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You're the one that I want
\"In this charming and exciting women's fiction novel, Giovanna Fletcher explores the complicated relationship between three friends--Maddy, her fiancâe Rob, and their best friend Ben. Maddy, dressed in white, stands at the back of the church. At the end of the aisle is Rob--the man she's about to marry. Next to Rob is Ben--best man and the best friend anyone could ever have. And that's the problem. Because if it wasn't Rob waiting for her at the altar, there's a strong chance it would be Ben. Loyal and sensitive, Ben has always kept his feelings to himself, but if he told Maddy she was making a mistake, would she listen? And would he be right? Best friends since childhood, Maddy, Ben, and Rob thought their bond was unbreakable. But love changes everything. Maddy has a choice to make, but will she choose wisely? Her heart, and the hearts of the two best men she knows, depend on it... Romantic, suspenseful, and a whole lot of fun, You're the One That I Want is a great read about friendship, love, and the decisions that we make \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The contemporary British novel since 2000
Focuses on the novels published since 2000 by twenty major British novelists The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000 is in five parts, with the first part examining the work of four particularly well-known and highly regarded twenty-first century writers: Ian McEwan, David Mitchell, Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith. It is with reference to each of these novelists in turn that the terms 'realist', 'postmodernist', 'historical' and 'postcolonialist' fiction are introduced, while in the remaining four parts, other novelists are discussed and the meaning of the terms amplified. From the start it is emphasised that these terms and others often mean different things to different novelists, and that the complexity of their novels often obliges us to discuss their work with reference to more than one of the terms. Also discusses the works of: Maggie O'Farrell, Sarah Hall, A.L. Kennedy, Alan Warner, Ali Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Atkinson, Salman Rushdie, Adam Foulds, Sarah Waters, James Robertson, Mohsin Hamid, Andrea Levy, and Aminatta Forna.
eBook
The future she left behind
\"One woman's journey home gets derailed by her soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law in a novel filled with humor, small-town charm, rekindled love, and the resilient ties of family. Cast aside by her cheating husband, Katelyn Chandler is ready to pack it all in and drive home to Little Springs, Texas. She wants a chance to regroup, reconnect with her mother, and get back to her art. But Shirley Pratt--master manipulator, elitist snob, and Katelyn's terror of a live-in monster-in-law--has other ideas. Shirley insists on joining Katelyn's trip after her son tries to pack her off to a retirement community. Katelyn has no choice but to play peacekeeper between the ornery old woman and the proud matrons of Little Springs. Yet the small town seems to be changing Shirley. And as Katelyn weighs the wisdom of picking up where she left off with Jackson Mendoza, the town bad boy and her high school sweetheart, she must find a way to believe in the strength of her dreams\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Looking inside
\"The New York Times bestselling author who brought you Glow, Glimmer, and The Affair is back with a new novel that will have you leaving the curtains open. Are you just going to stand there and watch? -- Eleanor Briggs just can't help herself. The sight of the man in the high-rise across the street is driving her wild. She longs to feel his touch up close and personal. To win him over, she'll need to shake off her wallflower sensibilities and become the seductress she never imagined she could be. The only trouble will be finding the perfect way to meet him...Or are you going to join in? -- Sex is easy for millionaire entrepreneur Trey Riordan. Finding something of substance, however, seems impossible. That is until a simple night of reading at a local coffee shop becomes something far steamier when a beautiful brunette comes by and leaves a note telling him to look out his bedroom window at eleven o'clock. But when the time comes, neither of them will be truly ready for what follows...\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
‘There’s no woods left’: the progression of hope in William di Canzio’s Alec (2021) and E.M. Forster’s Maurice (1914/71)
In 2021 author William di Canzio published Alec: A Novel (2021), a literary text that purports to be both a prequel and a sequel to E.M. Forster’s now seminal Maurice (1971). The aim of this essay is to analyse and contrast the connections between both texts as exhibited by their endings, focusing mainly on their representation of hope in connection to queer experiences. Thus, I draw on Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer orientations and Rita Felski’s notion of ‘recognition’ to suggest that these novels are representations of queer hope. I propose to define this term here as a cross-historical and protean concept that avoids clichés often associated with ‘happy endings’ while articulating queer concerns, struggles, and – eventually – offering an orientation to alternative ways of living, emphasising the importance of literature as a surface through which to understand the history and challenges of LGBTQIA+ people through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Journal Article
