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- Doc--an honest, dishonest narrator
- child's play
- Looking to read Everything Else He's Written!
- A whole life made "out of gestures and politeness"
- Too much suburbia, too little war
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A Gesture Life: A Novel
Chang-Rae Lee
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1573228281
Release Date: 2000-10-10 |
Amazon.com
Never judge a book by its cover--or, for that matter, by its name. Otherwise you might overlook A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee's fine if awkwardly entitled follow-up to Native Speaker. As he did in his debut, the author explores the dilemma of being an outsider--and the corrupt, heartbreaking bargains an outsider will make to adapt to his surroundings. The protagonist, Franklin Hata, has actually spent his whole life donning one variety or another of existential camouflage. First, as a native-born Korean, he bends over backwards to fit into Japanese culture, circa 1944. Then he attempts a similar bit of environmental adaptation in postwar America--more specifically, in the slumbering New York suburb of Bedley Run. But in neither case does he quite succeed, which gives the novel its peculiar, faltering sense of tragedy.
"There is something exemplary to the sensation of near perfect lightness," confesses this resident alien, "of being in a place and not being there, which seems of course a chronic condition of my life but then, too, its everyday unction, the trouble finding a remedy but not quite a cure, so that the problem naturally proliferates until it has become you through and through. Such is the cast of my belonging, molding to whatever is at hand."
A Gesture Life presents this chronic condition in two different time frames. In one, delivered via flashback, Hata is a medical officer in Japan's Imperial Army. Posted to a tiny installation in rural Burma, he's ordered to oversee a fresh detachment of Korean "comfort women"--i.e., victims of institutionalized gang rape. At first he maintains his professional distance, not to mention his erotic appetite: "It was the notion of what lay beneath the crumpled cotton of their poor clothes that shook me like an air-raid siren." But soon enough he's drawn into a relationship with one of the women, whose bloody and horrific denouement leaves a permanent mark on the "unblissed detachment" of his existence.
The present-tense, American half of the story revolves around Hata's life in Bedley Run, where he adopts, alienates, and finally forms a shaky rapport with his daughter, Sunny. We might expect this sort of material to pale in comparison with his wartime trauma. But oddly enough, Hata's suburban melancholia is much more compelling--and the gradual disclosure of his past, which is supposed to ratchet up the tension, seems too crude a mechanism for a writer of Lee's superlative talents. (His truest tutelary spirit, in fact, might be John Cheever, who gets an explicit nod at one point.) None of this is to dismiss A Gesture Life, whose dual narratives are written with a rare, unhurried elegance. And if Lee's splice job lacks the absolute adhesion we expect from a great work of art, he nonetheless pulls off a remarkable, moving feat: he puts us inside the skin of a man who, "if he could choose, might always go silent and unseen." --James Marcus
Book Description
The riveting story of a Japanese immigrant who leads a proper, decorous life in a New York suburb. As his life slowly unravels, he is transported back to his days as a medic in the Japanese army in World War II, and his obsessive love of a young comfort woman.
"Not since Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day has there been a novel so attentive to the interplay of dark memory and light manners...a beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book."-New York Times Book Review
"Exceptional...A beautifully tapestried story of seeking identity and acceptance in another culture while remaining separate from the tug of it."--Christian Science Monitor
"A Gesture Life is the touching, multilayered rumination of an uneasy psyche. It is also a tragic, horrifying page-turner, whose evocation of wartime victims is unforgettable...a deeply involving tale."-Chicago Tribune
A Gesture Life is:
"Unforgettable."-USA Today
"Mesmerizing."-San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
"Masterly."-Newsweek
"Magnificent."-Newsday
"Beautiful."-Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Hugely affecting."-Boston Globe
"Remarkable."-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
One Of The Most Celebrated Novels of the Year
A New York Times Notable Book
A Los Angeles Times Notable Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Notable Book of the Year
A Finalist for the New Yorker Book Award
An Esquire Distinguished Book of the Year
Talk Magazine's Best Book of 1999
An ALA Notable Book of the Year
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch Notable Book of the Year
Customer Reviews:
Doc--an honest, dishonest narrator.......2006-12-24
Ah, the unreliable narrator. Lee has an excellent command of the English language, as always present in his novels. This element is always an interesting juxtaposition in the lives of his characters--as it is often assumed that immigrants would be clumsy and ignorant when speaking in a non-native language (which is also a reference to one of his other works, Native-Speaker).
Doc, who is called Doc by all the towns residents, is not a doctor at all, one of many ironic details of his life. He is excellent proof that inaction and not making active choices are in fact action and active choices. A man with a weak heart, literally and metaphorically, Doc Hata misrepsents himself his whole life, or lets others believe things about him that aren't quite true, nor are they false.
