Jim Meskimen
1) Backfire
"The events of a single episode of Howard Norman's superb memoir are both on the edge of chaos and gathered superbly into coherent meaning . . . A wise, riskily written, beautiful book." — Michael Ondaatje
Howard Norman's spellbinding memoir begins with a portrait, both harrowing and hilarious, of a Midwest boyhood summer working in a bookmobile, in the shadow of a grifter father and under the erotic tutelage of his brother's girlfriend.
Diane Kresh's 2023 Reading List
Read Alikes for "Small Things Like These"
8) Fosse
"[A] searching and surprisingly witty look at the scientific odds against tomorrow."
—Timothy Ferris
Jonathan Weiner—winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and one of the most distinguished popular science writers in America—examines "the strange science of immortality" in Long for This World. A fast-paced, sure-to-astonish scientific adventure
...Masters of language can turn unassuming words into phrases that are beautiful, effective, and memorable. What are the secrets of this alchemy? Part of the answer lies in rhetorical figures: practical ways of applying great aesthetic principles—repetition and variety, suspense and relief, concealment and surprise—to a simple sentence or paragraph. Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric recovers this knowledge for our times. It amounts
...Moss Hart's Act One, which Lincoln Center Theater presented in 2014 as a play written and directed by James Lapine, is one of the greatest American memoirs—a glorious memorial to a bygone age filled with all the wonder, drama, and heartbreak that surrounded Broadway in the early twentieth century.
Hart's story inspired a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and readers everywhere as he eloquently chronicled his impoverished
...When Bradley wakes up in the night to strange lights in his backyard, he wonders if there are aliens in town. His twin, Brian, and friends Lucy and Nate aren’t so certain. But then some kids disappear. Are there really aliens in Green Lawn?
February Friend
Bradley is passing out his class’s valentines, but one of the cards tells the class to look in the closet. Inside they find a rabbit! Then...
A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. When he is brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world's most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn't be a case for historian‑turned‑deputy David Mapstone—except that the victim had been dating David's sister‑in‑law, Robin, and now she's a target too. David's wife, Lindsey, is in Washington with an elite anti-cyber-terror unit and she makes one
...17) Skin Deep
The Simeon Grist private-eye novels by 2011 Edgar and Macavity Award nominee Timothy Hallinan have become cult favorites, and here is the one that started it all.
For a fee so big he can't turn it down, Simeon Grist is hired to watchdog the kind of guy he'd usually prefer to throw through the nearest window. Toby Vane is the golden boy of prime-time television, whose gee-whiz smile and chiseled features mask a dark secret that would take
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