Letters Literature

Tacky is about the power of pop culture - like any art - to imprint itself on our lives and shape our experiences, no matter one's commitment to "good" taste. These 14 essays are a nostalgia-soaked antidote to the millennial generation's obsession with irony, putting the aesthetics we hate to love - snakeskin pants, Sex and the City, Cheesecake Factory's gargantuan menu - into kinder and sharper perspective.

After her mother, Brenda, passed away and her father sold the family home, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself floundering, unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then they found the letters. This heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters is a celebration of correspondence; those lost acts of penned love, the vivid snapshots in time scattered back through a life.

There's no such thing as privacy in the tiny village of Birdswing. Everywhere Dr. Benjamin Bones turns, someone is spying from a window, listening through a wall, or gossiping over a garden fence. "The birds sing in Birdswing," says the vicar, Father Cotterill; and in February 1940, this is more true than ever. Waiting for Hitler to make his move and turn this "Phony War" into the real thing, Ben's fellow villagers are desperate for a distraction.

As World War Two rages, MI5 agent Sarah Gillespie is faced with her toughest challenge yet: handling Adeline Vernier, a mysterious double agent from Paris. Adeline’s coded letters could help the Allies defeat the Germans – but, in return, she demands that her boyfriend is rescued from Nazi-occupied France. Adeline is not above threatening to double-cross MI5 to get what she wants, leaving Sarah fearful for the millions of lives at stake.

KEIN GOTT. KEIN KRIEG. KEIN MONSTER. KANN SIE ENTZWEIEN. Zwei Wochen ist es her, seit Iris von der Front zurückgekehrt ist. Zwei Wochen, seit ihr Herz in tausend Stücke zerbrach, weil sie den Mann, den sie liebt, während Dacres Angriff zurücklassen musste. Verzweifelt wartet sie auf ein Lebenszeichen von Roman und versucht, ihn über die magische Verbindung ihrer Schreibmaschinen zu erreichen. Doch als endlich der lang ersehnte Brief von ihm ankommt, bestätigt sich Iris' größte Angst! Roman steht unter Dacres Einfluss, der all seine Erinnerungen an Iris ausgelöscht hat.

A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin - critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane.

When I sold a vintage typewriter, I never imagined its new owner would become my pen pal, best friend, and secret crush. We have two rules: no photos and no real names. Over the years, "Remington" and I have gone from typewritten notes to daily texts, but our rules stay the same. And so does my life. I'm a wannabe writer who can't complete a novel, and I've fallen for a guy who I've never met. So when I received a letter my Nanna wrote before she died encouraging me to embark on a summer of risks—my first on the list was to break all the rules.

Thirty-five Letters is a compilation of found letters written by a mother to her absent son. Spanning from 1972 to the spring of 1980, these letters offer insight into the world of a wife and mother who is trying desperately to keep her life on track and family intact.

Millie Ashton thinks London society is full of empty headed, arrogant fools, but when she meets Alex Radley she falls desperately in love with him. Fearing humiliation and rejection, she decides the only sensible thing to do is take her pride and go home to India. Men like Alex do not fall for girls like her, whereas every girl loses her heart to Alexander the Great. Alex Radley, Marquess of Brooke rules the ton like a god, but even gods are known to fall for mere mortals.

Set in New York in the '80s and '90s, Upstate tells the story of two young lovers, Antonio and Natasha, torn apart by tragedy and struggling to survive against all odds. When a horrific tragedy sends Antonio to jail, their worlds turn upside down.

Veranlasst durch eine Rezension von August Wilhelm Schlegel zeigte Goethe sich im Dezember 1797 zuversichtlich, die Regeln des Epos und des Dramas herauszuarbeiten. "Seit der Erscheinung der Schlegelschen Recension meines Herrmanns habe ich die Gesetze der Epopée und des Dramas wieder durchgedacht und glaube auf gutem Wege zu seyn. Die Schwierigkeit bey diesen theoretischen Bemühungen ist immer die Dichtarten von allem zufälligen zu befreyen. Nächstens erhalten Sie wohl einen kleinen Aufsatz darüber und ich mag daher nichts weiter voraussagen." (Goethe an Schiller, 20.12.1797).

One sunny Spring morning, EJ's simple life is turned upside down when the town's master gardener unceremoniously hands her a stack of handwritten letters that have all been addressed to a nonexistent person at the garden. This simple act sets in motion a chain of events that will lead EJ on a life-altering quest to uncover the identity of the mysterious letter writer―and into a surprising head-on confrontation with the harsh realities of the racial injustice that is as deeply rooted in the life of her community as the ancient herbs cultivated in the Moravian garden.

Margaret Lovell tries her best to love everyone. But when it comes to Lord Blackwell, she doesn't care to succeed. After the young Earl of Blackwell accused her father of cheating and tricked him out of his fortune, she has despised him for causing their disgrace and lack of security. So when she learns that Lord Blackwell is on his deathbed, she cannot help but feel a lack of sympathy. With her family's financial situation worsening, she doesn't have time to think of anything else, especially the man who caused it.

Best-selling novelist, memoirist, and biographer Edmund White displays his sharp wit and boundless erudition in 37 portraits of the writers, artists, and cultural icons who have captured his curiosity and imagination for the last 20 years. White is as compelling as he is unpretentious in these stories of his encounters with some of the most provocative writers, artists, and personalities of our time.

En este divertidísimo, muy serio y excepcionalmente original libro, C. S. Lewis comparte con nosotros la correspondencia entre el viejo diablo y su sobrino Orugario, un novato demonio encargado de asegurarse de la condenación de un joven hombre. Cartas del Diablo a Su Sobrino es la historia más atractiva acerca de la tentación -- y el triunfo sobre ella -- jamás escrita.

Sometimes your life is split by a single decision. I've spent every day of the last seven years regretting mine: He left, and I didn't follow. A thousand letters went unanswered, my words like petals in the wind, spinning away into nothing, taking me with them. But now he's back. I barely recognize the man he's become, but I can still see a glimmer of the boy who asked me to be his forever, the boy I walked away from when I was young and afraid. Maybe if he'd come home under better circumstances, he could speak to me without anger in his voice.

Jeremy Wheale's well-ordered life is blasted apart when his brother is murdered. The killer was after a family heirloom - an antique gold tray - which sets Wheale on a trail from Devon to the tropical rainforest of Yucatan. There he joins the hunt for a lost Mayan city. But in the dense cover of the jungle, a band of vicious convict mercenaries are waiting to strike....

One of the King's most trusted knights has vanished in the snow, so young Sir Tiuri and his best friend Piak must journey into the shadowy heart of the forest to find him. The Wild Wood is a place of mysteries, rumors, and whispered tales. A place of lost cities, ancient curses, robbers, princesses, and Men in Green. As the darkness surrounds him and reports grow of secret plots and ruthless enemies, Tiuri finds himself alone and fighting for survival - caught in a world where good and evil wear the same face.

Love Letters is a romance story featuring an alpha man and a curvy woman. I fell in love with her cupcakes...and then with her. But I screwed up. I didn't tell her I was leaving the next day. Now, I have to find a way to her heart, with love letters.

Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The only Chinese citizen known to have openly and steadfastly opposed communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith—and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets.