Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

DEFENDING BRITTA STEIN de Ronald H. Balson

A story of bravery, betrayal, and redemption—from the winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

DEFENDING BRITTA STEIN
by Ronald H. Balson
St. Martin’s Press, September 2021

Chicago, 2018: Ole Henryks, a popular restauranteur, is set to be honored by the Danish/American Association for his many civic and charitable contributions. Frequently appearing on local TV, he is well known for his actions in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II—most consider him a hero. Britta Stein, however, does not. The ninety-year-old Chicago woman levels public accusations against Henryks by spray-painting “Coward,” “Traitor,” “Collaborator,” and “War Criminal” on the walls of his restaurant. Mrs. Stein is ultimately taken into custody and charged with criminal defacement of property. She also becomes the target of a bitter lawsuit filed by Henryks and his son, accusing her of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Attorney Catherine Lockhart, though hesitant at first, agrees to take up Mrs. Stein’s defense. With the help of her investigator husband, Liam Taggart, Lockhart must reach back into wartime Denmark and locate evidence that proves Mrs. Stein’s innocence. DEFENDING BRITTA STEIN is critically-acclaimed author Ronald H. Balson’s thrilling take on a modern day courtroom drama, and a masterful rendition of Denmark’s wartime heroics.

Ronald H. Balson is an attorney, professor, and writer. His novel The Girl From Berlin won the National Jewish Book Award and was the Illinois Reading Council’s adult fiction selection for their Illinois Reads program. He is also the author of Eli’s Promise, Karolina’s Twins, The Trust, Saving Sophie, and the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers. He has appeared on many television and radio programs and has lectured nationally and internationally on his writing. He lives in Chicago.

WINGWALKERS de Taylor Brown

Set in the 1930s, this is a novel about a husband and wife who travel across the United States performing acts of aerial daring and a chance encounter they have with William Faulkner that has unexpected consequences for all.

WINGWALKERS
by Taylor Brown
St. Martin’s Press, April 2022

One part epic adventure, one part love story, and—as is the signature for critically-acclaimed author Taylor Brown—one large part American history, WINGWALKERS follows Della and Zeno Marigold, a vagabond couple who fund their journey to the west coast in the middle of the Great Depression by performing death-defying aerial stunts from town to town. Woven into their story is that of the author (and thwarted fighter pilot) William Faulkner. Based on a tantalizing tidbit from Faulkner’s real life, this novel captures the true essence of a bygone era and sheds a new light on the heart and motivations of one of America’s greatest authors.

Taylor Brown grew up on the Georgia coast. He has lived in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and the mountains of western North Carolina. He is the recipient of the Montana Prize in Fiction and a finalist for the Southern Book Prize. His novels include Fallen Land, The River of Kings, Gods of Howl Mountain, and Pride of Eden, and his short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, Chautuaqua, Southwest Review, and many others. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

PARACHUTE WOMEN de Elizabeth Winder

In the tradition of Girls Like Us, a group biography of the extraordinary women at the center of the Rolling Stones’ world.

PARACHUTE WOMEN:
Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones
by Elizabeth Winder
Hachette US, September 2021

The Rolling Stones have long been considered one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time. At the forefront of the British Invasion and heading up the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the Stones’ innovative music and iconic performances defined a generation, and fifty years later, they’re still performing to sold-out stadiums around the globe. Yet, as the saying goes, behind every great man is a greater woman, and behind these larger-than-life rockstars were four incredible women whose stories have yet to be fully unpacked. . . until now.
In PARACHUTE WOMEN, Elizabeth Winder introduces us to the four women who inspired, styled, wrote for, remixed, and ultimately helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg put the glimmer in the Glimmer Twins and taught a group of straight-laced boys to be bad. They opened the doors to subterranean art and alternative lifestyles, turned them on to Russian literature, occult practices, and LSD. They connected them to cutting edge directors and writers, won them roles in art house films that renewed their appeal. They often acted as unpaid stylists, providing provocative looks from their personal wardrobes. They remixed tracks for chart-topping albums, and sometimes even wrote the actual songs. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves, they consciously (and unconsciously) kept the band current—and confident—with that mythic lasting power they still have today.
Lush in detail and insight, and long overdue, PARACHUTE WOMEN is a group portrait of the four audacious women who transformed the Stones into international stars, but who were themselves marginalized by the male-dominated rock world of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Written in the tradition of Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, it’s a story of lust and rivalries, friendships and betrayals, hope and degradation, and the birth of rock and roll.

