Archives par étiquette : Levine Greenberg Rostan

FIRE SEASON de Leyna Krow

A feminist novel upending the archetypal « western » in the vein of The Sisters Brothers meets Inland, set in 1889 in Washington Territory on the heels of a great fire about an inadvertently dangerous psychic and the two conmen she meets on her path to redemption.

FIRE SEASON
by Leyna Krow
‎Viking, Summer 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

For the citizens of Spokane Falls, a fire that destroyed their frontier boomtown was no disaster; it was an opportunity. Set in 1889 in Washington Territory on the heels of this event, FIRE SEASON tells the story of three characters who seize big opportunities the fire brings, though in different ways and to different ends. Barton Heydale, manager of the city bank, uses the ensuing chaos to embark on schemes of fraud, forgery, and kidnapping. Quake Auchenbaucher, a conman, suddenly finds his career in manipulation jeopardized. And there’s Roslyn Beck, an alcoholic prostitute with the ability to see the future and with whom both men fall madly and dangerously in love. Unbeknownst to them, she has a deviant influence that, for better or worse, can change the world. As their paths collide, diverge, and collide again, these three come to terms with their own needs for power, greed, and control — leading one to total ruin, one to heartbreak, and one, ultimately, to redemption.
In the incandescent, genre-bending spirit of Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Karen Joy Fowler’s Sarah Canary, or Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, with notes of Ottessa Moshfegh’s quick wit and wicked imagination, FIRE SEASON is playful, creepily magical, and historical, yes, but not in the traditional sense. The setting is a darkly whimsical approximation of what the Pacific Northwest was like at the end of the 19th century, and the characters may seem better suited to the modern literary fabulism of someone like Aimee Bender or Kelly Link than the wild west.

Leyna Krow’s first collection I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking (Featherproof Books, 2017) was a finalist for The Believer Book Award. Krow lives in Spokane, Washington with her husband and two children. She is at work on her second novel.

Photo credit: Young Kwak

GOOD FOR A GIRL de Lauren Fleshman

A memoir and manifesto about women and sports, told through the experiences of a highly decorated runner. From the time Lauren first laced up her sneakers to out-sprint the boys in her neighborhood, though puberty when half of all girls abandon sports for good, and into elite running where she had to be “fast and fuckable” to fit into the Nike machine, Lauren felt she was bumping into a system that was not made for her.

GOOD FOR A GIRL:
A Life Running In A Man’s World
by Lauren Fleshman
‎ Penguin Press, TBD 2022
(via Levine, Greenberg, Rostan)

Lauren Fleshman is very, very good at running. She was a two-time USA Champion, finished 7th in the world, and is widely known for having a devastating (but entertaining to watch) finishing kick. For the past 25 years, she can now clearly see that at every step of the way she was bumping up against a system that was never made for her. This is a #metoo story that follows Lauren while she racked up the miles:

● From puberty, where sports diverge by gender, where boys develop the types of bodies sports were designed around, and 50% of girls quit.
● To college, where she entered a system built by and for men, one full of cracks to fall through and landmines to step on, that refused to acknowledge and account for the different physiology of women who were consistently hurting themselves to fit in.
● To being a professional runner for Nike where she learned that she needed to be Fast and Fuckable to succeed in their marketing machinery.

Running is the highest participatory sport in the world, and women are taking it over. In one generation we’ve gone from being pulled off the Boston marathon course for the crime of running while female to making up 60% of the 59 million Americans who run and the 18 million who race. It’s a women’s sport now, and we are only just beginning to realize it.

Lauren Fleshman is considered one of the greatest distance runners in USA history. Her professional racing career saw two USA Championship Titles and five World Championship berths for Team USA. She is endeared as much for her failures as her accomplishments, because of her unique approach to sport and legacy in the running community. Her influence has remained strong since retiring from elite racing in 2016, when she transitioned to Head Coach of Little Wing Athletics, the only woman led, woman run, woman sponsored professional running team in the world. Lauren currently serves on the Board of Directors for USATF, advocating for better governance, safe sport, and the protection of athlete’s rights.

FOOLED de Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simmons

From Wall Street Ponzi schemes to Nigerian email scams, from chess cheaters with hidden computers to Bridge cheaters with covert signals, from psychic mediums preying on credulous audiences to scientific fraudsters making up results their colleagues want to hear, from art forgers to deceptive marketers, our world is filled with people who want to fool us..

