American Literature

Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and soon thereafter began working at CBS news as a correspondent. Profoundly influenced by her family’s cultural traditions, yet growing up completely Americanized in the United States, Chung describes her career as an Asian woman in a white male-centered world.

Rodeo cowboy Joe Willie Wolfchild, riding an explosive bull called See Four and moments away from becoming World Champion, suffers a devastating accident. His parents and grandparents use all their native wisdom to ease him out of his subsequent bitter depression, but without success. Meanwhile, in a distant city, a troubled young kid named Aiden plans a holdup that goes wrong and lands himself in jail.

The days of traveling martial artists and mountaintop masters are over. Power is controlled by corporations, modernized martial arts sects, and governments. Those at the bottom of society struggle as second class citizens in a world in which power is a commodity. Rick is a young fighter in this world. He doesn't dream of immortality or becoming the strongest, just of building a better life for himself and his sister, who suffers from a spiritual illness. Unfortunately, life isn't that easy.

Trying to put past hurts behind you is hard when your ex is a fool, but buoyed by child support and alimony, Jo Walker is moving forward with her life, pursuing a career, raising her little girl, and trying to live in peace. She believes she has all the bases covered in her world. But what about her heart? Rap legend Everett "Big South" McClain is divorced, too, knows all about failed relationships, and has relegated his love life to casual connections rather than pursuing something real. That is, until he lays eyes on Jo.

As a Japanese-American fisherman stands trial for murder on an island in Puget Sound, snow blankets the countryside. The whiteness covers the courthouse, but it cannot conceal the memories at work inside: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, an unrequited love, and the ghosts of racism that still haunt the islanders. First novels rarely attract as much attention as Snow Falling on Cedars. Remaining on best seller lists for months, it has cast a spell on listeners across the country.

They said I was a bad idea. Poor. Violent. Criminal. They said I'd amount to nothing, and I believed them, too. Until I met her. Layla Barros saved me from my worst, but to do that, she lost the best herself. Now it's my turn to bring her back to life. If only I can figure out how to do it. I'll do anything to protect the chance we finally have together. I'll follow her to the other side of the word: Brazil. Cuba. You name it. But how can I be her true north when I'm still finding my direction, too?

Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.

This national best-seller vividly reconstructs one of the most unbelievable and controversial battles in American military history—General Custer’s Last Stand in 1876. Why would a seasoned leader like Custer lead 200 U.S. Army soldiers into battle against 2,000 Native American warriors? The answer lies in this book, which captures in stunning detail the heroism, foolishness, and brutality that led to this legendary battle.

Mac knows he's a dead man. His only hope is to join another cattle drive on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, deep in New Mexico Territory. The journey ahead is even deadlier than the hired guns behind him. His trail boss is an ornery cuss. His crewmate is the owner's spoiled son. And the route is overrun with kill-crazy rustlers and bloodthirsty Comanche. To make matters worse, Mac's would-be killers are closing in fast. But when the cattle owner's son is kidnapped, the courageous young cook has no choice but to jump out of the frying pan - and into the fire....

Over 120 years after Oscar Wilde submitted The Picture of Dorian Gray for publication, the uncensored version of his novel appears here for the first time in audio. This volume restores material, including instances of graphic homosexual content, removed by the novel's first editor, who feared it would be "offensive" to Victorians.

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato - where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues - a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris - a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

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.

Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and an intriguing interpretation of British history - these are just some of the themes embraced by the anonymous authors of the eleven tales that make up the Welsh medieval masterpiece known as The Mabinogion. They tell of Gwydion the shape-shifter, who can create a woman out of flowers; of Math the magician whose feet must lie in the lap of a virgin; of hanging a pregnant mouse and hunting a magical boar.

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.

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 sweeping story that transports the listener from a tribal African village to a plantation in the Southern United States, from the teeming Halifax docks to the manor houses of London, The Book of Negroes introduces one of the strongest female characters in recent Canadian fiction, one who cuts a swath through a world hostile to her colour and her sex.

Carlos Castaneda takes the listener into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is “natural” and “logical”. His landscape is full of terrors and mysterious forces, as sharply etched as a flash of lightning on the deserts and mountains where don Juan takes him to pursue the sorcerer’s knowledge - the knowledge that it is the Eagle that gives us, at our births, a spark of awareness, that it expects to reclaim at the end of our lives and which the sorcerer, through his discipline, fights to retain.

What do you do when the love of your life forgets? Not the good times. Not the love. Not the passion. But the pain and heartbreak and betrayal. He doesn't remember that he broke my heart. But I do. He doesn't remember the darkest parts of our marriage. He doesn't remember that six months ago, I said goodbye. What do you do when the love of your life remembers your marriage but not your divorce?

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.