The Industry Of Souls

The Industry of Souls is the story of Alexander Bayliss, a British citizen who was wrongfully arrested for espionage by the KGB in the 1950s and sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labor in the work camps of Siberia. Eventually freed in the 1970s, he decides not to return to the West--a world he barely remembers and to which he no longer belongs--and instead finds his way to a small Russian village where he becomes a much beloved schoolmaster. Now, on the day of his eightieth birthday, communism has evaporated and Russia is changed. This moving story alternates between this momentous day to his harrowing past in the camp and his life in the village. And in the end, he is presented with a choice, perhaps for the first time in his life. Martin Booth's brilliantly crafted novel is a celebration of life in the face of death, of humanity in the midst of a system that robs men of their dignity. It stands as a mature and profound exploration of the meaning and the essence of human friendship.

On his 80th birthday, a British citizen arrested in the 1950s for spying in the Soviet Union looks back on his life in Russia--his harrowing life in the "gulag" and his quiet life 20 years later in the village.

For readers of Roberto Bolaño's Savage Detectives and Muriel Spark's Loitering with Intent, this "sublime" and "delightfully unhinged" metaphysical mystery disguised as a picaresque romp follows one poet's spectacular fall from grace to ask a vital question: Is everyone a plagiarist? (Nicolette Polek, author of Imaginary Museums). A scandal has shaken the literary world. As the unnamed narrator of Dead Souls discovers at a cultural festival in central London, the offender is Solomon Wiese, a poet accused of plagiarism. Later that same evening, at a bar near Waterloo Bridge, our narrator encounters the poet in person, and listens to the story of Wiese's rise and fall, a story that takes the entire night—and the remainder of the novel—to tell. Wiese reveals his unconventional views on poetry, childhood encounters with "nothingness," a conspiracy involving the manipulation of documents in the public domain, an identity crisis, a retreat to the country, a meeting with an ex-serviceman with an unexpected offer, the death of an old poet, a love affair with a woman carrying a signpost, an entanglement with a secretive poetry cult, and plans for a triumphant return to the capital, through the theft of poems, illegal war profits, and faked social media accounts—plans in which our narrator discovers he is obscurely implicated. Dead Souls is a metaphysical mystery brilliantly encased in a picaresque romp, a novel that asks a vital question for anyone who makes or engages with art: Is everyone a plagiarist?

Book of Souls picks up the action a year after the conclusion of the international sensation Library of the Dead. Will Piper’s life has been forever changed by the astonishing secret he discovered hidden at the government’s clandestine installation deep under the Nevada desert. His uneasy retirement from the FBI is interrupted when a long-missing book surfaces at an auction house in London. A group of ex-Area 51 employees recruits Will to assist them in obtaining the book and in helping them solve a mystery that will affect the fate of all mankind. As government operatives try to stop him, Will discovers the ancient missing volume has had a profound effect on history. Remarkably, a newly found puzzle sonnet by a young William Shakespeare seems to have been inspired by the book. As Will peels back the onion to solve a series of clues hidden in the poem, he finds the book has influenced not only Shakespeare but also the religious philosophy of John Calvin, the father of predestination, and the prophesies of the seer Nostradamus. When the final clue yields the ultimate secret, Will is forced to confront a truth which humanity may not be prepared to accept.

“A gloriously over-the-top scare fest that has hidden depths. Readers will root for Kris all the way to the explosive, poignant finale.”—Publishers Weekly From the New York Times best-selling author of The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires. Only a girl with a guitar can save us all. Every morning, Kris Pulaski wakes up in hell. In the 1990s she was lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a heavy-metal band on the brink of breakout success until lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom, leaving his bandmates to rot in obscurity. Now Kris works as night manager of a Best Western; she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Then one day everything changes—a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band. Kris hits the road, hoping to reunite Dürt Würk and confront the man who ruined her life. Her journey will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a celebrity rehab center to a satanic music festival. A spine-tingling horror novel, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul.

Pip and her twin brother, Tim, join forces again with Sebastian, the alchemist's son they awakened from a centuries-long slumber, to fight against an evil magician who learns people's deepest secrets in order to control their souls.

Pip and her twin brother, Tim, awaken an alchemist's son from a centuries-long slumber when their family moves to an old English country estate, and he enlists them in the fight against an evil alchemist who seeks to create a homunculus.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A spare yet eloquent, bittersweet yet inspiring story of a man and a woman who, in advanced age, come together to wrestle with the events of their lives and their hopes for the imminent future. In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. His daughter lives hours away, her son even farther, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in empty houses, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with. But maybe that could change? As Addie and Louis come to know each other better--their pleasures and their difficulties--a beautiful story of second chances unfolds, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer's enduring contribution to American literature.

This ethnography of everyday life in contemporary Russia is also an examination of discourses and practices of "soul" or dusha. Russian soul has historically appeared as a myth, a consoling fiction, and a trope of national and individual self-definition that drew romantic foreigners to Russia. Dale Pesmen shows that in the 1990s this "soul" was scorned, worshipped, and used to create, manipulate, and exploit cultural capital. Pesmen focuses on "soul" in part as what people chose to do and how they did it, especially practices considered "definitive" of Russians, such as hospitality, the use of alcoholic beverages, steam baths, Russian language, music, and suffering. Attempting to avoid narrow definitions of soul as a thing, Pesmen developed a new way of structuring ethnographic interviews.During her stay in a formerly "closed" military industrial city and surrounding villages, Pesmen spent time on public transportation and in kitchens, steam baths, vegetable gardens, shops, and workplaces. She uses stories from her fieldwork along with examples from the media and literature to introduce a phenomenology of russkaia dusha and of related American and other non-Russian metaphysical notions, exploring diverse elements in their makeup, examining and questioning the world created when people believe in the existence of such "deep," "vast," "enigmatic," "internal" centers. Among theoretical issues she addresses are those of power, community, self, exchange, coherence, and morality. Pesmen's attention to dusha gives her a multifaceted perspective on Russian culture and society and informs her rich portrayal of life in a Russian city at a historically critical moment.

From old-fashioned bricks-and-mortars to cutting-edge startups, businesses are moving into uncharted territory as they determine how to move from an analog past to a digital future effectively. How can you make sure not to leave human instinct behind? Businesses are leaving behind traditional meetings in favor of virtual ones, transitioning from surveys and studies to analytics and algorithms. The startling and often unacknowledged truth is that?the promise of digital transformation can only be realized when we find a way to balance it with the promise of people.?In the end, it’s the people that matter, and companies must never forget the soul that drives them. In Restoring the Soul of Business, business leader Rishad Tobaccowala?teaches you to: Understand how to unleash the significant benefit that can be realized by combining emotion and data, human and machine, analog and digital. Spot the warning signs of data-blinded companies: cold cultures with little human interaction, poor innovation stemming from discouraged employees who don’t contribute ideas, and poor customer service due to automated, robotic processes. Explore how organizations of various sizes and from different industries have successfully reoriented their thinking on how to fuse technology and humanity. Gain skills to become an expert in connections critical to growth and success, including the connection between being creative and using technology. Everyone working in an organization will find penetrating observations and guidance about how and why establishing the proper balance between human intuition and creativity and data-driven insights can lead to increased revenue, profitability, retention—and even joy—in their careers and business. Restoring the Soul of Business provides practical tools and techniques that every organization can and should implement, and challenges you to move forward with the kind of balance that capitalizes transformation and produces one great success after another.