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Vivaldo Bonfim was a bored book-keeper whose main escape from the tedium of his work was provided by novels. In the office, he tended to read rather than work, and, one day, became so immersed in a book that he got lost and disappeared completely. That, at least, is the version given to Vivaldo’s son, Elias, by his grandmother. One day, Elias sets off, like a modern-day Telemachus, in search of the father he never knew. His journey takes him through the plots of many classic novels, replete with murders, all-consuming passions, wild beasts and other literary perils. *The Book that Devoured my Father is, at once, a celebration of filial love, friendship and literature. Translated by the UK finest translator of Portuguese, Margaret Jull Costa
Vivaldo Bonfim was a bored book-keeper whose main escape from the tedium of his work was provided by novels. In the office, he tended to read rather than work, and, one day, became so immersed in a book that he got lost and disappeared completely. That, at least, is the version given to Vivaldo's son, Elias, by his grandmother. One day, Elias sets off, like a modern-day Telemachus, in search of the father he never knew. His journey takes him through the plots of many classic novels, replete with murders, all-consuming passions, wild beasts and other literary perils. The Book that Devoured my Father is, at once, a celebration of filial love, friendship and literature.
By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg’s memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it. “Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?” Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face. Uhlberg’s first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: “I love you.” But his second language was spoken English—and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father’s ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn. Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression—an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times. From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father’s hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties. From the Hardcover edition.
Ann Dávila Cardinal's Five Midnights is a “wickedly thrilling” (William Alexander) and “flat-out unputdownable” (Paul Tremblay) novel based on the el Cuco myth set against the backdrop of modern day Puerto Rico. 2019 Digital Book World Award Winner for best Suspense/Horror Book Five friends cursed. Five deadly fates. Five nights of retribución. If Lupe Dávila and Javier Utierre can survive each other’s company, together they can solve a series of grisly murders sweeping though Puerto Rico. But the clues lead them out of the real world and into the realm of myths and legends. And if they want to catch the killer, they'll have to step into the shadows to see what's lurking there—murderer, or monster? “A frightening, fast-paced thriller.” —Julianna Baggott, Alex Award-winning author of Pure At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Megan has been haunted by the ghost of her twin sister, Remy, since the accident nine years ago. Megan doesn’t want anyone to think she’s crazy, so she keeps this little “talent” to herself. But when she meets Luke at her summer job and discovers he can see ghosts too, she’s thrilled. Finally, someone who can relate...and, even better, can possibly help Remy move on. Megan’s not even worried about the fact that Luke’s supercute and nice, because of course she’s totally into her boyfriend (even though he’s been spending way too much time with another girl). And she definitely didn’t mean to kiss Luke (especially since her friend has a thing for him). Messy much? But when the visions Remy haunts Megan with get crazy violent, Megan must turn to Luke to figure out what her twin is trying to say. Because someone’s definitely in danger...she’s just not sure who.
An ambitious man and his adoring daughter are separated and estranged by an ocean and by the tides of history in this “marvelous” novel (Los Angeles Times). For Anna Schoene, growing up in the magical world of Shanghai in the 1930s creates a special bond between her and her father. He is the son of missionaries, a smuggler, and a millionaire who leads a charmed but secretive life. When the family flees to Los Angeles in the face of the Japanese occupation, he chooses to stay, believing his connections and luck will keep him safe. He’s wrong—but he survives, only to again choose Shanghai over his family during the Second World War. Anna and her father reconnect late in his life, when she finally has a family of her own, but it is only when she discovers his extensive journals that she is able to fully understand him and the reasons for his absences. The Distant Land of My Father is a “beautiful” novel “for everyone who has ever felt himself in exile from any beloved place, or a time that can never return” (The Washington Post Book World). “Seamlessly weaves together Anna’s own memories with those of her father, gleaned from the journals . . . An elegant, refined story of families, wartime, and the mystique of memory.” —Kirkus Reviews “Vivid with details of prewar Shanghai and Los Angeles.” —Publishers Weekly “Lush and epic.” —San Jose Mercury News “Remarkable . . . A moving tale of love and the possibility of forgiveness.” —Library Journal
A New York Times Editors’ Choice—“a gripping epic about a father and daughter that plumbs the dark side of a family riven by addiction and mental illness” (Entertainment Weekly). Gardiner Amory’s life is reeling—Nixon is being impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life negotiating her parents’ conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, liquor-soaked life of her father. But when the pair divorces, Gardiner’s basest impulses are unleashed in a deluge, the chasm between all of them widens, and Daley is stretched thinly across it. As she reaches adulthood, Daley rejects the narrow world of her father’s prejudices and embarks on her own life—until Gardiner hits rock bottom. Returning home to help her father get sober, Daley risks everything she’s found beyond him, including a chance at love, in an attempt to repair a trust that was broken long ago . . . In this Winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, Lily King pulls readers into “a brilliant exploration of the attraction of martyrdom, the intoxication of playing savior. . . . An absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line” (Washington Post).
When his father died, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher wasn’t quite two. His mother packed up his father’s belongings, put the boxes in a hall closet, and closed the door. The “man in a box” remained a mystery, hardly mentioned, and making only rare appearances in stories when Fletcher or his siblings inquired. Meanwhile, his young Hispanic mother transformed herself into an artist, scouting the back roads and secondhand shops of New Mexico for relics and unlikely treasures to add to her “little shrines,” or descansos. “Look closely,” she’d say to her son. “Everything tells a story.” This book is Fletcher’s literary descanso, a piecing together—from moments and objects and words—of a father’s life, of the life lived without that father, and of his own mixed-race identity. Fletcher’s reflections unfold like a collage, offering a rich array of images and stories of life with his single mother, organizing weekend family car trips to explore graveyards and adobe ruins; of growing up on the fault lines of class and culture; of being a father who never had one of his own to learn from. From incidents and observations, Fletcher assembles a beautifully crafted portrait of his family’s unspoken affliction with loss over the decades, a portrait that finally evokes the father at its heart.
This is the memoir of an Austrian boy growing up during World War II. He is a gentle soul surrounded by a loving family. From early on he reads voraciously creating a world for himself that shelters him from reality. His dream is to move to Africa and raise sheep or grow coffee. When his father gets drafted and bombs start falling on Austria, his family takes refuge in the country. There the boy witnesses never-ending treks of refugees, soldiers moving in all directions, and finally American troops fighting their way in ahead of the Russians. He scavenges for edibles in the woods, stands in line for bread and tries out his school English on the GI's now occupying this part of Austria. After months in exile the family finally moves back into their own house. The boy plays dangerous games with surplus munitions and helps stave off hunger by collecting harvest leftovers. When word arrives that his father was killed in action, his family falls apart. His mother trains to become a midwife, his siblings are put into the care of an aunt, and he - sponsored by an uncle - finds normalcy in boarding school.
"A modern retelling of the parables The Good Shepherd and The Prodigal Son." - Michael O'Brien Canadian bookseller Alex Graham is a middle-age widower whose quiet life is turned upside down when his college-age son disappears without any explanation or trace of where he has gone. With minimal resources, the father begins a long journey that takes him for the first time away from his safe and orderly world. As he stumbles across the merest thread of a trail, he follows it in blind desperation, and is led step by step on an odyssey that takes him to fascinating places and sometimes to frightening people and perils. Through the uncertainty and the anguish, the loss and the longing, Graham is pulled into conflicts between nations, as well as the eternal conflict between good and evil. Stretched nearly to the breaking point by the inexplicable suffering he witnesses and experiences, he discovers unexpected sources of strength as he presses onward in the hope of recovering his son--and himself.