A work of slippery truths, examples of how memory is distorted and frail, liminal spaces, and unexpected twists, this novel provides an excellent literary and thought-provoking journey.
child's play.......2006-03-10
child's play, that's the impression one gets upon reading chang-rae lee's gesture life, child's play in the sense that the author is at home in english as no other writer currently wielding this thing we've assigned our globe's lingua franca. maybe i exaggerate a little, but there is no denying the talent, the effortless grace with which chang-rae lee can evoke an image, intercalate a dialogue with a telling descriptive detail, and sustain a narrative without resorting to gimmicks or fancy word play. mastery of diction, syntax, narrative structure and style, they're all there for the aspiring novelist to envy and admire and the casual reader to blissfully ignore as the story and the plot is as equally elegant, profound and compelling. buy the book or steal it if you must, just get the darn thing and read. you'll be doing yourself a favor.
Looking to read Everything Else He's Written!.......2006-02-25
A Gesture Life. The very title of this novel intrigued me. What exactly would that look/feel/sound like? Then I pulled the book from the shelf and was no less satisfied but all the more compelled by its cover---at once dreamy, theatrical, beautiful in some classic way...
Now that I have finished this book I can say "Yes, I certainly know what Chang-rae Lee means by A Gesture Life. This work is phenomenal in ways that lull the reader into a sense of "All is right with the world", only to have that world up-ended by layers-deep revelations...some coming in cumulative fashion, others coming at you so fast you've no time to 'duck' [or even consider the possibility]. Then again, there are those illuminations that you believe you understand, only to find they stretch and grow larger, and at times, to the point of inconceiveablity.
Lee's writing is on par with the finest I've ever had the experience to read. It is breathtaking in its poetic beauty, haunting in its relentlessness, transcendental in its offering of this amazing life of Doc Hata, its main character. I am left struck with so many new awarenesses, and simple relief for the realizations brought to light within the pages of this book. I often imagined HOW Lee kept himself composed to write many parts within it. Lee's ability to empathize and lend grace to unspeakable circumstances is immeasurable.
Remarkable, astounding, honest work. I am grateful to know this author's work and will now seek out everything else he has to share with us.
Bravo, Bravo, Bravo.
A whole life made "out of gestures and politeness".......2006-01-15
Franklin Hata (or "Doc Hata," as he is known to the residents of Bedley Run) is a friendly and polite, if reserved and serene, septuagenarian who is considered by his neighbors as a stalwart member of the community. Of Korean birth, he was adopted and raised by a family in Japan and entered the Japanese Army during Second World War before emigrating to the United States. In spite of his efforts to immerse himself first in his Japanese homeland and then in American suburbia, he never becomes fully part of either culture.
The conflicted protaganist of "A Gesture Life" is also a reluctant narrator of his own life. Having spent seven decades building a facade of decorum, he hides failures and misfortunes from the reader, revealing them glacially as he accounts for the loneliness in his old age, as well as for his ultimate inability to fill roles others expect of him--and he expects of himself.
Hata's story revolves around the presence of five women, and he sheds his secretiveness as he introduces and portrays each of them. Foremost is his adopted Korean daughter, Sunny, who as a youth gradually rebelled against his propriety and his remoteness and who scorns the dreams he has envisioned for her future. Repulsed and even embarrassed by his artificiality, she tells him spitefully, "You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness."
Hata also becomes close (or as close as his politesse will allow) to three women in the community: a neighbor with whom he has a brief affair, a realtor who wants to put his immaculately kept home on the market, and the mother of a terminally ill son who, along with her husband, buys Hata's medical supplies shop when he retires.
But a central conceit of the novel is a lesser-known aspect of the Pacific war. We gradually realize that Hata's relationship with his daughter is an unsuccessful attempt at redemption for his involvement, as a medical officer in the Japanese army, with the Korean "comfort women" who were enticed to volunteer for service and then forced to be prostitutes--and particularly for one of the women, Kkutaeh, who suffers horrendously on his watch.
Lee's novel is notable for its dichotomy: Hata's quiet mien and the seemingly calm first-person narrative conflict sharply with the tragedies and the strife he witnesses and reluctantly recalls. "A Gesture Life" is a study of a man so concerned with always doing the right thing that he inevitably does the wrong one. It is only when he confronts his past that he truly finds redemption.
Too much suburbia, too little war.......2006-01-06
I bought this book because of the great reviews, because I was looking for something new, and because of the emphasis from some reviews here on Amazon on the World War II sections.
