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Salvage : readings from the wreck / by Brand, Dionne,1953-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."In her first full-length non-fiction since A Map to the Door of No Return, Dionne Brand examines "classic" books from her earlier life, exposing implications both personal and political. A bracing look at reading, life, and what remains in the wreck of empire. "The geopolitics of empire had already prepared me for this ... [the fact that] coloniality constructs outsides and insides -- worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted, and navigated -- in order to live something like a real self." So writes internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand, as she reflects on her early reading, growing up as an avid bookworm in Trinidad and Tobago, and the dawning realization of how the books she devoured, and sometimes loved, also made Black being inanimate. Uniquely and powerfully blending memoir with rigorous and expansive thinking, Brand explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes in famous and familiar books, looking particularly at the extraordinary implications and modern-day reverberations of stories such as Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and consciousness. Much more than a memoir, and much more than a literary examination, this is gripping, revelatory and essential reading by one of our most powerful and brilliant writers."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Literary criticism.; Personal narratives.; Brand, Dionne, 1953-; Black people in literature.; Colonies in literature.; Imperialism in literature.; Racism in literature.;

The golden age of murder : the mystery of the writers who invented the modern detective story / by Edwards, Martin,1955-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.A real-life detective story, investigating how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction, writing books casting new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors' darkest secrets.
Subjects: Detection Club.; Detective and mystery stories, English; English fiction;

A mind spread out on the ground / by Elliott, Alicia,author.;
"A bold and profound work by Haudenosaunee writer Alicia Elliott, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is a personal and critical meditation on trauma, legacy, oppression and racism in North America. In an urgent and visceral work that asks essential questions about Native people in North America while drawing on intimate details of her own life and experience with intergenerational trauma, Alicia Elliott offers indispensable insight and understanding to the ongoing legacy of colonialism. What are the links between depression, colonialism and loss of language--both figurative and literal? How does white privilege operate in different contexts? How do we navigate the painful contours of mental illness in loved ones without turning them into their sickness? How does colonialism operate on the level of literary criticism? A Mind Spread Out on the Ground is Alicia Elliott's attempt to answer these questions and more. In the process, she engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, sexuality, love, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, writing and representation. Elliott makes connections both large and small between the past and present, the personal and political--from overcoming a years-long history with head lice to the way Native writers are treated within the Canadian literary industry; her unplanned teenage pregnancy to the history of dark matter and how it relates to racism in the court system; her childhood diet of Kraft dinner to how systematic oppression is linked to depression in Native communities. With deep consideration and searing prose, Elliott extends far beyond her own experiences to provide a candid look at our past, an illuminating portrait of our present and a powerful tool for a better future."--
Subjects: Native peoples; Racism; Colonization;

Jane Austen's bookshelf : a rare book collector's quest to find the women writers who shaped a legend / by Romney, Rebecca,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen's books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn't a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers -- and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen's work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn't a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase "pride and prejudice" came from Frances Burney's second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen's bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn't Romney -- despite her training -- ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon? Jane Austen's Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen's heroes -- women writers who were erased from the Western canon -- to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth -- and recounts Romney's experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen's. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen's bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen's Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Literary criticism.; Personal narratives.; Austen, Jane, 1775-1817; Austen, Jane, 1775-1817; Burney, Fanny, 1752-1840; Radcliffe, Ann, 1764-1823; Lennox, Charlotte, approximately 1729-1804; Smith, Charlotte, 1749-1806; More, Hannah, 1745-1833; Inchbald, Mrs., 1753-1821; Piozzi, Hester Lynch, 1741-1821; Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849; English literature; Literature; Women novelists, English; Women novelists, English; Women novelists, English; Women novelists, English;

Everything and less : the novel in the age of Amazon / by McGurl, Mark,1966-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl discovers a dynamic scene of literary experimentation in an unlikely location: in the realms of self-publishing created by Amazon. Reclaiming several works of self-published fiction from the abyss of critical disregard, McGurl offers a Copernican revolution in the world of letters: rather than giving central importance to the critically lionized highbrows--Colson Whitehead, Don DeLillo, Elena Ferrante, and Amitav Ghosh, among others--he discovers that their fiction orbits countless unknown authors forging a career through untraditional means"--
Subjects: Amazon.com (Firm); Electronic publishing.; Self-publishing.; Fiction; Fiction;

