Bøger i P.S. serien

Exploring the fascinating stories of more than a dozen authorial impostors across several centuries and cultures, Carmela Ciuraru plumbs the creative process and the darker, often crippling aspects of fame.Only through the protective guise of Lewis Carroll could a shy, half-deaf Victorian mathematician at Oxford feel free to let his imagination run wild. The "three weird sisters" from Yorkshire?the Brontës?produced instant bestsellers that transformed them into literary icons, yet they wrote under the cloak of male authorship. Bored by her aristocratic milieu, a cigar-smoking, cross-dressing baroness rejected the rules of propriety by having sexual liaisons with men and women alike, publishing novels and plays under the name George Sand. Highly accessible and engaging, these provocative stories reveal the complex motives of writers who harbored secret identities?sometimes playfully, sometimes with terrible anguish and tragic consequences. Part detective story, part exposé, part literary history, Nom de Plume is an absorbing psychological meditation on identity and creativity.

A funny and moving debut novel that follows four generations of a singularly weird American family, all living under one roof, as each member confronts a moment of crisis in a narrative told through a uniquely quirky, charming, and unforgettable voice. Acclaimed short story writer Elizabeth Crane, well known to public radio listeners for her frequent and captivating contributions to WBEZ Chicago's Writer's Block Party, delivers a sublime, poignant, and often hilarious first novel, perfect for fans of Jessica Anya Blau's The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Heather O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals."Crane has a distinctive and eccentric voice that is consistent and riveting." --New York Times Book Review

Two young men are swimming naked in an Adirondack lake when they hear a motor, a car appears, and two women get out, one with an orange scarf around her head. It's 1936: New York is suffering through the Great Depression, frightening things are happening in Europe, and Artie Saltzman and Harold Abramovitz, friends since their Brooklyn childhood, are unsure about everything?jobs, lefty politics, women. After this time in the mountains, nothing will be quite the same. From World War II to the McCarthy-era witch hunts, through work, marriages, and life with children, Artie and Harold turn to each other, whether for solace or another good argument. And when Artie's daughter Brenda comes of age during the 1960s, her struggles with jobs, love, and friendship in yet another period of political turmoil recall Artie and Harold's youth.A sweeping yet intimate novel about people who never stop loving one another despite everything life throws at them, When We Argued All Night illuminates a friendship over more than sixty-five years, as the twentieth century gives way to the changed yet recognizable times in which we live.

A rogue virus that kills pregnant women has been let loose in the world, and nothing less than the survival of the human race is at stake.Some blame the scientists, others see the hand of God, and still others claim that human arrogance and destructiveness are reaping the punishment they deserve. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl living in extraordinary times. As her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her toward the ultimate act of heroism. She wants her life to make a difference. But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her scientist father fears, impressionable, innocent, and incapable of understanding where her actions will lead?Set in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman's struggle to become independent of her parents. As the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart, Jessie begins to question her parents' attitudes, their behavior, and the very world they have bequeathed her.

As university students in late 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta were inseparable. Spirited and unconventional, they challenged authority and fought for a better world. But over the past thirty years, the quartet has drifted apart, the day-to-day demands of work and family tempering the revolutionary fervor they once shared. Then comes devastating news: Armaiti, who moved to America, is gravely ill and wants to see the old friends she left behind. For Laleh, reunion is a bittersweet reminder of unfulfilled dreams and unspoken guilt. For Kavita, it is an admission of forbidden passion. For Nishta, it is the promise of freedom from a bitter, fundamentalist husband. And for Armaiti, it is an act of acceptance, of letting go on her own terms. The World We Found is a dazzling masterwork from the remarkable Thrity Umrigar, offering an unforgettable portrait of modern India while it explores the enduring bonds of friendship and the power of love to change lives.

When Jason Mulgrew enrolls in a private high school in an exciting new neighborhood (North Philly, murder center of the city), he finds himlf displaced into a world of privilege and strict standards. His classmates, whose parents are lawyers and bankers, live in houses with yards and pools. Mulgrew, whose longshoreman father bought him a motorcycle upon completion of his driver's test, struggles to relate in this wider world, fighting his way through the gauntlet of high school as an awkward, sexless giant.Mulgrew tackles the glorious complications, misapprehensions, and obsessions of the teenage mind. He revisits his unhealthy fixations on dogs, his "bird," the Prep, friends who are girls, Kahlúa & Cream, and a certain position in student body government to craft yet another raunchy, honest, and relentlessly funny memoir.