But overall, this book is first and foremost about life in american suburbia - the very powerful World War II chapters occupy at best 20-25% of the book, and don't kick in until about half way through. So much of the remainder of the book reverted to why people have a hard time making deep friendships or building satisfactory family relationships in typical, affluent american neighborhoods. Some parts here were very touching, particularly the one about the Hickey's, but others seemed forced, particularly the Liv-Renny relationship. The sequence of events towards the end strains credulity, and I found the "happy" ending dissatisfying.'
I dont usually identify with books in set in america suburbia. In this case, I came out somewhat satisfied. At the very least, I finished the book (in two days), which is already saying something given that I was unable to do so when I tried books by Richard Ford and Tim Obrien which also had great reviews. But it will take another book to make me a fan of this genre.
Book Description
A beautiful and harrowing reflection on memory and accountability,
Gestures is a tale of eloquent and tragic force.
The story begins in 1923. A young and inexperienced Foreign Service officer, Jeremy Burnham arrives in the storied and exotic city of Venice to take up his first post. He falls into a friendship with an attractive older woman, Jane Carlyle, who initiates him into Venetian society and introduces him to the enigmatic Eva von Woerden, and the cosmopolitan Jewish art connoisseur Anthony Manet. The destinies of these four characters become enlaced as Venice and Italy fall under the encroaching shadow of fascism. When one of them is brutally murdered, a chain of events is set off that will climax more than twenty years later in the ruins of post-war Amsterdam, when the lessons of courage and moral responsibility implicit in that earlier death are at last made plain. H. S. Bhabra’s stunning novel is a richly wrought narrative of a world caught in the flux of the twentieth century.
Customer Reviews:
An Almost Perfect Book.......2006-06-09
Sometimes novelists overreach. Bhabra almost certainly did, when he undertook to write a book that encompasses all the upheaval, dislocation, pain, betrayal and romance of pre-WWII Venice and post-WWII Amsterdam, as seen through the eyes of an aging aristocratic British career diplomat. Yet what is astonishing is how close this book comes to perfection. It is, after whatever criticism one might have of the plot and the development of the central character, a beautifully written book that displays a formidable knowledge of history and geography. You may not remember the twists and turns of the story, but you will never forget the sense of being completely engrossed in the world that Bhabra creates and of the array of emotions it evokes. It may not be a perfect book, if in fact there is such a thing, but it comes within a hair's breadth of being so. Don't miss it.
Amazing - great to see it back in print.......2005-08-21
I have always liked this book, with its vast international canvas and 'fin de siecle' feel. It was the only one HS Bhabra published under his own name, but fans may like to try the thrillers he wrote as A M KABAL too.
I cannot praise this one too much........2004-10-01
I hesitate writing a review for this book because I fear I lack the words to do it justice. Still, I like to try - if only for the hope that maybe I end up saying something that might convince another reader to pick up this exceptional novel. Certain that he/she will at the end agree that the reading of this novel has been one of the richest reading experiences in his/her life; I know it has been for me.
I first read Gestures over a decade ago and the memory of that experience is still vivid in my mind. What H.S. Bhabra managed to do was draw me in in such an artful way that I wasn't even aware of what was happening. And not until I found myself surrounded by the atmosphere of the characters and places was it that I knew that I was lost in the tale that H.S. Bhabra was telling. A tale told with the virtuosity of an extremely gifted writer.
Like the other reviewer I too stayed up till deep in the night, experiencing a wide range of emotions and feelings that to this day impresses me deeply. Rarely has an author's words managed to evoke half that many emotions and feelings from me as H.S. Bhabra has.
I could, of course, talk about what befalls the characters. Tell about their fate, the places they visit, the relations they have, but I won't. I won't because I'd hate to ruin the surprise. All I will say is that to not read this novel will make you poorer by having missed out on what undoubtedly would have been one of the best reading experiences of your entire life. A big statement, yet I'm certain of its truth.
One last remark. For years I've searched for other books by H.S. Bhabra, to my surprise Amazon did not even have Gestures for sale (this made me anxiously guard my copy of Gestures as I feared losing it and never again being able to read it), and today was the first time when searching for books by Bhabra yielded results. To my surprise I found Gestures. :) It makes me very happy to see this story in print again (it was first published in Great Britain in 1986). Some stories are simply too great to ever be out of print.
A stunning Book.......2003-03-17
...It is a joy to read, and transports the reader to a world that is lost and which few of us living today ever knew existed. But that is only part 1.
It gets better! Taking up the narrative twenty years later in the shambles of post-war Amsterdam, the story, like life, gets deeper. I guessed at less than half of the intrigues and interconnections that are revealed in the denouement.
