Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End

Download Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982109343
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End by : Liz Levine

Download or read book Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End written by Liz Levine and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist, Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize A genuinely moving, funny, and inventive account of loss and grief, mental illness and suicide, from film and TV producer Liz Levine (Story of a Girl), written in the aftermath of the deaths of her sister and best friend. I feel like I might be a terrible person to be laughing in these moments. But it turns out, I’m not alone. In November of 2016, Liz Levine’s younger sister, Tamara, reached a breaking point after years of living with mental illness. In the dark hours before dawn, she sent a final message to her family then killed herself. In Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End, Liz weaves the story of what happened to Tamara with another significant death—that of Liz’s childhood love, Judson, to cancer. She writes about her relationship with Judson, Tamara’s struggles, the conflicts that arise in a family of challenging personalities, and how death casts a long shadow. This memorable account of life and loss is haunting yet filled with dark humor—Tamara emails her family when Trump is elected to check if she’s imagining things again, Liz discovers a banana has been indicted as a whistleblower in an alleged family conspiracy, and a little niece declares Tamara’s funeral the “most fun ever!” With honesty, Liz exposes the raw truths about grief and mourning that we often shy away from—and almost never share with others. And she reveals how, in the midst of death, life—with all its messy complications—must also be celebrated.

No One Is Talking About This

Download No One Is Talking About This PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593189604
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis No One Is Talking About This by : Patricia Lockwood

Download or read book No One Is Talking About This written by Patricia Lockwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE & A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2021 WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE “A book that reads like a prose poem, at once sublime, profane, intimate, philosophical, witty and, eventually, deeply moving.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice “Wow. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book. What an inventive and startling writer…I’m so glad I read this. I really think this book is remarkable.” —David Sedaris From "a formidably gifted writer" (The New York Times Book Review), a book that asks: Is there life after the internet? As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?" Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.

Nobody Is Ever Missing

Download Nobody Is Ever Missing PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Granta Books
ISBN 13 : 1783780886
Total Pages : 181 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (837 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Nobody Is Ever Missing by : Catherine Lacey

Download or read book Nobody Is Ever Missing written by Catherine Lacey and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable life in Manhattan, her home, her career and her loving husband. As the people she has left behind scramble to figure out what has happened to her, Elyria embarks on a hitchhiker's odyssey, testing fate by travelling in the cars of overly kind women and deeply strange men, tacitly being swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and public parks. As she journeys from Wellington to Picton, Takaka, Kaikoura and onwards she asks herself, what is it that I am missing? How can a person be missing? Full of mordant humour and uncanny insights, Nobody Is Ever Missing is a startling tale of love, loss, and the dangers encountered in the search for self-knowledge. It is a novel which goes far beyond the story of a physical journey and asks what it means to be human, to be a woman, and to be at the mercy of forces beyond one's own control.

Sometimes I Lie

Download Sometimes I Lie PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250144833
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sometimes I Lie by : Alice Feeney

Download or read book Sometimes I Lie written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ALICE FEENEYS NEW YORK TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “Boldly plotted, tightly knotted—a provocative true-or-false thriller that deepens and darkens to its ink-black finale. Marvelous.” —AJ Finn, author of The Woman in the Window My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Nobody

Download Nobody PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Carolrhoda Lab ®
ISBN 13 : 1606843222
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (68 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Nobody by : Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Download or read book Nobody written by Jennifer Lynn Barnes and published by Carolrhoda Lab ®. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the popular BookTok series The Inheritance GamesJennifer Lynn Barnes introduces us to . . . Nobody. There are people in this world who are Nobody. No one sees them. No one notices them. They live their lives under the radar, forgotten as soon as you turn away. That's why they make the perfect assassins. The Institute finds these people when they're young and takes them away for training. But an untrained Nobody is a threat to their organization. And threats must be eliminated. Claire has been invisible her whole life, missed by the Institute's monitoring. But now they've ID'ed her and have sent Nix to remove her. Yet the moment Nix lays eyes on her, he can't make the hit. It's as if Claire and Nix are the only people in the world for each other. And they are—because no one else can really see them.