Everything and nothing at all : essays / by Wills, Jenny Heijun,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."From Hilary Weston Prize-winning author Jenny Heijun Wills comes a new collection of piercing, breathtaking essays on beauty, identity, and language -- as well as the grey zones that exist between and within these notions of self. As an adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the spaces of race and ethnicity. As a polyamorous, pansexual femme, she occupies a liminality between family -- adopted, biological, chosen -- and "freedom;" queerness and heteronormativity; monogamy and a constellation of love. As a person who self-harms to cope with mental illness, she moves between the desire to be beautiful and the urge to make herself ugly, preening in the limelight while daily wishing her body would disappear. And as a parent with a lifelong eating disorder, her love language is to feed, but she finds it near-impossible to consume anything herself. These facets of Jenny's personhood have served as both the anchors she has clung to, in the time before self-discovery and understanding, and the harsh parameters of what others now imagine she can be. Everything and Nothing At All weaves together literary criticism, cultural context, and personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge. Yet Jenny is acutely aware of the cost of this knowledge: the more she uncovers, the more parts of herself she must reconcile. And though she is guided by those who came before -- her Korean grandmother, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, even Emily Brontë, when read with intention -- and the lovers she has sewn into her life, they cannot shield her from the combined weight of this knowledge. It feels at once like everything she has been seeking in order to set herself free, and that which threatens to extinguish her, one day, into nothing at all. Devastating, illuminating, and beautifully crafted, these essays breathe life into the ambiguities and excesses of Jenny's life, where she lingers always at the intersections within the intersections of identity."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Essays.; Personal narratives.; Wills, Jenny Heijun.; Body image.; Pansexual people; Self-perception.; Authors, Canadian (English);

The Ruth Rendell mysteries. [videorecording] / by Baker, George.; Butler, Josephine.; Callis, James.; Ravenscroft, Christopher.; Acorn Media (Firm); Blue Heaven (Firm); Granada International Media Limited.;
Volume 1. Simisola.Volume 2. Road rage.James Callis, Josephine Butler, George Baker, Christopher Ravenscroft, Barbara Ewing, David Daker, Jerome Flynn, Sadie Frost, Serena Evans, Simon Chandler.In these two Inspector Wexford specials, the kindly, compassionate detective investigates the disappearance of his doctor's daughter and an environmental protest that goes horribly wrong. As always, award-winning writer Ruth Rendell weaves incisive social observation into her compelling plots, showing why critics and fans regard her as the reigning queen of the British literary mystery.14A.DVD ; full screen presentation.
Subjects: Rendell, Ruth, 1930-; Criminal investigation; Detective and mystery television programs.;
© c2009., Acorn Media,

Wonderworks : the 25 most powerful innovations in the history of literature / by Fletcher, Angus,1976-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A brilliant examination of literary invention through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to Elena Ferrante, showing how writers created technical breakthroughs as sophisticated and significant as any in science, and in the process, engineered enhancements to the human heart and mind"--
Subjects: Literature;

Cold warriors : writers who waged the literary Cold War / by White, Duncan,1979-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.A brilliant, invigorating account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War. During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to exile, imprisonment or execution if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union had secret agents and vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turning on each other, lovers cleaved by political fissures, artists undermined by inadvertent complicities. In Cold Warriors, Harvard University's Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book has at its heart five major writers--George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene and Andrei Sinyavsky--but the full cast includes a dazzling array of giants, among them Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carr, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, Arthur Koestler, Vaclav Havel, Joan Didion, Isaac Babel, Howard Fast, Lillian Hellman, Mikhail Sholokhov--and scores more. Spanning decades and continents and spectacularly meshing gripping narrative with perceptive literary detective work, Cold Warriors is a welcome reminder that, at a moment when ignorance is celebrated and reading seen as increasingly irrelevant, writers and books can change the world.
Subjects: Biographies.; Cold War in literature.; Politics and literature.; Authors; Literature, Modern;

Small Things Like These [electronic resource] : by Keegan, Claire.aut; Kelly, Aidan.nrt; cloudLibrary;
The landmark new novel from award-winning author Claire Keegan It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Literary;
© 2021., HighBridge Audio,

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