I was up half the night trying to finish this book, and the other half trying to comprehend what I had read. It is a compelling commetary on the interplay of good and evil, the limits of government, and the tension between truth and diplomacy. I was left turning over in my mind the well-worn words of Edmund Burke "In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing". But which of us is good, and which "nothing" should we not do?
An erudite and self-conscious story of 1920's Venice.......2001-01-11
For those who appreciate the old-fashioned British style of novel writing, this Penguin paperback telling of life as a British consul in the 1920's-1930's Venice will be a delight. The man plays as if in his 80's, writing of his youthful work when sent out to Venice. (The author in fact seems to be an Anglo-Indian born in 1955!) He tells of interesting English ex-patriates enjoying the cheap prices of post-WWI Europe, and life in Venice amongst their charms, their parties, their endless hours of leisure. He becomes fond of one Jewish art appraiser and comes to his rescue, he finds himself in confusion over love, and he comments always as if he were now very old and considering all of it again, but in retrospect.
I thoroughly enjoyed this style, and his ability to keep one attached and interested in the motley characters who are tied together by time, place, English language and money, but who then find themselves blown apart by the rise of the Fascisti and the revolutionary forces afloat in Europe.
Average customer rating:
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Sterne's Whimsical Theatres of Language: Orality, Gesture, Literacy (Studies in Early Modern English Literature)
Alexis Tadie
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0754630765 |
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Hallowed Gesture: A Novel of Rebirth and Regret
Joe Cawley
Manufacturer: iUniverse, Inc.
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ASIN: 0595419135 |
Book Description
A war torn country abroad. A civil war raging. An American presence that is continually drawing fire, if not from insurgents ambushing ill-equipped and ill-defended armored vehicles than from political pundits and, increasingly, the general public back home. Iraq? Vietnam? The similarities are striking; the themes universal. This new novel, Hallowed Gesture, harkens back to the Vietnam War with a universal message that is as timely today as it was four decades ago.
Joe McDonnell, flush with the proceeds of a successful lawsuit, returns to his Pennsylvania home to unearth his brother's remains and accompany them for reburial in Arlington National Cemetery only to discover that the body buried in Jim McDonnell's grave is not his. As marines, both Jim and Joe saw bloody action in Vietnam, but only Joe came home to live quietly with his psychological scars and the determination to fulfill his brother's childhood dream of a hero's burial. How that journey is thwarted and turned into an unexpected triumph is the gripping story of this novel, Hallowed Gesture.
Customer Reviews:
An Excellent Read.......2007-02-15
The first page caught my attention immediately. It brought up a lot of memories of the aftermath of the Vietnam era. The book has a lot of material that is found in a lot of books similar to the following authors: Gary Grossman, Daniel De Silva, Alan Folsom. It is not a long book but holds your attention from beginning to end. I really enjoyed this book. I am sure that everyone who reads it will enjoy it. The ending has you ready for the next book.
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Gestures of Healing: Anxiety and the Modern Novel
John J. Clayton
Manufacturer: University of Massachusetts Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 087023739X |
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Grand Gestures: From The Curve
Robert Ullman
Manufacturer: Alternative Comics
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ASIN: 1891867288 |
Book Description
Grand Gestures focuses on three post-collegiate buddies and the romantic relationships, or lack thereof, which lend conflict and comedy to their lives. Ostensibly a love story, this book will strike a familiar chord with anyone who's ever had a heartbreaking crush or gotten hammered and gone home with a stranger.
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The Stony Dance: Unity and Gesture in Andrey Bely's Petersburg (SRLT)
Timothy Langen
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
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ASIN: 0810122243 |
Book Description
Widely considered the greatest Russian modernist novel, Andrei Bely's Petersburg has until now eluded the critical attention that a book of its caliber merits. In The Stony Dance, Timothy Langen offers readers a study of Bely's masterpiece unparalleled in its comprehensiveness, clarity, and inclusion of detail--a critical study that is at the same time a meditation on the nature of literary art.
