A Reunion Of Ghosts

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST “The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” —Lauren Groff, New York Timesbestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters—three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself. “Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”—People Book of the Week “A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”—Emma Straub, New York Timesbestselling author

‘A triumphant, beautiful, and devastating novel about coincidences, family, and the sins of our fathers’ Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See ‘Had me devouring the pages ... Tragic, touching and – against all odds – strangely uplifting’ Stylist Magazine, 5 Stars

How do three sisters write a single suicide note? This is the riddle the Alter sisters--Lady, Vee and Delph--pose at the outset of this darkly funny novel as they finalize their plans to collectively end their lives on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Their reasons are not theirs alone, and they prove that the sins of the father are indeed visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generations. The Jewish Alter family has been haunted by suicide ever since the sisters’ great-grandfather, the Nobel Prize–winning chemist Lenz Alter, developed the first poison gas used in warfare and also the lethal agent used in the gas chambers of the Third Reich. Lenz and his wife, Iris, their son Richard and his children, Rose, Violet and Dahlie, all took their own lives. Now Dahlie’s children are the only ones remaining. Lady, Vee and Delph love one another fiercely and protect one another from the shadows of the past through a shared sense of dark, deeply brilliant humour. As they gather in the Upper West Side apartment in which they were raised to close the circle of the Alter curse, an epic and achingly human tale--inspired in part by the true story of Fritz Haber, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of mustard gas--unfolds. Part wry memoir, part unflinching eulogy for those who have gone before, this is an intensely personal but profound commentary on the events of the 20th century. As one of the characters remarks, “Too bad Lenz Alter didn’t invent Prozac instead of chlorine gas; that probably would have saved them all.” Judith Claire Mitchell’s epic narrative captures three unforgettable characters--and their haunted family--within one brutally witty, achingly human voice.

Yael Weiss, eighteen years old and looking for adventure, finds it in the library one day when she discovers a packet of guns meant for Erinyes, an Armenian organization set on avenging their people’s massacre by the Turks in 1915. While the weapons make her nervous, Dub Hagopian, the young Armenian-American soldier sent to retrieve them, excites her in a completely different way.Smitten, Yael impulsively follows Dub to France by volunteering with the YMCA, reinventing herself along the way as twenty-five-year-old Methodist Yale White. When she and Dub cross paths again, Yael gets caught up in a crowd bursting with both the passionate ideals and the devil-may-care energy of youth–with consequences neither of them could ever foresee.

A superb storyteller who keeps his readers in thrall’—Statesman It is said that if the smell of the Himalayas creeps into a man’s blood, he will return to the hills again and again. Master storyteller Ruskin Bond shows how this love may persist to death and beyond. The agents of the supernatural may be gentle like the fairy folk in ‘On Fairy Hill’, or malevolent like the well-dressed diners of ‘The Prize’; humorous like the very proper witch, Miss Bellows, in ‘The Black Cat’, or tragic like the haunting Gulabi in ‘Wilson’s Bridge’. Bond aficionados will meet familiar faces in other stories and be thrilled by the gripping mystery, ‘Who Killed the Rani?’ This exciting collection, animated by the brooding presence of the Himalayas, establishes Bond as a connoisseur of the mysterious and macabre.

After Lee and Grant met at Appomatox Court House in 1865 to sign the document ending the long and bloody Civil War, the South at last had to face defeat as the dream of a Confederate nation melted into the Lost Cause. Through an examination of memoirs, personal papers, and postwar Confederate rituals such as memorial day observances, monument unveilings, and veterans' reunions, Ghosts of the Confederacy probes into how white southerners adjusted to and interpreted their defeat and explores the cultural implications of a central event in American history. Foster argues that, contrary to southern folklore, southerners actually accepted their loss, rapidly embraced both reunion and a New South, and helped to foster sectional reconciliation and an emerging social order. He traces southerners' fascination with the Lost Cause--showing that it was rooted as much in social tensions resulting from rapid change as it was in the legacy of defeat--and demonstrates that the public celebration of the war helped to make the South a deferential and conservative society. Although the ghosts of the Confederacy still haunted the New South, Foster concludes that they did little to shape behavior in it--white southerners, in celebrating the war, ultimately trivialized its memory, reduced its cultural power, and failed to derive any special wisdom from defeat.

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST “The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” —Lauren Groff, New York Timesbestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters—three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself. “Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”—People Book of the Week “A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”—Emma Straub, New York Timesbestselling author

In this thrilling romantic suspense, smokejumper Alexia Allen returns home to face her past only to find a long-buried secret that threatens her life.

A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the reader that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

IT’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN ALIVE AND UNDEAD. Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’s bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case. Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city’s most notorious crime boss—and Chess’s drug dealer—gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn’t bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he’s not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity. Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths, First Elders, and a lot of seriously nasty magic—all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man Chess can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.