'Heartfelt, emotional and uplifting' Faith Hogan, author of The Gin Sisters' Promise 'Written with warmth, humour, sincerity and so much heart' Hazel Prior, author of Away with the Penguins One lost suitcase. Two strangers. And a notebook that will change lives. For almost fifty years, sisters Dolly and Greta have lived together - getting each other through the good times and the bad. Except this year, Greta isn't there and Dolly is feeling lost and alone. In memory of her sister, Dolly heads to the lost luggage auction where she and Greta go each Christmas. But her bid reveals a gift she never imagined. Amongst the clothes is the notebook of a reclusive woman who has hardly been outside for an entire year, but who isn't ready to give up on life. The notebook's contents resonate with Dolly. With the support of her neighbours, retired Leroy and eleven year old Flo, Dolly decides to take on the year of firsts Phoebe had planned. But, can you have a year of firsts when you're seventy-two? And is Dolly ready to discover the notebook's secrets, or are some secrets better left lost at the airport? ________ 'Deeply satisfying. Dolly's story will stay with me for a long, long time' Celia Anderson 'Inspirational and incredibly uplifting' NetGalley Reviewer 'This was just such a lovely, heartfelt, joyous and emotional book' This Hannah Reads 'A truly heartwarming, moving and outstanding story' Amazon Reviewer 'Real curl up on the sofa with a hot drink stuff! NetGalley Reviewer 'Just gorgeous - tremendously engaging . . . and life-affirming in every way' Being Anne 'An uplifting and emotional book' Amazon Reviewer 'An emotional story full of hope' NetGalley Reviewer 'The story is written with such sensitivity and I was so touched by it' Jan's Book Buzz

Axelsson provides an overview of American war and military novels set between 1945 and 1962. These are novels informed and inspired by the conditions and background of postwar occupation, the Korean War, and the early phases of the Cold War. More than 120 narratives are considered and evaluated from a literary point of view and discussed in terms of their contribution to the understanding of the period. The ultimate goal is a clear delineation of this period in American life and literature. In view of this orientation, the study will be useful to researchers and teachers of American history and literature as well as students of the Korean War. Of the books considered, 27 are given extended treatment; they were selected as being representative of socio-literary phenomena. The major part of the action in the novels takes place between V-E Day and the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time in America characterized by restraint and measured response to unprecedented demands and dangers, accompanied by valiant efforts to rise to the occasion and find new ways of meeting new challenges to American values and ideals. Although the key concept throughout is American military experience, the wide field of civilian-military relations is used as an overlay to achieve a balanced perspective on the period. The book includes two appendices: the first is a list of key data and summaries of all works in the investigation; the second is a list of the works broken down by geographical settings and thematic considerations following categories outlined by chapters. A bibilography of secondary sources is also outlined.

By taking as its point of departure the privileged relationship between the crime novel and its setting, this book is the most wide-ranging examination of the way in which Italian detective fiction in the last twenty years has become a means to articulate the changes in the social landscape of the country. Nowadays there is a general acknowledgment of the importance of place in Italian crime novels. However, apart from a limited scholarship on single cities, the genre has never been systematically studied in a way that so comprehensively spans Italian national boundaries. The originality of this volume also lies in the fact that the author have not limited her investigation to a series of cities, but rather she has considered the different forms of (social) landscape in which Italian crime novels are set. Through the analysis of the way in which cities, the "urban sprawl," and islands are represented in the serial novels of eleven of the most important contemporary crime writers in Italy of the 1990s, Pezzotti articulates the different ways in which individual authors appropriate the structures and tropes of the genre to reflect the social transformations and dysfunctions of contemporary Italy. In so doing, this volume also makes a case for the genre as an instrument of social critique and analysis of a still elusive Italian national identity, thus bringing further evidence in support of the thesis that in Italy detective fiction has come to play the role of the new "social novel."

Before Joyce became famous as writer, he supported himself through his other language work: English-language teaching in Pola, Trieste, and Rome. The importance of James Joyce's teaching, however, has been underestimated until now. The very playfulness and unconventionality that made him a popular and successful teacher has led his pedagogy to be underrated, and the connections between his teaching and his writing have been largely neglected. James Joyce's Teaching Life and Methods reveals the importance in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake of pedagogy and the understanding of language Joyce gained teaching English as a Foreign Language in Berlitz schools and elsewhere.

After the Lebanese Civil War, many Lebanese novelists committed themselves to building a "memory for the future." What resulted was a vital contribution to the legacy of contemporary Arabic literature. Through interviews, literary analysis, and the lens of trauma studies, Lang sheds light on what it means to remember through post-war literature.