It's 2008. In three days, family man and Silicon Valley speechwriter Dan Jordan will see his start-up stock vest. He'll cash out with $1.1 million, turn in his frenetic Valley life in for a slower one on the beach with his wife and two children, and finally live the life he's supposed to live. Or so he thinks. Before he can collect his cash and get outta Dodge, all hell breaks loose. Dan is kidnapped by a gang of tiny IT nerds who threaten to get him fired before the options can vest, stalked by a potentially murderous corporate security muscle man, and confronted with the possible disintegration of his marriage, all while his sociopath neighbor, Crazy Larry, threatens to ruin everything. . . .Side-splittingly funny and full of larger-than-life characters, Cash Out is like Office Space as reimagined by the creators of The Hangover?a sly caper gone outrageously, unforgettably awry.

In this brilliant collection, Tessa Hadley showcases beautifully her formidable talent for writing domestic fiction that rises about the genre to become literary art.?Filled with exquisitely calibrated gradations and expressions of class, conducted with symphonic intensity and complexity.... Extraordinarily well-made.??New York Times Book ReviewMarried Love is a masterful collection of short fiction from one of today's most accomplished storytellers. These tales showcase the qualities for which Tessa Hadley has long been praised: her humor, warmth, and psychological acuity; her powerful, precise, and emotionally dense prose; her unflinching examinations of family relationships.Here are stories that range widely across generations and classes, exploring the private and public lives of unforgettable characters: a young girl who haunts the edges of her parents' party; a wife released by the sudden death of her film-director husband; an eighteen-year-old who insists on marrying her music professor, only to find herself shut out from his secrets.Hadley evokes worlds that expand in the imagination far beyond the pages, capturing domestic dramas, generational sagas, wrenching love affairs and epiphanies, and distilling them to remarkable effect.

Daring, clever, and alluring, Queenie Dove has spent a lifetime developing the skills of an accomplished thief. Born into a criminal family in London's East End during the Great Depression, and trained by a group of women shoplifters during the Blitz, Queenie soon graduates from petty street crime to far more lucrative heists and the seedy glamour of the city's underworld. But giving birth to a daughter will make Queenie finally try to go straight . . . until the opportunity to take part in one last, audacious robbery tempts her back to the life of danger and excitement she once lived to the fullest.Told in Queenie's captivating and singular voice, Lucky Bunny is a richly colorful tale of trickery, adventure, and heart.

Winner of the Portico PrizeWinner of the Edge Hill University Short Story PrizeShort-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award"Every one of the seven tales here delights and disturbs in equal measure. The Beautiful Indifference illustrates that short fiction is indeed a finely wrought art form, and Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they from a collection of astonishingly sensuous power." -- Sunday Times (London)Sarah Hall has been hailed as "one of the most significant and exciting of Britain's young novelists" (The Guardian). Now, in this remarkable collection of short fiction, she has created a work at once provocative and mesmerizing.

Glamour magazine called Come Back, the first nonfiction collaboration by Claire and Mia Fontaine, the best mother-daughter memoir, while the New York Times Book Review praised it as, a testament to the power of the love.The Fontaines are back with Have Mother, Will Travel, a beautiful, thoughtful, insightful, inspiring book that brilliantly captures the changing relationship between a mother and her adult daughter. Seen within the context of an unforgettable round-the-world adventure, the emotional milestones reached and the new understandings and appreciations achieved will warm the heart and nourish the soulan extraordinary journey that should not be missed by armchair travelers and by mothers and daughters everywhere.

Afraid of losing her parents at a young age, Naomi Feinstein prepares single-mindedly for a prestigious future as a doctor. But when her only friend and confidant abruptly departs from her life, Naomi isn't sure she will ever recover, even after a long-awaited acceptance letter to Wellesley arrives. Yet Naomi soon learns that college isn't the bastion of solidarity and security she had imagined. Amid hundreds of other young women, she is consumed by loneliness?until the day she sees a girl fall into the freezing waters of a lake. The event marks Naomi's introduction to Wellesley's oldest honor society, the mysterious Shakespeare Society, defined by secret rituals and filled with unconventional, passionate students. As Naomi immerses herself in this exciting and liberating world, her happiness is soon compromised by a scandal that brings devastating consequences. Naomi has always tried to save the ones she loves, but sometimes saving others is a matter of saving yourself. An Uncommon Education is a compelling portrait of a quest for greatness and the grace of human limitations. Poignant and wise, it artfully captures the complicated ties of family, the bittersweet inevitability of loss, and the importance of learning to let go.

