Showing results for "Beauty" in Literary Fiction

The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan's gleefully grotesque hyperbole functions as a scathing critique of his young nation's troubled past: the rapacious offhand greed of colonialism....

“This is not your grandma’s fairy tale… Brilliant.” —The Washington Post “The Force of Such Beauty grips with the strength of an Olympian and holds it with the endurance of a marathoner … [to] an ending that actually caught my breath, not once, but twice in quick succession...

Amy Wong is an up-and-coming designer in the New York fashion industry; she is young, beautiful, and has it all. But she finds herself at odds with rival designers in a world rife with chauvinism and prejudice. In her personal life, she struggles with marriage and motherhood, finding that her choices often fall short of her traditional family's expectations. Derailed again and again, Amy must confront her own limitations to succeed as the designer and person she wants to be.

One great example of Chekhov's minimalism is found in The Beauties, a very short "story" - I use the term loosely, because it is really just two snapshots, two unrelated anecdotes in which a man describes seeing true beauty in two different women. These women are imperfect, yet enigmatically alluring. Chekhov's genius lies in the way he manages to convey with such apparent effortlessness a profound sense of the mystery of beauty, and of the sadness of those who observe and think.

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE FEATURED ON BBC’S BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB Penelope Fitzgerald’s Booker Prize-winning novel of loneliness and connecting is set among the houseboat community of the Thames, with an introduction from Alan Hollinghurst. On Battersea Reach, a mixed bag of the...

A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and ’90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s...

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "Thoroughly original . . . A novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as...

Read by the original Jane Banks from Mary Poppins! The sleeping girl has no idea she is asleep. After Aleyna witnessed the cruel deaths of her family, she was put to sleep by Ezralon the unicorn. He has been keeping her safe, hidden in the forest, until her true prince could come and rescue her. While Aleyna is protected in the forest, her spirit walks the halls of her ruined, deserted castle in a dream-like existence, believing everything is still perfect.

For misfit Libby Archer, social expectations for young women in Rochester, New York, in the mid-1950s don't work. Her father has died, leaving her without parents, and her well-meaning friends are pressuring her to do what any sensible single girl must do: marry a passionate, persistent hometown suitor with a promising future. Yet Libby boldly defies conventional wisdom and plans to delay marriage - to anyone - by departing for her uncle's Belfast estate.

Vera Keller, the daughter of German immigrants in turn-of-the-century New York City, finds her life upended when the man she loves becomes engaged to another woman. But Angelo Bellavia has also inadvertently opened up Vera’s life to unexpected possibilities. Angelo’s new wife, Pearl, the wealthy daughter of a clothing manufacturer, has defied her family’s expectations by devoting herself to the suffrage movement. In Pearl, Vera finds an unexpected dear friend…and a stirring new cause of her own.

2011: When Madeleine loses her job as a lecturer, she decides to leave her riverside flat in cobbled Stew Lane, where history never feels far away, and move to Apricot Place. Yet here too, in this quiet Walworth cul-de-sac, she senses the past encroaching: a shifting in the atmosphere, a current of unseen life. 1851: and Joseph Benson has been employed by Henry Mayhew to help research his articles on the working classes. A family man with mouths to feed, Joseph is tasked with coaxing testimony from prostitutes.

Franci and Lottie may be identical twins, but that’s where the similarities end. Franci has always been the stable one, while Lottie has bipolar disorder, constantly battling depression and mania. After years of taking care of her sister, Franci moves across the country to build a life for herself. Now, all the two share is distance. But when Lottie gets in an accident, Franci reluctantly steps back into her familiar role as protector. She returns to find her sister’s life in complete disarray and makes a shocking discovery: Lottie has an infant daughter she never told Franci about.

After the tragic loss of his wife, Helen, Luke Hansard is desperate to keep her memory alive. In an effort to stay close to her, he reaches out to an online friend Helen often mentioned: a reclusive photographer with a curious interest in beautiful but broken objects. But first he must find her - and she doesn’t want to be found. Orla Kendrick lives alone in the ruins of a remote Suffolk castle, hiding from the haunting past that has left her physically and emotionally scarred.

Everything seemed possible in the summer of 1951. Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The "Catskills of the Midwest" was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless.

On the windswept shores of an East German island, Bettina Heilstrom struggles to build a life from the ashes. World War II has ended, and her country is torn apart. Longing for a family, she marries Werner, an older bureaucrat who adores her. But after joining the fledgling secret police, he is drawn deep into its dark mission and becomes a dangerous man.

A plague of mutant grasshoppers is invading American suburbia. An underground suicide cult is gaining national prominence. Gangs of teenage boys with blow torches run amok. But what really has 14-year-old Edie Stein distracted from her town's annual Feminine Woman of Conscience Pageant is Lana Grimaldi, the sexy girl next door. How does a feminine woman of conscience deal with her?

C. S. Lewis, el gran escritor británico, erudito, teólogo laico, locutor, apologista cristiano y autor de éxitos de ventas como Mero cristianismo, Cartas del diablo a su sobrino, El gran divorcio, Las crónicas de Narnia y muchos otros clásicos muy apreciados, recrea brillantemente la...

'A delightful novel about fate, second chances, and how our worst moments are only the gateways to the best moments to come. When you're finished, you'll be writing your own reverse bucket list to check off.' --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author New York Times bestselling author...

An NPR best book of the year and recommended by Oprah Daily, Good Housekeeping, Zibby Mag, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, and Katie Couric Media! ""A summer read with bite.”—NPR Disgraced model-writer Bianca Bridge can’t stand hotshot makeup maven Obadiah Cortland. And he lets her know the feeling...

Tolstoy's story of one woman's fate is brought powerfully to life in this BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation starring Teresa Gallagher and Toby Stephens. Anna Karenina enjoys a privileged and aristrocratic lifestyle as the wife of influential government official Alexy Karenin. Yet their ten-year...