Make me
\"Available for the first time as a complete novel--the serial from the New York Times bestselling author of When I'm With You that explores hidden pasts, dangerous obsessions, and uncontrollable passion... Harper McFaddan established herself as an investigative journalist by being both compassionate and fearless. After tragedy strikes her family, she moves to the shores of Lake Tahoe to find some peace. But when mysterious software mogul Jacob Latimer enters her life, her thoughts turn from her own healing to an insatiable desire to get closer to him... No one knows what secrets lurk in the past of Jacob Latimer. He built his corporation from nothing, but rumors abound about his mysterious rise to power. Harper is the last person he should let into his life. She could expose the truth about his origins. But Jacob knows things about Harper's past that draw him in. He wants nothing more than to make her his--and Jacob is a man who always gets what he wants..\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
\Unstable, in Chaos\: Reading Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and Percival Everett’s Telephone in the Age of Cruel Optimism
Many of the formal innovations of contemporary fiction arise from a collective sense of ceaseless crisis—a recognition that traditional modes of storytelling, forged in earlier cultural climates, may now be overrun and unable to accommodate an age of accelerated instability. This essay examines two such formally adventurous novels: Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2014) and Percival Everett’s Telephone (2020), both of which employ multiple published versions to unsettle narrative unity and readerly expectations. Smith’s novel appears in two randomly sequenced editions; Everett’s in three distinct iterations. The essay argues that such strategies may be seen as responses to the condition Lauren Berlant terms “cruel optimism”: a structure of feeling in which attachments to normative fantasies of the good life persist, despite their increasing impossibility. In foregrounding variation, contingency, and aesthetic instability, these novels register what Berlant describes as a cultural moment shaped by “austerity, precarity, and awkwardness,” and reflect the experience of a world in which the genres of meaning-making are themselves in question. They do so, however, not by offering resolution, but by inhabiting the impasse—what Berlant elsewhere calls “genre flailing” - and devising alternative modes of formal coherence in the face of disruption. The result is fiction that portrays the very crisis that structurally forms it.
Journal Article
Racked and stacked
\"Opposites don't just attract in the West--they sizzle--and Wyoming has never been hotter than in the latest sexy Blacktop Cowboys novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Hang Tough. Growing up with three older brothers, Larissa \"Riss\" Thorpe defines the term tomboy--a moniker that never mattered to her until she crossed paths with sexy cowboy playboy, Ike Palmer. His declaration that he prefers his women soft and feminine is the one benefit to becoming his business partner. Since Riss is obviously not his type, there's little chance they'll mix business and pleasure when they're in close quarters on the road together. Former cattle broker Ike Palmer was ready for a new chapter in his life when he partnered with Riss, a contrary redhead who lords her mechanical abilities over him at every turn. Ike raised his three younger sisters; he knows a thing or three about how women work. The problem is...Riss is unlike any woman he's ever met. With the odds stacked against them, Riss and Ike will have to choose between the stubbornness that keeps them apart and the fiery attraction that could lead to something more..\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Snakes on a Page
This article offers a radical departure in the reading of monstrosity and vulnerability in selected contemporary fiction. By focusing on the representation of particularly vilified members of the natural world, namely snakes, I expose how the authors destabilize the boundaries between human vulnerability and animal monstrosity. These representational strategies facilitate readers’ engagement with the complicity of human characters in the violence that permeates the narrative arcs. More expansive and, I argue, more accurate readings of monstrosity enable us to move towards reckoning with the power of human characters to exert their will in destructive and cruel ways. This is a reckoning that is long overdue, and it is a crucial step towards more respectful engagement with the natural world. The texts that will form the foundation of the rest of the analysis are Stay and Fight (2019) by Madeline Ffitch, Reptile Memoirs (2022) by Silje Ulstein, and Blue Skies (2023) by T. C. Boyle, and I deploy strategically selected strands of Literary Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Vegan Studies, and Monster Studies as the theoretical lens through which to read the novels.
Journal Article