Lydia -- who is about to leave for college and whose family has converted to Orthodox Christianity -- works through her own spiritual crisis by writing letters to an icon of St. Lydia.

Fact and Fiction: the 19th Century love affair between Henry Hartyn, a chaplain of the East India Company, and his 'beloved Persis' in Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell, based on their letters and diaries.

Fact and Fiction: the 19th Century love affair between Henry Hartyn, a chaplain of the East India Company, and his 'beloved Persis' in Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell, based on their letters and diaries.

EASTWICK LETTERS transcribes and illustrates 117 individual sheets written 1844–51 by Andrew McCalla Eastwick, his wife Lydia, their children, and business associates as the family set up works, and home in 19th century St. Petersburg, Russia. Eastwick was one of three partners in the Philadelphia firm of Harrison, Winans & Eastwick. The business had been awarded a $3 million/ five-year contract to build rolling stock, (locomotive engines and cars) for Czar Nicholas I for a railroad to connect St. Petersburg and Moscow. The enterprise required Eastwick and partners to take possession of a large Imperial industrial complex on the Neva River, known as Alexandroffsky Head Mechanical Works. Once in operation they were to use serf labor and Russian materials to fulfill the contract. Concurrently, Major George Washington Whistler (West Point civil engineer and father of the famous artist), was to oversee the construction of the 420 miles of railway track and railbed required. Presented chronologically and extensively illustrated, EASTWICK LETTERS opens a window into the private emotions of the writers, and illustrates a colorful story of Russian life and times at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. More so than early photographs, the letters vividly reveal the inner thoughts of each writer, and what they observed in a foreign land. In 1851 the Eastwick family returned to Philadelphia where Andrew purchased Bartram’s Garden along the Schuylkill River and saved it from industrial development. Years later after Andrew’s passing, Lydia Eastwick bequeathed the property to the City of Philadelphia where today, Bartram’s Garden is a landmark. The conservatory is open to the public and carries on the legacy of John Bartram, first American botanist to the Colonies.

A new collection of short stories from the woman Rick Moody has called "the best prose stylist in America" Her stories may be literal one-liners: the entirety of "Bloomington" reads, "Now that I have been here for a little while, I can say with confidence that I have never been here before." Or they may be lengthier investigations of the havoc wreaked by the most mundane disruptions to routine: in "A Small Story About a Small Box of Chocolates," a professor receives a gift of thirty-two small chocolates and is paralyzed by the multitude of options she imagines for their consumption. The stories may appear in the form of letters of complaint; they may be extracted from Flaubert's correspondence; or they may be inspired by the author's own dreams, or the dreams of friends. What does not vary throughout Can't and Won't, Lydia Davis's fifth collection of stories, is the power of her finely honed prose. Davis is sharply observant; she is wry or witty or poignant. Above all, she is refreshing. Davis writes with bracing candor and sly humor about the quotidian, revealing the mysterious, the foreign, the alienating, and the pleasurable within the predictable patterns of daily life.

"While most of the letter writers are unknown, four achieved prominence - the author Charlotte Lennox, the Reverend Thomas Winstanley, the navigator Charles Clerke, and the bluestocking Susannah Dobson. This book presents new perspectives on Lennox's and Winstanley's domestic lives, Clerke's ambiguous encounters with indigenous peoples, and Dobson's mysterious sexuality." "This book will appeal to eighteenth-century scholars as well as to scholars in women's and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to postcolonial, queer, and other literary theorists."--BOOK JACKET.

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband. Lydia Millet’s previous work has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Likewise greeted with rapturous praise, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a first-person account of a young mother, Anna, fleeing her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined. A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.