William and Louisa Day are a suburban husband and wife, with no children, confronting the question of what their relationship means to them and if and how it will survive. One day, after weeks of bizarre behavior?disappearing in the middle of parties, hoarding mail?Louisa approaches William with a stark request: "I want you to build us a house." Caught off guard, William is suddenly forced to reckon with his own hopes and desires, his growing discomfort at home and work, and, in the end, his wife's fight-or-flight ultimatum. The result is an emotionally powerful novel, marked by Ben Greenman's trademark blend of yearning and mordant wit.

St. Petersburg, 1736. Dasha and Xenia are cousins and devoted friends growing up in the shadow of royal society. On the night they make their debut at court, Xenia falls madly in love with a charismatic singer in the empress's imperial choir. They marry and settle into a contented family life.But on a snowy winter night, tragedy shatters their dreams, plunging Xenia into an abyss of grief. Pulling away from everyone, including her dear friend, she begins giving away her possessions to the poor. Then one day she disappears...until eight years later, when Dasha hears rumors of a soothsayer and healer in St. Petersburg's slums, dressed in a ragged military uniform, who answers only to her husband's name.Told in Dasha's compelling voice, The Mirrored World vividly captures a darkly glittering world of imperious empresses, ice palaces, holy fools, and Italian castrati?a world of unparalleled extravagance for the few and desperate squalor for the multitudes. What causes one privileged young woman to cross that divide, to give up all her possessions and become one of the homeless people whom she has served? Is it devotion or delusion? The novel illuminates the blessings of friendship, the limits of reason, and the costs of loving deeply.

Tales of love, loss, and betrayal are at the heart of When It Happens to You, the debut story collection from actress and author Molly Ringwald.A Hollywood icon, Ringwald defined the teenage experience in the eighties in such classic films as Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles. Now the star of ABC Familys hit series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, and author of the bestselling memoir Getting the Pretty Back, Ringwald brings that same compelling candor she displayed in her film roles to the unforgettable characters she has created in this series of linked stories about the particular challenges, joys, and disappointments of adult relationships.Here are stories that grapple with infertility and infidelity, fame and familial discord, in a magnificent collection that will resonate broadly with readersfrom fans of Melissa Banks to Meg Wolitzer to Lorrie Moore.

Heather Barbieri follows her acclaimed Gaelic-tinged drama The Lace Makers of Glenmara with the resonant tale of a woman who, in the wake of scandal, flees to a remote Maine island to reconnect with her past--and to come to terms with the childhood tragedy that has haunted her for a lifetime.Set on the rugged New England coast, Barbieri's The Cottage at Glass Beach strikes the perfect balance between high lit and mainstream women's fiction, infusing a potent and unforgettable love story with unforgettable characters that will remain with you long after the final chapter. Richly evocative, Barbieri's narrative of intimacy, struggle, and redemption will call out to readers of Joanne Harris, Alice Hoffman, and other modern masters of drama.

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiancé the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa finds herself obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, an aspiring writer who can't seem to put down a book?or a cocktail?long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired . . . again.In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women begin to realize just how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier?and the secrets that now threaten to surface.

The past just arrived on Ruby's doorstep . . .To uncover the truth about a friend's disappearance, a fragile young woman must silence the ghosts of her past in this moving debut tale that intertwines mystery, madness, betrayal, love, and literature."My past was never more than one thought, one breath, one heartbeat away. And then, on that particular October evening, it literally arrived at my doorstep."Twenty-two-year-old Ruby Rousseau is haunted by memories of Tarble, the women's college she fled from ten months earlier, and the painful love affair that pushed her to the brink of tragedy.When a suitcase belonging to a former classmate named Beth arrives on her doorstep, Ruby is plunged into a dark mystery. Beth has gone missing, and the suitcase is the only tangible evidence of her whereabouts.Inside the bag, Ruby discovers a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the book she believes was a harbinger of her madness. Is someone trying to send her a message?and what does it mean?The search for answers leads to Tarble. As Ruby digs into Beth's past, she has no choice but to confront her own?an odyssey that will force her to reexamine her final days at school, including the married professor who broke her heart and the ghosts of illustrious writers, dead by their own hand, who beckoned her to join their tragic circle.But will finding the truth finally set Ruby free . . . or send her over the edge of sanity?

