* A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of the Year * Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Dispatch From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra and her children—“brilliant…gripping…high drama…made tangible and graphic in Tóibín’s lush prose” (Booklist, starred review). “I have been acquainted with the smell of death.” So begins Clytemnestra’s tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. House of Names “is a disturbingly contemporary story of a powerful woman caught between the demands of her ambition and the constraints on her gender…Never before has Tóibín demonstrated such range,” (The Washington Post). He brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra’s thirst for revenge, but applaud it. Told in four parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes’s story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother’s lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.

Baby-naming has become an art form with parents today, but where do parents go to find names and their meanings? The Name Book offers particular inspiration to those who want more than just a list of popular names. From Aaron to Zoe, this useful book includes the cultural origin, the literal meaning, and the spiritual significance of more than 10,000 names. An appropriate verse of Scripture accompanies each name, offering parents a special way to bless their children.

A “sensual, brutal . . . ambitious, dazzling, disturbing, and memorable” retelling of Jason and the Argonauts seen through the eyes of Medea (Financial Times). International bestselling and multi-prize-winning author David Vann transports readers to the Mediterranean and Black Sea, 3,250 years ago, for “[a] stunning depiction of one of mythology’s most complex characters” (The Australian). It is thirteenth century BC, and the Argo is bound for its epic return journey across the Black Sea from Persia’s Colchis with the valiant Jason, the equally heroic Argonauts, and the treasured symbol of kingship, the Golden Fleece. Aboard as well is Medea, semi-divine priestess, and a believer in power, not gods. Having fled her father, and butchered her brother, she is embarking on a conquest of her own. Rejected for her gender, Medea is hungry for revenge, and to right the egregious fate of being born a woman in a world ruled by men. In Bright Air Black, “David Vann blow[s] away all the elegance and toga-clad politeness . . . around our idea of ancient Greece . . . to reveal the bare bones of the Archaic period in all their bloody, reeking nastiness (The Times, London), and to deliver a bracing alternative to the long-held notions of Medea as monster or sorceress. We witness Medea’s humanity, her Bronze Age roots and position in Greek society, her love affair with Jason, the cataclysmic repercussions of betrayal, and the drive of an impassioned woman—victim, survivor, and ultimately, agent of her own destiny. The most intimate and corporal version of Medea’s story ever told, Bright Air Black “a compelling study of human nature stripped to its most elemental” (The Guardian).

Containing entries for more than 45,000 English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and immigrant surnames, The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland is the ultimate reference work on family names of the UK. The Dictionary includes every surname that currently has more than 100 bearers. Each entry contains lists of variant spellings of the name, an explanation of its origins (including the etymology), lists of early bearers showing evidence for formation and continuity from the date of formation down to the 19th century, geographical distribution, and, where relevant, genealogical and bibliographical notes, making this a fully comprehensive work on family names. This authoritative guide also includes an introductory essay explaining the historical background, formation, and typology of surnames and a guide to surnames research and family history research. Additional material also includes a list of published and unpublished lists of surnames from the Middle Ages to the present day.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A coming-of-age classic about a young girl growing up in Chicago • Acclaimed by critics, beloved by readers of all ages, taught in schools and universities alike, and translated around the world—from the winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. “Cisneros draws on her rich [Latino] heritage...and seduces with precise, spare prose, creat[ing] unforgettable characters we want to lift off the page. She is not only a gifted writer, but an absolutely essential one.” —The New York Times Book Review The House on Mango Street is one of the most cherished novels of the last fifty years. Readers from all walks of life have fallen for the voice of Esperanza Cordero, growing up in Chicago and inventing for herself who and what she will become. “In English my name means hope,” she says. “In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting." Told in a series of vignettes—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous—Cisneros’s masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery and one of the greatest neighborhood novels of all time. Like Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street or Toni Morrison’s Sula, it makes a world through people and their voices, and it does so in language that is poetic and direct. This gorgeous coming-of-age novel is a celebration of the power of telling one’s story and of being proud of where you're from.

Eva Traube Abrams, a semiretired librarian in Florida, is at the returns desk one morning when her eyes lock on to a photograph in a newspaper nearby. She freezes; it's an image of a book she hasn't seen in sixty-five years--a book she recognizes as the Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article describes the looting of libraries across Europe by the Nazis during World War II--an experience Eva remembers all too well. As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in the Book of Last Names will become even more vital when the Resistance cell they work with is betrayed and Rémy disappears. As the Germans close in, Eva records a last, vital message in the book. Decades later, does she have the strength to seek out its answer--and help reunite those lost during the war?

The close friendship between Martin Simmonds and violin prodigy Dovidl Rappoport, two Jewish boys living in London between the 1930s and the end of World War II, is threatened by the unexpected disappearance of Dovidl on the eve of his debut performance.

In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

For use in schools and libraries only. A young boy who has trouble reading helps Santa with his yearly rounds and receives a special Christmas present.

James, a journalist who writes for a laboratory's magazine, starts to lose control of his life and have nightmares of a nuclear accident that may set off the apocalypse after going to an abandoned house for a rendezvous with a technician.