American Literature

A revelatory look into the life and work of Ernest Hemingway, considered in his time to be the greatest living American novelist and short story writer, winner of the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. Mary Dearborn's new biography gives the richest and most nuanced portrait to date of this complex, enigmatically unique American artist.

Kylie Macklin is eager to live a normal life. Freshly moved from Florida to Alabama and finally in remission from cancer, the optimistic nine-year-old is used to dodging her overprotective mom’s warnings. So when a new playmate invites her to hang out, the happy girl thinks nothing of the playground being located in a graveyard for young victims of the Spanish Flu… and a local serial killer.

He's British. She's American. They meet on vacation. And agree to fake-name each other. One is lying about everything. The other is telling the truth. They're about to embark on a sexcation. But what happens when it's over?

When 26-year-old Reese accepts a position as a grad assistant, she has no idea an unpleasant encounter with a student will lead to the discovery of what she calls "the trifecta": fine, intellectual, and a little bit rude - three qualities she finds irresistible in a man. She has no intention of doing anything with that discovery. But everybody knows what happens to best laid plans. Jason is a grown man. He's at Blakewood State University to finish his degree and move on. The last thing he's interested in is the female population on campus...Reese might be a notable exception.

American heiress Sophia Wilson leaves Old New York for a Season in London. Her goal: to marry into the English aristocracy and help improve her family's social standing in America. Sophia knows her marriage will be a business transaction - her father will provide a generous financial settlement in exchange for a title - but secretly, what she desires most of all is to marry for love.

Six months ago, I gave my heart to a girl. Beautiful, kind, and sexy as sin, she's the only person who saw past my record or the color of my skin. Who ever saw me for me. She loved me enough to let me go, to let me leave this city to find my own path. But without her, I drift, lost without direction. Without me, she spirals, desperate for connection. I gave my heart to a girl, and she gave hers to me. But love shouldn't hurt this much.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

Love should burn slow, but with Ezra "Ethic" Okafor it is always fast and fleeting. After an accidental killing affects Alani, the woman he loves, she thinks he's a monster. Separated by tragedy, the pair endure a loss like nothing they have ever felt, and their connection is impossible to repair. Ethic is reduced to misery and raising his children alone once again. With Morgan in the throes of a passionate love affair and Bella in need of guidance that he can't provide, Ethic is in turmoil. He's failing as a man, and the fingerprint he is leaving on the world is a bloody one.

I suppose some of us have to get really dirty before we can become truly clean. I was allegedly South Dakota's most famous Old Lady. Sixteen years ago, I had survived my Old Man's murder. Never again. Never again will I surrender my heart. Never again will I sacrifice to the Club. But that all changed in one night. I came home and crashed into him, and my past and present blew up in my face.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and complex, unforgettable characters.

Captain Marryat's The Children of the New Forest is a wonderful tale in narrative, historically rich and quite fascinating. This story of adventure, treachery, and love takes place during the English Civil War, when fellow countrymen are found enemies, and are set against each other, Roundhead and Cavalier, Parliament and the King. Many hoped for the same thing: justice. But, for a long time, neither could find it. In the midst of all were the Beverlies, the family of a faithful Cavalier, who died in service of the king.

Allie Sutton just got a new job. Not one she wants, and definitely not one she's prepared for. She hadn't seen her dad in years, so the last thing she expects upon his sudden death is to inherit the thing he loved more than anything (or anyone)...the professional football team he owned for the last 20 years. Luke Pierson does not want a new boss. What he wants is to be a good father to his daughter, the best quarterback possible for his teammates. What he doesn't need is a blonde bombshell ruining the team's chances at another championship.

A chance encounter and one night of passion leads to a mutually beneficial arrangement for two souls from different worlds. When love creeps into the equation, neither is sure how to feel or what to do. The only thing either is certain of, is their need for the other.

In 1920, as veterans question the very nation they fought for, socialist Upton Sinclair challenges Teddy Roosevelt for the presidency. And in the defeated Confederacy, a fiery racist whips his followers into a frenzy.

In the jungles of Southeast Asia, American sniper Mack Bolan honed his skills. After 12 years, with 95 confirmed hits, he returns home to Massachusetts. But it's not to reunite with his family, it's to bury them - victims in a mass murder/suicide. Even though Bolan's own father pulled the trigger, he knows the old man was no killer. He was driven to madness by Mafia thugs who have turned his idyllic hometown into a new kind of war zone.

Touré Wallace and Niomi Spencer were close friends at Finley College, the prestigious HBCU they attended. The attraction that simmered between them every semester was a question they never got to ask or answer before soaring ambitions launched them to opposite corners of the world. Both chased their dreams of grit and glamor as high-profile journalists. They got it all...except a shot at being more than friends. Years later, Touré is an award-winning investigative journalist and Niomi is America's most popular morning-show host, but they both feel like something’s missing.

Katherine Woodville's sister never gave her a choice. A happy girl of modest means, Kate hardly expected to become a maker of kings. But when her sister impulsively marries King Edward IV in secret, Katherine's life is no longer hers to control....

On Zero Day of the first and last cyberwar in human history, the internet went dark, transport and power grids collapsed and cities began to starve, showing just how vulnerable the world could be to a targeted campaign of online sabotage. This final installment of this prescient epic of civilisation collapse finds the small ragtag band of survivors come together to face a new, but eerily familiar threat - the rise of a fascist militia among the ruins of a failing country.

An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream.

I Kissed an Earl is another installment in rapidly rising star Julie Anne Long's sensual and emotionally charged Pennyroyal Green series, centered around the longstanding feud of the wealthy Eversea and Redmond families of Pennyroyal Green, Sussex. I Kissed an Earl absolutely brims with romance, adventure, and, of course, intense passion, as a beautiful, willful Regency lady searching for her lost brother stows away on a sailing ship - and ends up enchanting the vessel's highborn, hard-headed Captain.