The Red Thread

You have a terrific idea. You know it is so powerful that it could change a life, a market, or even the world. There's just one problem: others can't, or don't, see it... yet.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of NYRB Classics, a handpicked anthology of selections from the series. In Greek mythology, Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of red thread to guide him through the labyrinth, and the Red Thread offers a path through and a way to explore the ins and outs and twists and turns of the celebrated NYRB Classics series, now twenty years old. The collection brings together twenty-five pieces drawn from the more than five hundred books that have come out as NYRB Classics over the last twenty years. Stories, essays, interviews, poems, along with chapters from novels and memoirs and other longer narratives have been selected by Edwin Frank, the series editor, to chart a distinctive, entertaining, and thought-provoking course across the expansive and varied terrain of the Classics series.

After the loss of her daughter in a freak accident, Maya Lange opens an adoption agency to place baby girls from China with American families and discovers the painful and courageous journeys of both adoptive parents and birth mothers.

'Charlotte Higgins's Red Thread is a masterwork' Ali Smith A thrillingly original, labyrinthine journey through myth, art, literature, history, archaeology and memoir. The tale of how the hero Theseus killed the Minotaur, finding his way out of the labyrinth using Ariadne's ball of red thread, is one of the most intriguing, suggestive and persistent of all myths, and the labyrinth - the beautiful, confounding and terrifying building created for the half-man, half-bull monster - is one of the foundational symbols of human ingenuity and artistry. Charlotte Higgins, author of the Baillie Gifford-shortlisted Under Another Sky, tracks the origins of the story of the labyrinth in the poems of Homer, Catullus, Virgil and Ovid, and with them builds an ingenious edifice of her own. Along the way, she traces the labyrinthine ideas of writers from Dante and Borges to George Eliot and Conan Doyle, and of artists from Titian and Velázquez to Picasso and Eva Hesse. Her intricately constructed narrative asks what it is to be lost, what it is to find one's way, and what it is to travel the confusing and circuitous path of a lived life. Red Thread is, above all, a winding and unpredictable route through the byways of the author's imagination - one that leads the reader on a strange and intriguing journey, full of unexpected connections and surprising pleasures.

An elegant exploration of the hugely influential simplicity, beauty, and functionality of Nordic design - timeless, yet on trend From literature to food, lifestyle to fashion, cinema to architecture, Nordic influence is evident throughout contemporary culture. The Red Thread: Nordic Design celebrates this deep-rooted aesthetic, showcasing the diversity of design from Scandinavia and Finland via more than 200 objects - from everyday items to exquisitely produced decorative glassware, and from traditional handmade textiles to mass-produced products found in homes across the globe. The title is taken from a metaphor, common in the Nordic countries, of a shared and highlighted characteristic (like a long connecting thread in woven material), that runs through and connects themes, ideas, stories, and, in this case, design.

This collection of poems is largely autobiographical, telling the turning points in a life that began in war-torn Vietnam. Somehow, unlike many, Teresa and her family survived, although her parents were separated for a long time. She, her brother, and her mother escaped Vietnam in a ship crowded with frightened immigrants, and in time they settled in California, bringing with them their nightmares, their memories, their history and culture. Family is a recurring and insistent theme in this book. Teresa devotes her art to her grandmother, her mother, her brother, her son. This is the story of a refugee family who settled in California, bringing with them their nightmares, their memories, their history and culture. “Teresa Mei Chuc’s poems speak from the heart of one woman’s experience, and expand beyond the personal to reveal and record the common experienceof multitudes.... The ‘American experience,’ what is it? Chuc’s RedThread offers us all another piece in this difficult puzzle.” -Lowell Jaeger, Editor, New Poets of the American West

In the wake of a tragedy and fueled by guilt from a secret she's kept for years, a woman discovers how delicate the thread that binds family is in this powerful novel by Lyn Liao Butler. Two days before Tam and Tony Kwan receive their letter of acceptance for the son they are adopting from China, Tony and his estranged cousin Mia are killed unexpectedly in an accident. A shell-shocked Tam learns she is named the guardian to Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. With no other family around, Tam has no choice but to agree to take in the girl she hasn’t seen since the child was an infant. Overwhelmed by her life suddenly being upended, Tam must also decide if she will complete the adoption on her own and bring home the son waiting for her in a Chinese orphanage. But when a long-concealed secret comes to light just as she and Angela start to bond, their fragile family is threatened. As Tam begins to unravel the events of Tony and Mia’s past in China, she discovers the true meaning of love and the threads that bind her to the family she is fated to have.

When a girl is adopted from a Chinese orphanage, everything she knew about family, best friends, and sisterhood must change. Wen has spent the first eleven years of her life at an orphanage in rural China, and the only person she would call family is her best friend, Shu Ling. When Wen is adopted by an American couple, she struggles to adjust to every part of her new life: having access to all the food and clothes she could want, going to school, being someone's daughter. But the hardest part of all is knowing that Shu Ling remains back at the orphanage, alone. Wen knows that her best friend deserves a family and a future, too. But finding a home for Shu Ling isn't easy, and time is running out . . .