Bartter surveys 250 American science-fiction stories, and American SF novels--with occasional overlaps of stories made into episodic novels--that have some relationship, often direct, sometimes marginal, to atomic weapons and their effects. . . . Highly recommended for popular literature collections. Choice Divided into three principal parts, The Way to Ground Zero begins by exploring The Way to Hiroshima. Through a detailed analysis of the works included, Bartter reveals the sociopolitical assumptions that authors took for granted and develops a method by which these assumptions can be disclosed. She shows that encoded in these fictions we can find the patterns that led us to create and use the atomic bomb. In the second section, Bartter looks at the deeper assumptions on which these sociopolitical assumptions rest, focusing particularly on those which perpetuate considerations of nuclear war--both in science fiction and in actual policy making. Finally, Bartter explores alternative assumptions proposed by innovative science fiction writers. Throughout, an attempt is made to forge a deeper understanding of the ways in which science fiction both reflects and influences human and international relations. Students of science fiction and of literature and politics will find Bartter's work enlightening, provocative reading. Bartter argues that a close examination of American fiction, particularly science fiction, can offer important new insights into the events surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. The use of an atomic bomb to end the war followed a scenario long established in science fiction--defeating our enemy with a super-weapon developed by native technological genius. By examining the interrelationship between this persistent plot-device and the development and use of a real super-weapon, Bartter sheds new light on the transactional role of literature and real life. Her analysis is based on a comprehensive theory of human nature, substantiated by exhaustive research in science fiction archives and libraries and covers a large number of stories--both well-known and relatively obscure--featuring super weapons or super war and published by American authors.

During the last decade, women's narrative has become a recognized force in Mexican letters. The essays in this collection explore the recent work of nine contemporary Mexican women writers. Many of the works have been translated into English; some, like Laura Esquivel's "Like Water for Chocolate," have become international best sellers. The unprecedented commercial success of these novels has generated mixed reactions: at the same time that the secondary status afforded women's narrative has come to be questioned in many academic circles, some authors are dissociating themselves from women's writing. The essays in this volume address these issues, providing a much needed contribution to the study of women's narrative.

This work provides concise, accessible introductions to major writers focusing equally on their life and works. Written in a lively style to appeal to both students and readers, books in the series are ideal guides to authors and their writing. Charles Dickens is without doubt a literary giant. The most widely read author of his own generation, his works remain incredibly popular and important today. Often seen as the quintessential Victorian novelist, his texts convey perhaps better than any others the drive for wealth and progress and the social contrasts that characterised the Victorian era. His works are widely studied throughout the world both as literary masterpieces and as classic examples of the nineteenth century novel. Donald Hawes book will provide a short, lively but sophisticated introduction to Dickens's work and the personal and social context in which it was written.

Realistic writers seek to render accurate representations of the world, and their novels contain authentic details and descriptions of their characters and settings. Like Realistic authors, Naturalistic ones similarly try to portray the world accurately, but they tend to depict the darker side of life. Realism was born in Europe in the nineteenth century and soon became popular in the United States, while Naturalism became prominent at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both traditions have continued in one form or another to the present day, and Realistic and Naturalistic novelists include some of America's most significant authors, such as Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, and Jack London. This reference includes biographical and critical entries for more than 120 American Naturalistic and Realistic novelists.

An introductory essay discusses the history of the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions, points to the difficulty of defining them, and surveys the many authors who have been associated with the two movements. The entries that follow are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Each includes basic biographical information and a narrative overview of the writer's educational background, professional career, and published works. The writer's works are briefly discussed in relation to the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions. Entries include primary and secondary bibliographies, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.

The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period.

Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.

For much of her own century, Elizabeth Gaskell was recognized as a voice of Victorian convention&emdash;-the loyal wife, good mother, and respected writer&emdash;-a reputation that led to her steady decline in the view of twentieth-century literary critics. Recent scholars, however, have begun to recognize that Mrs. Gaskell's high standing in Victorian society allowed her to effect change in conventional ideology. Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund focus this reevaluation on issues pertaining to the Victorian literary marketplace.

Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskell's Work portrays an elusive and self-aware writer whose refusal to grant authority to a single perspective even while she recirculated the fundamental assumptions and debates of her era enabled her simultaneously to fulfill and deflect the expectations of the literary marketplace. While she wrote for money, producing periodical fiction, major novels, and nonfiction, Mrs. Gaskell was able to maintain a tone of warmth and empathy that allowed her to imagine multiple social and epistemological alternatives. Writing from within the established rubrics of gender, narrative, and publication format, she nevertheless performed important cultural work.

This book presents a fundamental reassessment of Sara Coleridge. It examines her achievements as an author in the public sphere, and celebrates her interventions in what was a masculine genre of religious polemics. Sara Coleridge the religious author was the peer of such major figures as John Henry Newman and F. D. Maurice, and recognized as such by contemporaries. Her strategic negotiations with conventions of gender and authorship were subtle and successful. In this rediscovery of Sara Coleridge the author revises perspectives upon her literary relationship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Far from sacrificing her opportunities in service of her father's memory, her rationale is to exploit his metaphysics in original religious writings that engage with urgent controversies of her own times. Sara Coleridge critiques the Oxford theology of Newman and his colleagues for authoritarian and elitist tendencies, and for creating a negative culture in religious discourse. In response, she experiments with methodologies of collaborative, dialogic exchange, in which form as much as content will promote liberal, inclusive and productive encounters. She develops this agenda in her major religious work, the unpublished Dialogues on Regeneration (1850-51), which this book examines in its penultimate chapter.

