Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Literary Fiction

Sebastian Zollner's failure as a journalist is matched only by his personal failures. Searching for redemption in the eyes of his peers, he heads off into the mountains to interview the eccentric, legendary painter Manuel Kaminski with the hope of writing his biography. Going blind and living in seclusion with his daughter, Kaminski could be working on his next masterpiece or easing into his final days. His artistic reputation hinges on any number of factors, but most prominently on a definitive biography.

Falsely accused of a crime and betrayed by his closest friend, the weaver Silas Marner has been hoarding his earnings for 15 years. Distanced from his religious community, he has devoted himself to his work and taken pleasure only in counting his coins. Then in a single day, his gold is stolen and a lovely child appears on his doorstep. As he changes his life to meet the irresistible needs of the child, Marner accepts that the loss of the gold was a necessary exchange for the child.

Winona Pathfinder, an elderly Lakota Sioux medicine woman, announces she intends to die in two months. For counseling, Winona is referred to Caucasian, middle-aged, and divorced psychologist Dr. Meggie O'Connor. A reluctant client, the feisty Winona decides to turn the tables and teach Dr. O'Connor a thing or two about life while steadfastly refusing to renounce her plans to die.

Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, The Scarlet Letter tackles the subjects of social stigma, shame, and judgment. Hester Prynne is at the forefront of the scandal, subject to public humiliation for bearing a child out of wedlock. Forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing for the rest of her life, she cannot run from her sin. Hester refuses to name her daughter's father, a local reverend whom she is in love with, a timid man who keeps his secret from the community.

"Isn't so and so a snob?" he asks. "She won't even admit she liked Grease." Looking for an author who ponders the imponderable, expresses the inexpressible, describes the indescribable, and leaves no burning issue of American popular culture or world concern unexamined? Well, you'll find him in Mark Leyner. On this recording, Leyner, one of the most gifted and original young American writers around, reads 6 prose pieces from his first published book.

More than any other writer, Alice McDermott exposes the vein of poetry, of profound joy and pain that transforms everyday experience into the heroic and universal. At Weddings and Wakes tells the bittersweet, lovable, human story of an Irish-Catholic family on Long Island as seen through the eyes of two sisters and a brother.

"I am born" famously begins David Copperfield. However, this is a birth which is blighted by its timing: 12 o'clock on a Friday night at precisely the time the clock began to strike. Such untimeliness means that David was destined to be unlucky in life and would be privileged to see ghosts and spirits, a dubious privilege. In David Copperfield, ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are invoked in relation to a range of male characters and situations.

This is the story of a generation, shaped by the 60s, that has reached its time of reckoning, and of a man who must uncover the secrets of his father's past before he can live and love in the present. Mitch Rozier has spent half of his 50 years writing an environmental column for an alternative West coast paper. Now he finds himself back under his father's roof. Sisters Lexa and Mariah McCaskill wrestle with the past that has driven them away from domesticity:

The explosion in storytelling festivals and one-person shows demonstrate that Americans are growing disenchanted with the mass media and returning to the simple pleasures of a well-told story. Here is a survey of great contemporary monologues, including excerpts by Spalding Gray, Lynda Barry, Tom Bodett, and Peter Matthiessen.

Beaufort, South Carolina is home to the Smallwoods, a family closely knit but fiercely at odds. Georgie, the youngest, is tormented by worry for her son, who vanished two years earlier, and by her anger at her father. An unforgiving patriarch and ex-Marine, Georgie's father neglects her mother, belittles her brother Ashby, and denies her sister Claire the financial support she needs after a trying divorce.

Perhaps the finest novel of nineteenth-century England, Bleak House embodies artful narrative, an engaging cast of characters, biting satire, and a detailed depiction of Victorian society. At the height of his creative power in this great work, Dickens pursues two great themes.

Spanning almost thirty years, My Other Life traces the journey of a fictional Paul Theroux—from young bachelorhood in Africa to his travels between continents, from in and out of marriage through various affairs and multiple means of employment. From his early education at the knee of a highly eccentric uncle until his years as a fledgling novelist in London under the wing of the rapacious Lady Max, this writer of different guises eventually retreats alone to his hometown, where he finds the raw material to begin again.

Wild mustangs, ghosts on the ranch, gun-toting outlaws and trailblazing cowboys roam the pages of this collection of 8 classic stories about the American frontier. Travel down "The Road to Hell" with a mysterious ranch builder, face down the "Yellow Devil" mountain lion, travel "Where the Wind Blows Free," and join in on a herd of other adventures that will keep you reading until long after high noon.

In November of 1920, 7-year-old Bill Sackter walked through the looking glass into a state institution for the retarded. He never saw his family again. 44 years later, a much older Bill re-entered the world, hungry for all it could offer.Barry Morrow became that buddy, and learned to see the world through Bill's eyes, colored by his boundless reserve of good cheer and goofy humor. He tells Bill's story in this highly emotional performance.

When one of Dr. Rafael Neruda's patients commits a vicious murder and then kills himself, the psychiatrist is compelled to discover the root causes of the crime. Delving into his own painful childhood, he embarks on a desperate personal mission to confront the nature of evil itself. Endangering both his personal and professional future, Neruda devises the ultimate test for his cure for evil— a cure that becomes a shocking journey of eroticism, manipulation, and danger.

There are eight million stories in the naked city; Anna is one of them. Let 'Em Eat Cake is a gritty, funny first novel that draws us into the life of lower-middle-class New York City as never before.

Many kids write stories, but only a few of them grow up to be successful authors. Before there was Carrie, there was "Johnathan and the Witchs." And before there was Rabbit Angstrom, Toyota dealer, there was Manuel Cirarro, famous detective. Could we have seen the seeds of success in Stephen King's and John Updike's juvenilia? These young writers are the same people who dominated the best seller lists and occupy the most celebrated spots on bookshelves in our stores, libraries, and homes.

A 19th century novel that defied the repressive moral conventions of Victorian England. Young Tess Durbeyfield comes from an impoverished home. Her father, desperate to alleviate the family's financial plight, presses his daughter into work for the wealthy D'Urbervilles. But in doing so, Tess meets the manipulative Alec, who forces himself upon her. And though Tess later meets a kinder man who proposes marriage, her salvation is jeopardized when she reveals to him her troubled past.

A brooding, suspenseful novel of sensuality and vengeance, set amid the fields and villages of 19th century England. Bella Ford, jilted by her unscrupulous lover, plans revenge that ends in a catastrophic act of violence.

Winter in a Massachusetts village serves as a backdrop to Edith Wharton's masterpiece about a man with little hope of escaping his bleak future. Married to an older woman named Zeena, Ethan Frome finds himself drawn to his wife's cousin, Mattie.