One late spring evening in 1912, in the kitchens at Sterne, preparations begin for an elegant supper party in honor of Emerald Torrington's twentieth birthday. But only a few miles away, a dreadful accident propels a crowd of mysterious and not altogether savory survivors to seek shelter at the ramshackle manor?and the household is thrown into confusion and mischief. Evening turns to stormy night, and a most unpleasant parlor game threatens to blow respectability to smithereens: Smudge Torrington, the wayward youngest daughter of the house, decides that this is the perfect moment for her Great Undertaking. The Uninvited Guests is the bewitching new novel from the critically acclaimed Sadie Jones. The prizewinning author triumphs in this frightening yet delicious drama of dark surprises?where social codes are uprooted and desire daringly trumps propriety?and all is alight with Edwardian wit and opulence.

Soon to featured in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust, airing on PBS in fall 2022A New York Times Notable Book - Winner of the National Jewish Book Award - Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award - A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist"A gripping detective story, a stirring epic, a tale of ghosts and dark marvels, a thrilling display of scholarship, a meditation on the unfathomable mystery of good and evil, a testimony to the enduring power of the ancient archetypes that haunt one Jewish family and the greater human family, The Lost is as complex and rich with meaning and story as the past it seeks to illuminate. A beautiful book, beautifully written."--Michael ChabonIn this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic--part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work--that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust--an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family's story began, and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.Deftly moving between past and present, interweaving a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories of a now-lost generation of immigrant Jews and provocative ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, The Lost transforms the story of one family into a profound, morally searching meditation on our fragile hold on the past. Deeply personal, grippingly suspenseful, and beautifully written, this literary tour de force illuminates all that is lost, and found, in the passage of time.

Her dream home is about to become a house of nightmares...From the moment Lacey glimpses the dusty-rose colonial cottage with its angled dormer windows and quaint wooden shutters, she knows she's found her dream house. Walking through its cozy rooms, the expectant mother can see her future children sitting on the round bottom step of the house's beautifully carved staircase, and she imagines them playing beneath the giant maple tree in the warm South Carolina sun. It doesn't matter to Lacey and her husband, Eric, that people had died there years before.But soon their warm and welcoming house turns cold. There is something malevolent within the walls?a disturbing presence that only Lacey can sense. And there is Drew, a demanding and jealous little boy who mysteriously appears when Lacey is alone. Protective of this enigmatic child who reminds her of the troubled students she used to teach, Lacey bakes cookies and plays games to amuse him. Yet, as she quickly discovers, Drew is unpredictable?and dangerous.Fearing for her baby's safety, Lacey sets out to uncover the truth about Drew and her dream house?a search for answers that takes her into the past, into the lives of a long-dead family whose tragic secrets could destroy her. To save her loved ones, Lacey must find a way to lay a terrifying evil to rest...before she, Eric, and their child become its next victims.

From the acclaimed author of Coop and Population: 485 comes a portrait of a unique individual and a dedicated way of life.What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannons? Visit by visit?often with his young daughters in tow?author Michael Perry finds out.Toiling in his shop, Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and?now and then?batches of potentially ?extralegal? explosives. Tom, who is approaching his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, and is famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has stories dating back to the days of his prize Model A and an antiauthoritarian streak refreshed daily by the interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps more than eight million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately?when he and Perry converse as husbands and the fathers of daughters?unvarnished tenderness.?PERRY'S the real thing.? ?USA Today

After decades of service and years of watching her family's troubles splashed across the tabloids, Britain's Queen is beginning to feel her age. An unexpected opportunity offers her relief: an impromptu visit to a place that holds happy memories?the former royal yacht, Britannia, now moored near Edinburgh. Hidden beneath a skull-emblazoned hoodie, the limber Elizabeth (thank goodness for yoga) walks out of Buckingham Palace and heads for King's Cross to catch a train to Scotland. But a colorful cast of royal attendants has discovered her missing. In uneasy alliance a lady-in-waiting, a butler, an equerry, a girl from the stables, a dresser, and a clerk from the shop that supplies Her Majesty's cheese set out to bring her back before her absence becomes a national scandal.Comic and poignant, fast-paced and clever, Mrs Queen Takes the Train tweaks the pomp of the monarchy, going beneath its rigid formality to reveal the human heart of the woman at its center.