Long Way Down

Download Long Way Down PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1481438271
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (814 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Long Way Down by : Jason Reynolds

Download or read book Long Way Down written by Jason Reynolds and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die

Download I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : WaterBrook
ISBN 13 : 0593193539
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die by : Sarah J. Robinson

Download or read book I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die written by Sarah J. Robinson and published by WaterBrook. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

Everything I Never Told You

Download Everything I Never Told You PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143127551
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Everything I Never Told You by : Celeste Ng

Download or read book Everything I Never Told You written by Celeste Ng and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the Alex Award and the Massachusetts Book Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Grantland Booklist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, School Library Journal, Bustle, and Time Our New York The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine “Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Ugly Love

Download Ugly Love PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1476753199
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (767 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ugly Love by : Colleen Hoover

Download or read book Ugly Love written by Colleen Hoover and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Colleen Hoover, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Starts with Us and It Ends with Us, a heart-wrenching love story that proves attraction at first sight can be messy. When Tate Collins meets airline pilot Miles Archer, she doesn't think it's love at first sight. They wouldn’t even go so far as to consider themselves friends. The only thing Tate and Miles have in common is an undeniable mutual attraction. Once their desires are out in the open, they realize they have the perfect set-up. He doesn’t want love, she doesn’t have time for love, so that just leaves the sex. Their arrangement could be surprisingly seamless, as long as Tate can stick to the only two rules Miles has for her. Never ask about the past. Don’t expect a future. They think they can handle it, but realize almost immediately they can’t handle it at all. Hearts get infiltrated. Promises get broken. Rules get shattered. Love gets ugly.

The Fortnightly

Download The Fortnightly PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1152 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (121 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Fortnightly by :

Download or read book The Fortnightly written by and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 1152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Leave the World Behind

Download Leave the World Behind PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062667653
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (626 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Leave the World Behind by : Rumaan Alam

Download or read book Leave the World Behind written by Rumaan Alam and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a Netflix film starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, Farrah Mackenzie, Charlie Evans and Kevin Bacon. Written for the Screen and Directed by Sam Esmail. Executive Producers Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, Nick Krishnamurthy, Rumaan Alam A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Fiction One of Barack Obama's Summer Reads A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis. Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?

The Secret History

Download The Secret History PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1400031702
Total Pages : 578 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Secret History by : Donna Tartt

Download or read book The Secret History written by Donna Tartt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-04-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Goldfinch. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. “A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment.... Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —The New York Times

Nobody Else Has to Know

Download Nobody Else Has to Know PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780756901967
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (19 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Nobody Else Has to Know by : Ingrid Tomey

Download or read book Nobody Else Has to Know written by Ingrid Tomey and published by . This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Webber was driving a car that hit a little girl who now may never walk again, and Webber's grandfather wants to claim that he was driving, not Webber.

Anything But Typical

Download Anything But Typical PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1416995005
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (169 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Anything But Typical by : Nora Raleigh Baskin

Download or read book Anything But Typical written by Nora Raleigh Baskin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-09 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jason, a twelve-year-old autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world.

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me

Download Nobody Will Tell You This But Me PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0525654720
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (256 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by : Bess Kalb

Download or read book Nobody Will Tell You This But Me written by Bess Kalb and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: VOGUE • FORBES • BOOKPAGE • NEW YORK POST • WIRED “I have not been as profoundly moved by a book in years.” —Jodi Picoult Even after she left home for Hollywood, Emmy-nominated TV writer Bess Kalb saved every voicemail her grandmother Bobby Bell ever left her. Bobby was a force—irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted on Bess; Bess adored Bobby. Then, at ninety, Bobby died. But in this debut memoir, Bobby is speaking to Bess once more, in a voice as passionate as it ever was in life. Recounting both family lore and family secrets, Bobby brings us four generations of indomitable women and the men who loved them. There’s Bobby’s mother, who traveled solo from Belarus to America in the 1880s to escape the pogroms, and Bess’s mother, a 1970s rebel who always fought against convention. But it was Bobby and Bess who always had the most powerful bond: Bobby her granddaughter’s fiercest supporter, giving Bess unequivocal love, even if sometimes of the toughest kind. Nobody Will Tell You This But Me marks the creation of a totally new, virtuosic form of memoir: a reconstruction of a beloved grandmother’s words and wisdom to tell her family’s story with equal parts poignancy and hilarity.

Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die

Download Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Zondervan
ISBN 13 : 0310291917
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (12 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die by : David Crowder

Download or read book Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, But Nobody Wants to Die written by David Crowder and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unique and engaging book, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, but Nobody Wants to Die, musicians David Crowder and Mike Hogan remind readers that a life lived to the fullest inevitably includes pain and grief. Even more, that kind of life requires dying to self---which then frees us to experience a greater joy: living as part of a community of faith.

I Know This Much Is True

Download I Know This Much Is True PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780060391621
Total Pages : 884 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (916 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis I Know This Much Is True by : Wally Lamb

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.