Archives par étiquette : Grove Atlantic

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS de Lauren Francis-Sharma

From the acclaimed author of Book of the Little Axe, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is the harrowing story of a young Black girl’s genius and resilience in the face of a world that would render her invisible.

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS
by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Atlantic Monthly Press, May 2023

Lauren Francis-Sharma’s debut novel ‘Til the Well Runs Dry was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and her second novel, Book of the Little Axe was praised as a “masterly epic” (Publishers Weekly) that spanned generations and continents. Now, she returns with HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS, a moving, richly imagined story of one family’s Great Migration and the foundations of Black Baltimore.
In 1904, the day the Great Baltimore Fire decimated the burgeoning city, William and Phyllis Battle welcome the arrival of their first child outside a whites-only hospital. The couple are recent arrivals in Baltimore, struggling to build for themselves the life they dreamed about down South. Phyllis, born with six fingers on each hand, has always been regarded with some suspicion by her community, but whether this suspicion is warranted or she’s simply misunderstood remains to be seen. Meanwhile, her daughter Margaret is coming of age, and demonstrates a keen intellect and photographic memory from a young age, but has never spoken a word. After William is injured in an industrial accident, Phyllis makes ends meet by teaching Margaret to use her extraordinary memory to count cards. However, the girl catches the eye of some unscrupulous characters who populate the gaming halls and dark alleyways of the city. And one day Margaret does not come home.
Set in the spring and Red Summer of 1919, a year whose racial terror incidents are now infamous, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is an evocative, suspenseful, and tenderly wrought story of an unforgettable family’s bitter fight to carve out a life on their own terms.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel ‘Til The Well Runs Dry, which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. She resides near Washington, DC with her husband and two children. She is the Assistant Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

PARADISE OF THORNS de Aidan Hartley

The irresistible account of building a life on the frontier of climate change in Africa’s last wilderness, by the bestselling author of The Zanzibar Chest.

PARADISE OF THORNS: Adventures in an African Wilderness
by Aidan Hartley
Atlantic Monthly Press, Spring 2022

Aidan Hartley is the bestselling author of The Zanzibar Chest, which was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson and Duff Cooper Prizes and appeared on best of the year lists from the Economist and Publishers Weekly. In his new book, Hartley chronicles an adventure in one of Africa’s last patches of wilderness. Concerned by the increasing violence of city life, Hartley moves north with his young family. His aim is to acquire a herd of cattle and live alongside the Samburu, a tribe of nomads who for centuries have lived in harmony with immense herds of wildlife in an unspoiled natural paradise north of Mount Kenya. The family buys a tract of remote desert where they carve out a life from scratch, establishing a ranch in a rugged terrain still teeming with elephants, lions, and other wildlife. Over the next seventeen years in this harsh Eden, the family builds a home and learns to live off the land. There are scorpions and snakes under every stone, charging buffalos, and leopards stealing through camp—but there are no fences in the endless landscape and in the night sky far from towns, the stars twinkle brighter than anywhere. As they build their farm alongside their Samburu neighbors, Hartley finds that the nomads’ way of life has been thrown off balance by environmental collapse and corrupt politics. Worsening droughts instill tribal tensions as these once-proud people compete over dwindling resources. And when a demagogue gains power in Hartley’s district, he uses the unpredictable rains to incite division and bloodshed—leading armed militias into wildlife conservation areas and farming hamlets where villagers are murdered, elephants are poached, and the pastures are worn down to dust. In the end, the demagogue is beaten at the polls by an enlightened Samburu woman famous for breastfeeding her baby in parliament, the scented African rains finally arrive to wash away the bad memories, and harmony returns. The nomads find redemption in a great coming of age ceremony for their young generation. A mother cheetah births a litter of cubs on the plains above the Hartleys’ home and the family resolves to preserve nature in what’s left of paradise. In this age of environmental collapse, PARADISE OF THORNS gives us a unique view from the frontline of climate change in Africa’s last wild spaces. It is infused with the romantic spirit of all writers seeking their own redemption in the natural world—or at least what’s left of it.

