Truth Stranger Than Fiction

As America's finest writer, Mark Twain could make entertaining reading -- and great literature -- out of almost anything. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into ill-advised schemes. So, in 1895 at age 60, he undertook a two-year round-the-world lecture tour, in which he circumnavigated the globe via steamship, including stops at the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Fiji Islands, New Zealand, India, South Africa and elsewhere. He describes a rich range of experiences -- visiting a leper colony in Hawaii, shark fishing in Australia, tiger hunting, diamond mining in South Africa, and riding the rails in India. The personalities of the ship's crew and passengers, the poetry of Australian place-names and the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand, among other topics, are the focus of his wry humor and redoubtable powers of observation. An evocative and highly unique American portrait of nineteenth-century travel and custom, this book has a serious thread running through it, recording Twain's observations of the mistreatments and miseries of mankind.

Using the lens of business history to contextualize the development of an American literary tradition, Truth Stranger than Fiction shows how African American literature and culture greatly influenced the development of realism, which remains one of the most significant genres of writing in the United States. More specifically, Truth Stranger than Fiction traces the influences of generic conventions popularized in slave narratives - such as the use of authenticating details, as well as dialect, and a frank treatment of the human body - in later realist writings. As it unfolds, Truth Stranger than Fiction poses and explores a set of questions about the shifting relationship between literature and culture in the United States from 1830-1930 by focusing on the evolving trend of literary realism. Beginning with the question, 'How might slave narratives - heralded as the first indigenous literature by Theodore Parker - have influenced the development of American Literature?' the book develops connections between an emerging literary marketplace, the rise of the professional writer, and literary realism.

Dealing with the pressure of dropping new music is starting to weigh down heavily on Tone. Especially when he is completely overwhelmed with the task of being a husband and now a new father. He never in his life would have thought that he would be under such circumstances. But he must deal with the unfortunate cards that he was dealt. A hand full of betrayal and disloyalty. Becoming a rapper's wife was never in the cards for Chasity, but you can't help what your heart desires. Learning to re-love and trust her husband again will be the hardest pill to swallow once she learns of his infidelities - a pain so great that someone's blood must spill for it. Maleeka will down right risk it all to beat Chasity and to gain Tone's love back. Having his child just isn't enough for her. She craves more. This time around she plans on turning Chasity's world completely upside down. Tone, Rowdy, Stacks, The Twins, Ashley, Chasity, and Maleeka are back - and someone will die. This is the final chapter...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

National Bestseller "The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." ?Maggie Nelson (from the Introduction) A Most Anticipated Book of Summer at BuzzFeed, NYLON, and more. Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid. True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior.The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

In this collection of photographs, Jim Stone captures both the humorous and the tragic factets of the human condition. Interspersed with the images are believe-it-or-not news stories that describe ordinary and extraordinary events that remind us that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

"This is a Borzoi book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.

J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh offer an introduction, evaluation and response to postmodern culture that comes straight from the heart of the gospel.