Elizabeth Winder is the author of Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy, and Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Antioch Review, American Letters, and other publications. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, and earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University.

AFTERSHOCKS de Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright

From two of America’s leading national security experts, comes the most definitive look at the geopolitical impact of COVID-19, a book that is both a riveting journalistic account of one of the strangest years on record and a comprehensive analysis of the pandemic’s ongoing impact on the foundational institutions and ideas that have shaped the modern world.

AFTERSHOCKS:
Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order
by Colin Kahl & Thomas Wright
St. Martin’s Press, August 2021

The COVID-19 crisis is the greatest shock to the world order since World War II. Millions have been infected and killed. The economic crash caused by the pandemic is the worst since the Great Depression, with the International Monetary Fund estimating that it will cost over $9 trillion of global wealth in the next few years. Many will be left impoverished and hungry. Fragile states will be further hollowed out, creating conditions ripe for conflict and mass displacement. Meanwhile, international institutions and alliances already under strain before the pandemic are teetering, while the United States and China, already at loggerheads before the crisis, are careening toward a new Cold War. China’s secrecy and assertiveness have shattered hopes that it will become a responsible stakeholder in the international order.
None of this came out of the blue. Public health experts and intelligence analysts had warned for a decade that a pandemic of this sort was inevitable; but the crisis broke against a global backdrop of rising nationalism, backsliding democracy, declining public trust in governments, mounting rebellion against the inequalities produced by globalization, resurgent great power competition, and plummeting international cooperation.
And yet, there are some signs of hope. The COVID-19 crisis reminds us of our common humanity and shared fate. The public has, for the most part, responded stoically and with kindness. Some democracies—South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, among others—have responded well. America may emerge from the crisis with a new resolve to deal with non-traditional threats, like pandemic disease, and a new demand for effective collective action with other democratic nations. America may also finally be forced to come to grips with our nation’s inadequacies, and to make big changes at home and abroad that will set the stage for opportunities the rest of this century holds.
But one thing is certain: America and the world will never be the same again.

Colin Kahl was Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor from 2013-2017 and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East from 2009-13. He is currently Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, and professor of political science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He has published numerous articles in The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Politico, The Washington Post, and other popular outlets, and he is a frequent contributor to CNN and MSNBC.
Thomas Wright is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Tom has written several definitive pieces analyzing Donald Trump’s foreign policy, mixing research into the historical record of Trump’s remarks over three decades with reporting from contacts inside and near the administration. He is also author of the book All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power (Yale University Press 2017).

Un film d’animation bientôt adapté du nouveau roman de Jane Smiley

Le producteur Frank Marshall (Jurassic World, série Jason Bourne) travaillera avec le réalisateur Barry Sonnenfeld (séries de films Men in Black et La Famille Addams, Les Désastreuses Aventures des orphelins Baudelaire) pour adapter en film d’animation le prochain roman de Jane Smiley, PERESTROIKA IN PARIS. La date de sortie n’est pas encore connue.

Publié chez Knopf en décembre 2020 aux États-Unis et à paraître en traduction française aux éditions Payot & Rivages fin 2021, le roman est une fable excentrique pour grands lecteurs mettant en scène une pouliche pur-sang nommée Perestroika qui quitte un jour son étable et se retrouve à errer dans Paris, où elle rencontre une chienne de chasse, un corbeau et un couple de colverts qui l’aident à se débrouiller dans la capitale. Elle fait ensuite la connaissance d’un jeune garçon qui vit avec son arrière-grand-mère dans un vieil hôtel particulier. Une drôle d’amitié se lie entre eux, mais le garçon ne pourra pas cacher la pouliche évadée chez lui pour toujours…

Jane Smiley, lauréate du prix Pulitzer 1992 pour son roman L’Exploitation inspiré du Roi Lear de Shakespeare et membre de l’Académie américaine des arts et des lettres depuis 2001, s’est également vu décerner le PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award en 2006.