FOOLED:
How Cheating Works and What You Can Do About It
by Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel J. Simmons
‎ Basic Books, June 2023
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

FOOLED is a book about why we fall for the schemes of liars, deceivers, marketers, con artists, and anyone else who tries to trick us into believing or doing something in their interest rather than our own. It identifies ten specific reasons why we are easily deceived, drawing upon classic and current research in cognitive psychology and the social sciences to explain exactly how deception works, why all of us are fooled at least some of the time, and how we can avoid being scammed—or even scam the scammers in return. FOOLED is not a book about why people cheat, but about how they manage to get away with it.
Chris and Dan’s first book, The Invisible Gorilla, was about how the brain’s limited capacities for attention, memory, and understanding make us miss so much in everyday life. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and bestseller published in over twenty languages.

Daniel Simons is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the University of Illinois. Previously he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Cornell University. He is one of the leading researchers in the world studying visual cognition and visual awareness, and he has made pioneering discoveries about the limitations of human perception, memory, and awareness.
Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger, an integrated healthcare system in Pennsylvania, where he is also co-director of the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program and faculty co-director of the Behavioral Insights Team. Chris received his A.B. in computer science and his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University, where he was also a Lecturer and Research Associate for many years. His research, published in leading journals, focuses on several areas: attention, intelligence, behavior genetics, and decision-making.

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT de Mary Louise Kelly

A meditation on work and parenting that focuses on the stage when your children are preparing to leave the nest. American broadcaster and journalist Mary Louise Kelly reckons with the compromises she has made – as most people have – while managing a busy life and career, and what it feels like now that the time she has left with her children at home is starting to run out.

IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT:
Thoughts on a Finish Line of Motherhood
by Mary Louise Kelly
Holt, late 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

Can she get to her son James’s soccer game on Thursday? Nope. Mary Louise Kelly, co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered, has to be at the studio all afternoon, reporting the news. Drive carpool for Alexander next week? Not if she wants to be part of the press corps flying to Iraq with the Secretary of Defense. She has never been cavalier about these decisions. The bargain she has always made with herself is this: this time I’ll get on the plane, but next year, I’ll be there for the mom stuff.
Well, James and Alexander are now 17 and 15, and a new realization has overtaken her: in only one year, her older son will be leaving for college. The time for do-overs is over. There used to be years to make good on her promises; now, there are months, weeks, minutes.
Mary Louise Kelly is coming to grips with the reality every parent faces. Unlike your marriage or your job, childhood has a definite expiration date. You have only so many years with your kids before they leave your house to build their own lives. It’s what every parent is supposed to want, what they raise their children to do. But the effect of this on her and her husband will be immense. It is at best bittersweet, at worst, devastating. And it brings with it the enormous questions of what she did right and what she did wrong.
Mary Louise has become consumed by these thoughts. What’s she’s written is not a definitive answer – not for herself and certainly not for any other parent. But her questions, her issues, will resonate with every parent. And, yes, especially with mothers, who are judged more harshly by society and, more importantly judge themselves more harshly. What would she do if she had to decide all over again?
This is no political tract, there is no correct answer. But her thoughts as she faces the coming year will speak to anyone who has ever cared about a child. IN THE TIME WE HAVE LEFT is not a manifesto; it’s an examination that is moving, often funny, revelatory and immensely relatable.

Mary Louise Kelly has been reporting for NPR for nearly two decades and is now co-host of All Things Considered. She has also written two suspense novels, Anonymous Sources and The Bullet, and is the author of articles and essays that have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal among numerous other publications.

SHE WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING de Sarah Adlakha

Sliding Doors meets Life After Life in Sarah Adlakha’s story about a wife and mother who is given the chance to start over at the risk of losing everything she loves.

SHE WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING
by Sarah Adlakha
Forge/Macmillan, August 2021
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

A second chance is the last thing she wants. When thirty-nine year old Maria Forssmann wakes up in her seventeen-year-old body, she doesn’t know how she got there. All she does know is she has to get back: to her home in Bienville, Mississippi, to her job as a successful psychiatrist and, most importantly, to her husband, daughters, and unborn son. But she also knows that, in only a few weeks, a devastating tragedy will strike her husband, a tragedy that will lead to their meeting each other. Can she change time and still keep what it’s given her?
Exploring the responsibilities love lays on us, the complicated burdens of motherhood, and the rippling impact of our choices, SHE WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING is a dazzling debut from a bright new voice.

Sarah Adlakha is a native of Chicago and a practicing psychiatrist who now lives along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi with her husband and their three daughters. SHE WOULDN’T CHANGE A THING is her first novel.