Who was Narciste Duprey and why did he build a mansion on Poverty Ridge in Sacramento, California? Why did his beauti ful wife, Velvulott a Gomez, hate him so much? Why did the children born into this house have broken, shatt ered fi ngers? Why, to this day, does the old mansion sit dark and empty? The House of the Broken Hands is a frightening ghost story about the people and the lives they lived in this mansion, and what happened to them. Set in Sacramento in the 1990's, a journalist who lives in the neighborhood becomes curious about the old house with no signs of life. She is determined to learn its history, and aft er hearing the bare bones of the story from an old woman who grew up in the neighborhood, she is compelled to dig deeper into the house's past.

In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend. "All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death." In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. "Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining." -- New York Times Book Review"Intimate and touching . . . the stuff of legend." -- San Francisco Chronicle"An immensely charming and moving tale." -- Boston GlobeNational Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year from National Public Radio, American Library Association, San Francisco Chronicle, BookPage, Newsday, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Literary Hub

Sin has ravaged the house that God created. It sits slumped, disheveled and in pain, groaning for the restoration that can only be accomplished by the hands of him who built it in the first place. The good news is that the divine Builder will not relent until everything about his house is made new again. The bad news is that you and I are living right in the middle of the restoration process. We live each day in a house that is terribly broken, where nothing works exactly as intended. But Emmanuel lives here as well, and he is at work returning his house to its former beauty. --from publisher description

A marathon dance mix consisting of thousands of mashed up text and image samples, In the House of the Hangman tries to give a taste of what life is like there, where it is impolite to speak of the noose. It is the third part of the life project Zeitgeist Spam. If you can't afford a copy ask me for a pdf.

Annaliese and Anna are two women divided by time but united by a common destiny and the heritage whose dramatic history exerts so powerful an influence upon their lives. Anna Riordan, a very successful businesswoman who also dabbles in politics, is at a crossroads in her life. Her husband has just walked out on her, she is trying to decide whether to seriously pursue a political career, and then there is the matter of Mark, an old flame, and her ties to South Africa. Anna's great-grandmother, Annaliese, fled South Africa not long after the Boer War. But she remembers the farm and the land, and impresses on young Anna that she must buy back that land – nothing else matters. Anna is sent on an unofficial government mission to test the winds of change in South Africa she makes contact with one of the black African leaders whilst there; a meeting that will, in the future, change her life. Before she can move on with her life, Anna must come to terms with her heritage, with the ghost of Annaliese that haunts her, and decide whether she really wants her husband back.

A lot can change in ten years. Kate, Amaya and Steve have been best friends since the second grade, but the start of senior year finds them all in very different places. Kate feels lost after dumping her long-term boyfriend, the bully who sent Steve to the hospita land drove him away. Amaya's insecurities have led her to a string of bad choices and worse relationships. And Steve feels more comfortable rolling a10-sided die with his raid party than hanging out with his two best friends. And then there's Ashley. After three, long years apart, Steve jumps at the chance to see Kate and Amaya at Kate's 'End of Summer' party. None are sure where their friendship stands, but each hopes for something more while fearing a single word of what they feel could tear them apart again -- this time forever. As the sun goes down and the music turns up, one thing is for certain -- this will be a party no one will forget.

This year's selections have been chosen from among the finalists of the National Magazine Awards. Includes articles from "The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine," and "Esquire."

'Exquisitely written... haunting... Few books, I think, capture so well the sense of a life broken for ever by trauma and guilt' Sunday Times 'An unsparing, honest and insightful memoir, that shows how private failure becomes national disaster' Hilary Mantel Twenty years after the end of the war, Horst Krüger attempted to make sense of his childhood. He had grown up in a quiet Berlin suburb. Here, people lived ordinary lives, believed in God, obeyed the law, and were gradually seduced by the promises of Nazism. He had been 'the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work'. With tragic inevitability, this world of respectability, order and duty began to crumble. Written in accomplished prose of lingering beauty, The Broken House is a moving coming-of-age story that provides a searing portrait of life under the Nazis.