Aidan Hartley was born in 1965 and grew up in East Africa. He is the author of The Zanzibar Chest, an international bestseller that was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson and Duff Cooper Prizes. He has covered the Balkans, the Middle East, and Russia for Reuters and currently writes a column about Africa for the Spectator in London. He lives in Laikipia, in northern Kenya with his wife and two children.

FIVE TUESDAYS IN WINTER de Lily King

The first-ever collection of stories by New York Times bestselling writer Lily King, including previously published pieces as well as new, original stories.

FIVE TUESDAYS IN WINTER
by Lily King
Grove Press, November 2021

Credit: Laura LewisHailed as “brilliant” (New York Times Book Review) and “wildly talented” (Chicago Tribune), New York Times bestselling writer Lily King has received widespread acclaim for her fiction. Her novel Euphoria (over 500,000 copies sold worldwide) was a breakout success, while, more recently, her novel Writers & Lovers was an instant New York Times bestseller, earned rapturous reviews, and was selected for numerous best of the year lists. Now the inimitable Lily King returns with her first-ever collection, including several never-beforepublished stories. Spanning over two decades of her life as a writer, King’s thoughtfully curated work elegantly explores her trademark themes of love, family, career, and loss.
In these stories, a teenage girl falls in love with her boss’s boyish yet married son. After her husband dies, a mother escapes to the German seaside with her daughter for a holiday she can barely afford, desperate to help the two of them grieve. And a man persists in trying to wake up his teenage granddaughter from a coma—the result of a skiing accident—cooing softly as he holds bottled scents to her nose, hoping the smell of sea water and grenadine will bring her back to him. Through these characters and more, Lily King intimately illustrates the extraordinary emotions that course through ordinary people.
Through galvanizing leaps of faith, heartbreaking conversations with lovers and children, and jolting violence at the hands of old and new friends, this profound, tender collection confirms Lily King as one of the greatest storytellers of our time.

Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, Euphoria, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014, and Writers & Lovers. She lives in Maine.

ROCK CONCERT de Marc Myers

From renowned music journalist Marc Myers comes a lively, entertaining, wide-ranging oral history of the golden age of the rock concert based on over ninety interviews with musicians, promoters, stagehands, and others who contributed to the huge cultural phenomenon that is live rock.

ROCK CONCERT: The Oral History of a Rite of Passage
by Marc Myers
Grove Press, November 2021

Wall Street Journal contributing writer and acclaimed music journalist Marc Myers dives into the fascinating history of rock ‘n’ roll in ROCK CONCERT. Myers’s Anatomy of a Song received high praise: the New York Times Book Review raved that “each story is a pleasure to read and will deepen your listening experience.” Myers raises the bar in his enthralling new book, informed by riveting interviews with influential people from the raucous rock ‘n’ roll scene through the ages.
Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and its power as a unifying experience—and as an influential multi-billion-dollar industry. In ROCK CONCERT, acclaimed interviewer Marc Myers sets out to uncover the history of this compelling phenomenon, weaving together ground-breaking accounts from the people who were there.
Myers combines the tales of icons like Joan Baez, Ian Anderson, Alice Cooper, Steve Miller, Roger Waters, and Angus Young with figures such as the disc jockeys who first began playing rock on the radio, like Alan Freed in Cleveland and New York; the audio engineers that developed new technologies to accommodate ever-growing rock audiences; music journalists, like Rolling Stone’s Cameron Crowe; and the promoters who organized it all, like Michael Lang, co-founder of Woodstock, to create a rounded and vivid account of live rock’s stratospheric rise.
ROCK CONCERT provides a fascinating, immediate look at the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll through the lens of live performances — spanning from the rise of R&B in the 1950s, through the hippie gatherings of the ’60s, to the growing arena tours of the ’70s and ’80s. Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips, the British Invasion that brought the Beatles in the ’60s, the Grateful Dead’s free flowing jams, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall are just a few of the defining musical acts that drive this rich narrative. Featuring dozens of key players in the history of rock and filled with colorful anecdotes, ROCK CONCERT will speak to anyone who has experienced the transcendence of live rock.

Marc Myers is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where he writes about rock, soul, and jazz, as well as the arts. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books Anatomy of a Song and Why Jazz Happened, and posts daily at JazzWax.com, winner of the 2015 Jazz Journalists Association’s award for Jazz Blog of the Year.