Noovella - Joseph Raffetto

“A gripping first-person account of the Spanish Civil War. Orwell at his best. One of the best books about war ever.”

THE MOROCCAN GIRL is a standalone thriller from Charles Cumming. “Kit Carradine is the successful author of several best-selling novels. When he is approached by MI6 and asked to carry out a simple task on behalf of his country while attending a literary festival in Morocco, he jumps at the chance. But all is not as it seems. Carradine soon finds himself on the trail of Lara Bartok, a leading figure in Resurrection, a violent revolutionary movement targeting prominent right-wing political figures around the world. Caught between competing intelligence services who want Bartok dead, Carradine faces a choice: to abandon Bartok to her fate or to risk everything trying to save her.”

“When challenged, non-experts resort to the false argument that the experts are often wrong. Though it may be true, but the solution is not to jettison expertise as an ideal; it is to improve our expertise. Nichols is certainly not opposed to information democratization, but rather the enlightenment people believe they achieve after superficial internet research.”

“With incomparable glee, Miller shifts effortlessly from Virgil to venereal disease, from Rabelais to Roquefort. In this seductive technicolor swirl of Paris and New York, he captures like no one else the blending of people and the cities they inhabit.”

“Grieving is Cristina Rivera Garza’s hybrid collection of short crónicas, journalism, and personal essays on systemic violence in contemporary Mexico and along the US-Mexico border.”

“Arguably Patricia Highsmith's finest, The Price of Salt is story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover. With this reissue, The Price of Salt may finally be recognized as a major twentieth-century American novel.”

“Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit is a refreshing entry into the many books about George Orwell that keep Orwell alive for every generation.”

“In The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, by narrative, by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own stories—of her mother and her decline from memory loss, of a trip to Iceland, of an illness—Solnit revisits fairytales and entertains other stories: about arctic explorers, Che Guevara among the leper colonies, and Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, about warmth and coldness, pain and kindness, decay and transformation, making art and making self.”

“The bottom line is this is the best “Fitzgerald” book published in the last 20 years. It’s one to savor. I plan to read it again and again.”

“Joseph Raffetto’s Mysteries of Game Theory and Other Oddities is an intriguing and timely collection of writings inspired by the dichotomy between freedom and oppression as well as questions concerning the feasibility and form of a more equal society. It includes an essay, two novellas, and two short stories, which all explore these issues and more. Given the seemingly precarious nature of contemporary society and the increasing distance between the haves and the have-nots, the included works are relevant and thought-provoking, in addition to being entertaining.” Seattle Book Review

Inside Orwell and Other Stories includes a timely short piece about the murder of Trayvon Martin as well as three novellas: Kristin B. (inspired by Christiane F.); Inside Orwell, which concerns George Orwell‘s fight agains fascism, communism, and imperialism; and Three A.M., a story details Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s decline. “This is a short and sweet collection of writing…” San Francisco Book Review. “The Fitzgerald and Orwell pieces are cohesive, focused, and absorbing….” Kirkus Reviews. Available anywhere online.

“The backstory of Ripley’s troubled young life, his latent homosexuality and curious marriage add depth  to Highsmith’s compelling story lines that add up to some of the best mystery thrillers I ever had the pleasure to read.” 

“The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.”

“Jesus and the Disinherited is an important and influential book whose message helped shape the civil rights movements and changed our nation's history forever. Thurman's work reaches past anger and distrust toward a vision of unity--a welcome epistle as we approach the next century.”

“The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving―and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche―as ever.”

“Extraordinary! A moving story retold with sensitiveness and insight.”—Forum  

“The First Man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual…Camus is…writing at the depth of his powers…It is a work of genius.“—The New Yorker