celebrating the power of both.

The book opens with the annual spring dispatch, by the Seattle-based Filipino union, of thousands of Filipino workers to the Alaska salmon canneries. We meet characters who reappear throughout the stories: Vince, the tough but charming union foreman and "big shot" father to Buddy, our American-born narrator; Chris, the battle-scarred union president targeted by McCarthyism; Rico, the spirited young king of the neighborhood who will fall victim to Vietnam; Stephanie, the beautiful mestiza who marrie up; and many others who age and change in ironic counterpint to persistent themes of loyalty, fierce ethnic pride, and a willingness to struggle against hostile forces in society. There are wry twists of humor and surprising turns of plot; a long-lost love is renewed; a long-hidden family secret is revealed. We encounter the inevitable aging and passing of the Manong generation, but we sense as well the arrival of its vision. Babies are born. The migrant fisheries worker gets a nine-to-five job, and his children go to college. The conclusion builds to a quiet power that is essentially elegiac; an era closes, but the voices of the older generation are shouldered by the younger, to keep the history to retell the stories, and to pay homage.

"A dark, crooked beauty that fulfills all the promise of White Oleander and confirms that Janet Fitch is an artist of the very highest order." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Josie Tyrell, art model, runaway, and denizen of LA's rock scene finds a chance at real love with Michael Faraday, a Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist. But when she receives a call from the coroner, asking her to identify her lover's body, her bright dreams all turn to black. As Josie struggles to understand Michael's death and to hold onto the world they shared, she is both attracted to and repelled by his pianist mother, Meredith, who blames Josie for her son's torment. Soon the two women are drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need. With the luxurious prose and fever pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch weaves a spellbinding tale of love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence. "Lushly written, dramatically plotted. . . Fitch's Los Angeles is so real it breathes." --Atlantic Monthly "There is nothing less than a stellar sentence in this novel. Fitch's emotional honesty recalls the work of Joyce Carol Oates, her strychnine sentences the prose of Paula Fox." --Cleveland Plain Dealer "A page-turning psychodrama. . . . Fitch's prose penetrates the inner lives of [her characters] with immediacy and bite." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Fitch wonderfully captures the abrasive appeal of punk music, the bohemian, sometimes squalid lifestyle, the performers, the drugs, the alienation. This is crackling fresh stuff you don't read every day." --USA Today "In dysfunctional family narratives, Fitch is to fiction what Eugene O'Neill is to drama." --Chicago Sun-Times "Riveting. . . . An uncommonly accomplished page-turner." --Elle

A stunning new collection from a “beguiling and magisterial” poet (The New York Times Book Review) This is the End of Days. This is what we’ve been waiting for always. I walked over to the Hudson River, heading for Mars. Each poem of mine is a suicide belt. I say that to my girlfriend Life. Peaches Goes It Alone, Frederick Seidel’s newest collection of poems, begins with global warming and ends with Aphrodite. In between is everything. Peaches Goes It Alone presents the sexual and political themes that have long preoccupied Seidel—and thrilled and offended his readers. Lyrical, grotesque, and elegiac, Peaches Goes It Alone adds new music and menace to Seidel’s masterful body of work.

"Inspired by the true story behind Jackie Kennedy's iconic outfit, Kelby has stitched a compelling tale of politics, fashion and history." -- People On November 22, 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy accompanied her husband to Dallas dressed in a pink Chanel-style suit. Much of her wardrobe, including the pink suit, came from the New York boutique Chez Ninon where a young Irish immigrant named Kate worked behind the scenes to meticulously craft the memorable outfits. Kate is torn between the glamorous world of Chez Ninon and her traditional Manhattan neighborhood. Finding balance is not easy in a time when women are still expected to follow the rules. And when you're in love, it's impossible. Kelby's luxurious narrative gives fascinating insight into the real story behind the iconic pink suit, introducing the reader to the wildly unforgettable characters that made Jackie Kennedy into the fashion icon of the century.