In News from Heaven, Jennifer Haighbestselling author of Faith and The Conditionreturns to the territory of her acclaimed novel Baker Towers with a collection of short stories set in and around the fictionalized coal-mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania.Exploring themes of restlessness, regret, redemption and acceptance, Jennifer Haigh depicts men and women of different generations shaped by dreams and haunted by disappointments.Janet Maslin of the New York Times has called Haighs Bakerton stories utterly, entrancingly alive on the page, comparable to Richard Russos Empire Falls.

The definitive history of the Samurai, by acclaimed author of Ninja: 1,000 Years of the Shadow Warrior"One could ask for no better storyteller or analyst than John Man." --Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography The inspiration for the Jedi knights of Star Wars and the films of Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese samurai have captured modern imaginations. Yet with these elite warriors who were bound by a code of honor called Bushido--the Way of the Warrior--the reality behind the myth proves more fascinating than any fiction. In Samurai, celebrated author John Man provides a unique and captivating look at their true history, told through the life of one man: Saigo Takamori, known to many as "the last samurai." In 1877 Takamori led a rebel army of samurai in a heroic "last stand" against the Imperial Japanese Army, who sought to end the "way of the sword" in favor of firearms and modern warfare. Man's thrilling narrative brings to life the hidden world of the samurai as never before.

From internationally bestselling author Nikki Gemmell comes a tantalizing story of love within marriage--and alongside it.Under her Chanel suit and designer lingerie, Connie Carven is no longer the typical banker's wife. When Cliff's horrible skiing accident shifts the balance of their relationship, Connie becomes a willing submissive to her husband's every desire. Cliff is eager to explore new, and troubling, avenues of passion. Connie, ever the dutiful wife, follows wherever he leads. While at first she enjoys a perverse sense of freedom within the ever-tightening bonds of her marriage, Cliff's dark desires soon consume her entirely. She finds herself surrendering to an act that will forever remind her that she belongs to her husband alone--to be unlocked only by him, whenever he pleases.But it is also this act that awakens Connie from the numbness that has taken over her life. And when she encounters someone new in the communal garden of her Notting Hill home, she discovers the thrill of true intimacy . . . and the price of risking everything for it.The author of the bestselling phenomenon The Bride Stripped Bare and the exquisite With My Body, Nikki Gemmell brings erotic writing into the twenty-first century. In I Take You she looks to the classic Lady Chatterley's Lover for inspiration, reimagining D. H. Lawrence's celebrated tale as a brutally honest and deeply sensual modern love story.

From the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist So Much for That and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin comes an extraordinary novel about siblings, marriage, and obesity.When Pandora picks up her older brother Edison at the Iowa airport, she doesn't recognize him. In the four years since she last saw him, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds. What happened? And it's not just the weight. Edison breaks her husband Fletcher's handcrafted furniture, makes overkill breakfasts for the family, and entices her stepson not only to forgo college but to drop out of high school. After Edison has more than overstayed his welcome, Fletcher delivers his wife an ultimatum: it's him or me. But which loyalty is paramount, that of a wife or a sister? For without Pandora's support, surely Edison will eat himself into an early grave.Rich with Shriver's distinctive wit and ferocious energy, Big Brother is about fat?an issue both social and excruciatingly personal. It asks just how much we are obligated to help members of our families, and whether it's ever possible to save loved ones from themselves.

A provocative and eye-opening memoir, High Price will change the way we think about addiction, poverty, and race, as well as our policies on drugs.As Columbia University's first tenured African American professor in the sciences, groundbreaking neuroscientist Carl Hart has redefined our understanding of addiction. His controversial landmark research goes beyond the hype of the antidrug movement to shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs, and to explain why current policies are failing.In High Price, Hart recalls his personal story?and though he escaped neighborhoods that were entrenched in systemic poverty, he has not turned his back on them. But balancing his former street life with his achievements today has not been easy?a struggle he reflects on publicly for the first time here.