'There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them'. 'How little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue'. If you want to make like Elizabeth Bennet and live happily ever after with a man who owns half of Derbyshire, then arm yourself with this Austentatious guide to flirting and courtship.

When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, it had an explosive effect on the public, calling attention to the problems of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression. This casebook provides a rich source of primary materials on the period and the plight of the migrant farm worker that brings to life the problems Steinbeck immortalized in the novel. Included are interviews with eyewitnesses to the Dust Bowl, firsthand accounts and investigative reports of the causes and effects of the Great Depression, letters to Eleanor Roosevelt and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, diaries and autobiographies of migrant farm workers in the 1930s, newspaper articles and editorials of the period, congressional testimony, a Wobbly song, affidavits by union activists, and other unique materials, many of which have never before appeared in print. All these materials can be used in literature, American history, and interdisciplinary classes to enrich the study of this novel and its times. Following a literary analysis of the novel, six chapters present primary documents on the following topics related to the novel: the financial causes and results of the Great Depression; the history of farming in the early twentieth century and the growth of agribusiness in California; working and living conditions of migrant farm workers in 1930s California; attempts to unionize farm workers and major strikes of the period; lawlessness among law enforcement officers in dealing with union members; the legacy of the 1930s--Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, and working and living conditions of farm workers long after the publication of the novel. Each chapter is followed by study questions, topics forresearch papers and class discussion, and suggestions of further reading.

Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides.

In this study of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable, Lawrence Miller traces Beckett's attempt to voice the expressive dilemma that is posed by the assumptions of modernist art and art criticism. A preliminary examination of Beckett's critical writings on literature and painting reveals a growing suspicion of modernist ambitions; it is the trilogy of novels, however, which represents Beckett's most sustained rejection of the feasible aspirations of an expressive theory of art. Still, the goal of expression cannot be abandoned since it represents the essence of the human condition; the compulsion inevitably triumphs over the longing to end.

This book explores the concepts of nationality and culture in the context of nineteenth-century Scottish fiction, through the writing of Walter Scott, James Hogg, R. L. Stevenson, and Margaret Oliphant. It describes the relationship between speech writing as a foundation of the literary construction of a particular national identity, exploring how orality and literacy are figured in nineteenth-century preoccupations with the definition of `culture'. It further examines the importance of romance revival in the ascendancy of the novel and the development of that genre across a century which saw the novel stripped of its female associations and accorded a masculine authority, touching on the sexualization of language in the discourse between women's narrative (oral) and men's narrative (written). The books importance for literary studies lies in the investigation of some of the consequences of deconstruction. It explores how the speech/writing opposition is open to the influence of social and material forces. Focusing on the writing of Scott, Hogg, Stevenson, and Oliphant, it looks at the conflicts in narratological experiments in Scottish writing, constructions of class and gender, the effects of popular literacy and the material condition of books as artefacts and commodities. This book is the first to offer a broad picture of the interaction of Scottish fiction and modern theoretical thinking, taking its roots from a combination of deconstruction, narrative theory, the history of orality, linguistics and psychoanalysis.

Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides.

The central concern of the book is the impact of global terror networks and state counterterrorism on twentieth-century fiction. A unique contribution of this book is the comparative approach, as opposed to the single author focus of most of the edited collections on terrorism in literature.

Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis. York Notes, The Ultimate Literature Guides

In this wide-ranging study, Gomma examines contemporary migrant narratives by Arab-American, Chicana, Indian-American, Pakistani-American, and Cuban-American women writers. Concepts such as national consciousness, time, space, and belonging are scrutinized through the "non-national" experience, unsettling notions of a unified America.

This book examines how contemporary women novelists have successfully transformed and rewritten the conventions of post-apocalyptic fiction. Since the dawn of the new millennium, there has been an outpouring of writing that depicts the end of the world as we know it, and women writers are no exception to this trend. However, the book argues that their fiction is distinctive. Contemporary women's work in this genre avoids conservatism, a nostalgic mourning for the past, and the focus on restoring what has been lost, aspects key to much male authored apocalyptic fiction. Instead, contemporary women writers show readers the ways in which patriarchy and neo-colonialism are intrinsically implicated in the disasters they envision, and offer qualified hope for a new beginning for society, culture and literature after an imagined apocalyptic event. Exploring science, nature and matter, the posthuman body, the maternal imaginary, time, narrative and history, literature and the word, and the post-secular, the book covers a wide variety of writers and addresses issues of nationality, race and ethnicity, as well as gender and sexuality.

This work explores this crucial period in the development of the English novel, integrating critical theory, historical background and close reading. Divided into two major sections, the first shows how historical and contextual material is essential for developing powerful readings. Thus the first part challenges such New Critical tenets as "exit author" and the "biographical fallacy" and discusses how the author becomes a formal presence in the text.;The second section is theoretical and speaks of the transformation in the way that we read and think about authors, readers, characters and form in the light of recent theory, offering an alternative to the deconstructive and Marxist trends in literary studies.