Mrs.
Ted Bliss,
by
Stanley Elkin
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Published
posthumously in 1995, Mrs. Ted Bliss tells
the story of an eighty-two-year-old widow starting
life anew after the death of her husband. As Dorothy
Bliss learns to cope with the mundane rituals of life
in a Florida retirement community, she inadvertently
becomes involved with a drug kingpin trying to use
her as a front for his operations. Mrs. Ted is stepping
out with more than one shady gentleman who is overly
interested in the late Mr. Ted's Buick LeSabre.
Combining a comic
plot with a deep concern for character, Elkin ends
his career with a vivid portrait of a woman overcoming
loss, a woman who is both recognizable and as unique
as Elkin's other famous characters.
Hilarious, touching, and complex, this novel -- Elkin's
last before his death in 1995 -- is the winner of
the 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award
for fiction. |
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Jack
Maggs,
by
Peter Carey
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London,
1837. Jack Maggs, a foundling trained as a thief,
betrayed and deported to a penal colony in Australia,
has reversed his fortunes. Under threat of execution
he returns to London after twenty years of exile to
try to fulfill his well-concealed heart's desire.
Masquerading as a footman, Maggs places himself in
the rather eccentric household of Percy Buckle, Esquire.
But when the unlikely footman comes under the scrutiny
of the brilliant and unscrupulous young novelist Tobias
Oates, an enthusiastic dabbler in mesmerism, Maggs's
secrets are revealed and he is forced to take desperate,
sometimes violent action. A powerful and unusual homage
to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Jack
Maggs displays all of Peter Carey's broad historical
and artistic knowledge, his masterful command of character,
and his powerful moral vision. |
|
Dirk
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency,
by Douglas Adams
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What do
a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an Electric Monk
who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics,
a Chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(poet), and pizza have in common? Apparently not much;
until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator,
sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness
of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting
a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery,
and eating a lot of pizza – not to mention saving
the entire human race from extinction along the way
(at no extra charge). To find out more, read this
book (better still, buy it, then read it) – or contact
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
‘A thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time
travel-romantic-musical-comedy epic.’ The author
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