Thoroughly versed in Russian and European modernism, in Bely's biography and writings, and in twentieth-century literary theory, Langen constructs an original analytic scheme for reading Petersburg. Guided by Bely's fertile but challenging notions of art and philosophy, he analyzes the novel first as an object embodying intentions and essences, then as a pattern of signification and events, and finally as a dance of gestures that coordinate body and meaning, regularity and surprise, self and other, and author, novel, and reader. The terms are derived from Bely's own writings, but they are nuanced with reference to Russian and European contexts and clarified with reference to philosophy and literary theory. Langen shows how Bely invariably challenges his own concepts and patterns, thereby creating an unusually demanding and dynamic text. In finding an approach to these enriching difficulties, this book at long last shows readers a welcoming way into Bely's thought, and his masterwork, and their place in the complex world of early twentieth-century literature.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Mississippi Quarterly, published by Mississippi State University on March 22, 1993. The length of the article is 4178 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Gestures of Healing: Anxiety and the Modern Novel. (book reviews)
Author: Melvin J. Friedman
Publication:
The Mississippi Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1993
Publisher: Mississippi State University
Volume: v46
Issue: n2
Page: p257(10)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
This digital document is an article from MELUS, published by Thomson Gale on June 22, 2006. The length of the article is 11000 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Recognizing the transracial adoptee: adoption life stories and Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life.(Critical essay)
Author: Mark C. Jerng
Publication:
MELUS (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 31
Issue: 2
Page: 41(27)
Article Type: Critical essay
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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- the Heiress
- Unlikeable main characters.
- Unlikeable main characters.
- A Redeemer
- Great character development
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The Heiress: The Bride Quest #3 (Bride Quest Series, 3)
Claire Delacroix
Manufacturer: Dell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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The Princess: The Bride Quest #1 (Bride Quest)
ASIN: 0440225892
Release Date: 1999-09-07 |
Book Description
"When you open a book by Claire Delacroix, you open a treasure chest of words, rare and exquisite!"
--Rendezvous
"I seek a bride, the wealthiest heiress in Ireland."
No woman can resist the charms of Rowan de Montvieux. But the dashing rogue is in no hurry to marry--until his family dares him to find a bride . . . or risk losing his inheritance. So Rowan sets out on a Bride Quest, vowing to wed only . . .
The Heiress.
But his journey is interrupted when a slave merchant offers to sell him a ragged peasant girl who carries herself like a queen. Intrigued and never imagining she is the sought-after Bronwyn of Ballyroyal, an heiress in disguise, Rowan buys her, offering her his protection if she will lead him to the bride he seeks.
Never has he met a woman so proud, so beautiful, so defiant. He suspects she is no commoner and vows to uncover her secrets and melt her fiery resolve. But the perilous voyage to Ireland kindles passions that risk both their lives, as the slave girl who would not be mastered slowly takes possession of his wary heart. . . .
Don't miss the first two novels in the breathtaking Bride Quest trilogy:
The Princess and
The Damsel, both available from Dell.
Customer Reviews:
the Heiress.......2001-06-24
do people really finish this book? The plot is good but get on with it, the author spend about 2 or 3 chapters just on each lovemaking scene, shssss!!!. Laid off the sex already, we get the point. Read this book if stuck in the middle of nowhere and have nothing else to do because it is very slow pace that drag on and on and on... well you get the idea. A waste of money, i wouldn't recomend.
Unlikeable main characters........1999-10-18
I was very disapointed with this book. I read to page 220 and decided I was wasting my time. I did not like either the Heiress or her suitor. The were shallow selfish people. When I decided the character that interested me the most was Baldassre, the slave trading, revenge seeking Ventian, I put the book down and have no intention of finishing it. I have read other books by Delacroix that I really enjoyed. I do not recommend this book.
Unlikeable main characters........1999-10-18
I was very disappointed with this book. I read to page 220 and decided I was wasting my time. I did not like either the Heiress or her suitor. The were shallow selfish people. When I decided the character that interested me the most was Baldassre, the slave trading, revenge seeking Venetian, I put the book down and have no intention of finishing it. I have read other books by Delacroix that I really enjoyed. I do not recommend this book.
A Redeemer.......1999-10-11
This was a much better story than "Damsel". I felt the author redeemed herself in this book. Although I was a bit hesitant to read this book I had to know what "funny" Rowan would do to capture his Heiress. Strong characters. Nice ending.
Great character development.......1999-10-06
I had a hard time getting into this book, as it seemed that the first half (almost) of the story was nothing but Rowan betting Ibernia that he could get her into bed with him. But after that, the story really began to develop and I found myself falling in love with the characters as they fell in love with each other. The plot turns from Rowan trying to save Ibernia, to Ibernia (or Bronwyn) ultimately saving Rowan. Both strong characters, with a sweet love story, and some funny scenes as well. I enjoyed it.
Product Description
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- A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister
- A Patchwork Planet
- A Stranger in the Family: A True Story of Murder, Madness, and Unconditional Love
- Adventures from the Technology Underground: Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them
- Adverbs: A Novel
- Along Came Mary : A Bad Girl Creek Novel
- An Evening of Long Goodbyes: A Novel
- An Inconvenient Wife
- Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories
- Apologizing to Dogs
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