Showing results by narrator "Ramiz Monsef" in All Categories

Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.

In Entrapment and Other Writings - containing his unfinished novel and previously unpublished or uncollected stories, poems, and essays - Algren speaks to our time as few of his fellow great American writers of the 1940s and ’50s do, in part because he hasn’t yet been accepted and assimilated into the American literary canon, despite that he is held up as a talismanic figure.

The fiction and reportage included in The Last Carousel, one of the final collections published during Nelson Algren’s lifetime, was written on ships and in ports of call around the world, and includes accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of Algren’s beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects. In this collection, not just Algren’s intensity but his diversity are revealed and celebrated.

FBI Special Agent Drew Cady is reluctantly drawn into investigating the assassination of a sitting United States senator. Strangely, the senator’s death is linked to a murdered Baltimore junkie with an identical MO - a single stab wound to the heart and a typed eulogy left at the scene. As Agent Cady deals with a professional hit man known only as the Canadian, as well as a breakthrough Alzheimer’s drug, a misanthropic hacker, and a Mexican drug cartel, he peels back the layers of deceit and comes to realize that even the reddest of red herrings can bite.

Nelson Algren was a renowned writer, known for his penetrating and influential social novels such as The Man with the Golden Arm and A Walk on the Wild Side. Originally published in 1935, Somebody in Boots was Algren’s first novel, based on his experiences living in Texas during the Great Depression. A wonderful companion to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, this new edition of Somebody in Boots features an introduction by Colin Asher, the author of a biography of Algren.

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project. Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit in Prague - he'd known it was one of Lech's proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.

From Spur Award-winning novelist Wayne D. Overholser comes this collection of Western short stories. This collection includes "The Woman from Cougar Creek", "The Price of Pride", "The Devil and Old Man Gillis", "Shooting for a Fall", "It's Hell to Be a Hero", "The Tongue-Tied Cowboy", "From Hell to Leadville", "The Deputy with a Past", "Judge Peterson's Colt Law", "The Breaking of Sam McKay", "Fugitive from the Boothill Brigade", and "The Man Ten Feet Tall".

Saddle tramp Sam MacKinnon is in trouble. Double-crossed by his partners after robbing a saloon and gambling hall, MacKinnon has been left behind in the mountains of southern New Mexico with busted ribs, a banged-up head, no gun, and no horse. And no chance - because aging lawman Nelson Bookbinder and his Mescalero Apache scout, Nikita - both made legendary by dime novels MacKinnon has read - are leading a small posse hot in pursuit of the bandits. Miraculously, MacKinnon escapes the law, finds his horse and rifle, and, despite his injuries, sets out on the vengeance trail.

The small town of Ballester owes its prosperity to the confluence of three big ranches - Snowshoe, Mexican Hat, and Rainbow. Its single lawman, Deputy Sheriff Percy Whittaker, known as Perc, didn't have to deal with much lawbreaking other than the occasional drunk on a Saturday night. Until a drifter named Sam Logan rode into town looking for work.

You land in prison in your 20s, faced with the likelihood of spending the rest of your life behind the wall. What do you do? Danner Darcleight started writing. He writes about what he sees, what he has done, and the toll that his own past actions have exacted. Concrete Carnival brings us inside a maximum-security prison, introducing a colorful cast of rogues while revealing the day-to-day struggles experienced by millions of Americans now living inside the world's largest prison complex.

The year is 2002. Weekly news magazines dominate the political agenda in New York and Washington. A young journalist named Michael M. Hastings is an intern at The Magazine, wet behind the ears, the only one in the office who has actually read his coworkers' books. He will stop at nothing to turn his internship into a full-time position and has figured out just who to impress: Nishant Patel, the international editor, and Sanders Berman, managing editor - both vying for the job of editor-in-chief.

Award-winning novelist Taylor Brown brings to life one of the most compelling events in twentieth-century American history, reminding us of the hard-won origins of today’s unions. Rednecks is a propulsive, character-driven tale that’s both a century old and blisteringly contemporary: a story of unexpected friendship, heroism in the face of injustice, and the power of love and community against all odds.

Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell’s least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, which involves a pathetic family upstate and a mysterious black monolith. It’s a sexy enough assignment—colonial origins, mutating victims, et cetera—but Laszlo has no interest in maximizing the curse’s potential; he’d rather sunbathe in Ibiza, quaff martinis, and hustle the hustlers on Manhattan’s subway.

On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a ten-minute televised speech announcing his resignation as Soviet president. Moments later, with little pomp and less circumstance, the red flag was lowered from its floodlit perch atop the Kremlin, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Into the vacuum—before a new democracy had time to put down roots—surged the Russian mafia, supplying what the new state could not: krysha, or “roof”—protection for the privately owned businesses sprouting across the country.

In the Connecticut suburbs, a motherless young man suddenly becomes the beneficiary of a wealthy older couple, whose generosity has unsuspected motives and a sinister price. On an island in Australia’s Torres Strait, an enigmatic castaway throws kinks into the local culture and sexual politics. And in the jungles of Vietnam, four American soldiers undertake a mystical search for a man-eating tiger.

Sheriff Jacob Wilkinson loves his younger brother, William, but it’s not easy when Will’s constantly trying to shoot him. Will blames his brother for the death of his young wife and has nothing left to live for—except vengeance. For his part, Jake is trying to do the right thing and track down the Collier gang, the ones actually responsible for the incident that robbed Will of his wife. But with Will sabotaging him at every turn, the odds that Jake will get justice for his brother seem nigh impossible.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service Special Agent Tyrone Benhoff is in purgatory. That’s what agents call it when they find themselves on the wrong side of command and are transferred to a place like Djibouti, Africa. He tried to open a case in Virginia that was too close to the wrong people. Now he’s being watched for even the slightest screw-up so his enemies at headquarters can drive him out of the agency. When a sailor on leave from Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, is killed outside a wildlife preserve in Zimbabwe, Ty is hand-picked to lead the investigation.

A coming-of-age story set against the collapse of Slovakia and the conquest of the Allied Forces over Germany, learn how one child’s remarkable journey to safety and adolescence encompasses the essence of Jewish life before the war and the overwhelming tragedy of a genocide whose effects are still being felt around the world. Written with the precision of unfailing memory and the pain of personal experience, Oscar (Osi) Sladek tells an unforgettable story of resilience and personal triumph.

Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit is a beautifully written novel in verse loosely based on author Colby Cedar Smith’s maternal grandmother. The story follows Mary as she and her family emigrate from Greece to Detroit in the 1930s, creating a historically accurate portrayal of life as an immigrant during the Great Depression, hunger strikes, and violent riots. Mary lives in a tiny apartment with her immigrant parents, her brothers, and her twin sister, and she questions why her parents ever came to America.

Angels, monsters, and bees. Birdwatchers, emperors, and prison wardens. These and more populate the twenty-two new and old stories from award-winning author E. Lily Yu, collected for the first time here in her debut short story collection. From her early innovative work that won her the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, such as "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees," to recent short fiction such as "Small Monsters," E. Lily Yu's writing has continued to garner award nominations and recognition from the literary community for its faceted beauty, cutting edge, and uplifting heart.