Bøger af Virginia Pye

"Belonging: Short Stories from Pangyrus," edited by Virginia Pye and Anne Bernays, is a poignant collection exploring the sacrifices we make for acceptance.What do we sacrifice when we strive to belong? A woman gets thin to make her family notice her. A teenage girl shoplifts with a friend for love and affirmation. Whether it's an unflinching look at a soldier's return to a land seared in his memory or a tale of a woman wandering the nighttime streets she's forgotten, the tender and funny stories of Belonging explore our own hope of ever finding the connections we so desperately want. Contributors include Erin Almond, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, EC Osondu, and others. The stories: Erin Almond The Unbearable Weight of My Heart Susan Buttenwieser Unaccompanied MinorsPaul Curtis Karaoke in the Lounge of the Gods Catherine Elcik We Own the Jetty Khanh Ha Ask the SeaMarie Myung-Ok Lee Manifest Your Dreams E. C. Osondu Conversations with a Stranger Pamela Painter Feelings and KissyAnn Russell Art ThievesJoshua Shapiro Signs

"Set in Gilded Age Boston, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann tells the story of a successful woman author of romance and adventure novels who becomes a champion of women's rights as she takes on the literary establishment and finds her true voice, both on and off the page. Everything changes for Victoria Swann when she goes against her publisher's expectations and abandons her frivolous writing style in favor of telling her own story. This seemingly personal decision causes her to lose her standing with her publisher, her income, and her marriage, as she joins the legions of hard-working young women who have been her most faithful readers. Her new young Harvard educated editor becomes her surprising ally as she fights on behalf of these same women, while he dares himself to become a more liberated, modern gentleman. The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann shows how writing and reading, like all acts of defiance, can liberate us from narrow, constrained lives-and how revision in life and revision on the page are intimately entwined"--

On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingnue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couples savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.

During the dangerous summer of 1937, a newly widowed American missionary finds herself and her teenage son caught up in the midst of a Japanese invasion of North China and the simultaneous rise of Communism. Meanwhile a charismatic Red Army officer requests her help and seems to have shared some surprising secret about her husband. Shirley must manage her grief even as she navigates between her desire to help the idealistic Chinese Reds fight the Japanese by serving as a nurse and the need to save both herself and her son by escaping the war-ravaged country before it’s too late.Taking her own grandmother's life as inspiration, Virginia Pye, author of the critically-acclaimed debut novel River of Dust, has written a stunning new novel of Americans in China on the cusp of World War II.

In these bittersweet, compelling stories, Virginia Pye's characters in Shelf Life of Happiness long for that most-elusive of states: happiness. A young skateboarder reaches across an awesome gap to reconnect with his disapproving father; an elderly painter executes one final, violent gesture to memorialize his work; a newly married writer battles the urge to implode his happy marriage; and a confused young man falls for his best friend's bride and finally learns to love. In each case, Pye's characters aim to be better people as they strive for happiness-and some even reap the sweet reward of achieving it.