The Silent Woman

In an astonishing feat of literary detection, one of the most provocative critics of our time and the author of In the Freud Archives and The Purloined Clinic offers an elegantly reasoned meditation on the art of biography. In The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath to create a book not about Plath’s life but about her afterlife: how her estranged husband, the poet Ted Hughes, as executor of her estate, tried to serve two masters—Plath’s art and his own need for privacy; and how it fell to his sister, Olwyn Hughes, as literary agent for the estate, to protect him by limiting access to Plath’s work. Even as Malcolm brings her skepticism to bear on the claims of biography to present the truth about a life, a portrait of Sylvia Plath emerges that gives us a sense of “knowing” this tragic poet in a way we have never known her before. And she dispels forever the innocence with which most of us have approached the reading of any biography.

WATCH WILL TRENT ON ABC! “If you’re into mystery thrillers, then you’re into Karin Slaughter.” —THESKIMM He watches. He waits. He takes. Who will be next . . . THE SILENT WIFE Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect. The man insists that he was framed by a corrupt law enforcement team led by Jeffrey Tolliver and that the real culprit is still out there—a serial killer who has systematically been preying on women across the state for years. If Will reopens the investigation and implicates the dead police officer with a hero’s reputation of wrongdoing, the opportunistic convict is willing to provide the information GBI needs about the riot murder. Only days ago, another young woman was viciously murdered in a state park in northern Georgia. Is it a fluke, or could there be a serial killer on the loose? As Will Trent digs into both crimes it becomes clear that he must solve the cold case in order to find the answer. Yet nearly a decade has passed—time for memories to fade, witnesses to vanish, evidence to disappear, and lies to become truth. But Will can’t crack either mystery without the help of the one person he doesn’t want involved: his girlfriend and Jeffrey Tolliver’s widow, medical examiner Sara Linton. When the past and present begin to collide, Will realizes that everything he values is at stake . . .

Though Plath has become a modern legendary figure, this is the first fully informed account of her life as a poet. With new material of all sorts, Stevenson recounts the struggle between fantasy and reality that blessed the artist but placed a curse on the woman. Photos.

Jodi and Todd are at a bad place in their marriage. Both are at the mercy of their unrelenting wants and needs, and both are unaware that the path they are on is careening toward murder. Much is at stake, including the affluent life they lead in their beautiful waterfront condo in Chicago, as she, the killer, and he, the victim, rush haplessly toward the main event, oblivious of the destiny they are jointly creating, caught in the thrall of disaster unfolding. Chapter by chapter, the narrative evolves from their alternating perspectives. He is a committed cheater. She lives and breathes denial. He exists in dual worlds. She likes to settle scores. He decides to play for keeps. She has nothing left to lose. The alternating voices pitch the reader back and forth between protagonists in conflict who are fighting for self-preservation, both of them making deeply consequential mistakes, behaving in ever more foolhardy ways, losing at the games they’re playing. The Silent Wife is a finely wrought, emotionally charged psychological thriller about a marriage in the throes of dissolution, a couple headed for catastrophe, concessions that can’t be made, and promises that won’t be kept. Expertly plotted and reminiscent of Gone Girl and These Things Hidden, The Silent Wife ensnares the reader from page one and doesn’t let go.

To illuminate the mysterious greatness of Anton Chekhov’s writings, Janet Malcolm takes on three roles: literary critic, biographer, and journalist. Her close readings of the stories and plays are interwoven with episodes from Chekhov’s life and framed by an account of Malcolm’s journey to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Yalta. She writes of Chekhov’s childhood, his relationships, his travels, his early success, and his self-imposed “exile”—always with an eye to connecting them to themes and characters in his work. Lovers of Chekhov as well as those new to his work will be transfixed by Reading Chekhov.

Beginning in the 1980s and gathering force in the last decade of the twentieth century, Moroccan women writers have become the latest group of Middle Eastern women to break their silence by writing both fiction and non-fiction. The Myth of the Silent Woman examines representative French-language texts from Moroccan women writers. Suellen Diaconoff situates these works in a discourse of social justice and reform, arguing that they contribute to the emerging national debate on democracy and help to create new public spaces of discourse and participation. In novels and short stories, essays and memoirs, including one powerful text by a dissident and former political prisoner, these authors contest hegemonic systems of thought and practice, reappraise traditional spaces and limits, shatter taboos and transgress borders. In so doing, they profoundly undermine easy assumptions about Arab women, feminism, and democracy, while boldly challenging the stereotype of the silent woman.

The latest novel from internationally bestselling authors, Hjorth & Rosenfeldt, creators of hit television shows, Wallander, The Bridge and ITV's Marcella. An idyllic white, two-storey, beautiful house in Sweden. Inside, a family has been brutally murdered – mother, father and two young children all shot in broad daylight. And the killer has got away. Sebastian Bergman has been brought in to solve the crime, but with no credible suspects, he is at a dead end. Until he discovers that there was a witness to the crime. A young girl who saw it all happen, and she has fled, in fear for her life. Bergman has to track the young girl down before it’s too late. But the killer is chasing her too – and he is determined to finish what he started.