Freedom Is a Feast
A multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a rebel who commits a youthful betrayal receives a late-life chance at redemption and a new life: "a tour de force" from "the new master" (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene). In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations. Almost forty years later, in a poor barrio of Caracas, Mar穩a, a single mother, ekes out a precarious existence as a housekeeper, pouring her love into Eloy, her young son. Her devotion will not be enough, however, to keep them from disaster. On the eve of the attempted coup against President Ch獺vez, Eloy is wounded by a stray bullet, fracturing her world. Amid the chaos at the hospital, Mar穩a encounters Stanislavo, now a newspaper editor. Even as the country itself is convulsed by waves of unrest, this twist of fate forces a belated reckoning for Stanislavo, who may yet earn a chance to atone for old missteps before it's too late. With its epic scope, gripping narrative, and unflinching intimacy, Freedom Is a Feast announces a major new talent. Alejandro Puyana has delivered a wise and moving debut about sticking to one's beliefs at the expense of pain and chaos, about the way others can suffer for our misdeeds even when we have the best of intentions, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.
Ramblings; Poetry & Haiku Collection
The poems in this book, Ramblings, are a collection of all the poems in my first four books of poetry - The Tree Was A Symbol of the World: A Sick Poetry Chapbook; Seasons of Stillness: A Collection of (Mostly) Sick Haiku; Ardent Illusions: A Haiku Collection; and Labyrinth: Peaked - Political - Philosophical - Poems.
Scabmuggers
For anyone interested in the intersection of feminism and politics comes this inspiring, based-on-a-true-story tale of fighting back against sexism in the labor movement, set against the backdrop of Harvard in the 1990s. As soon as courses at Harvard begin, Ana, a White female, finds herself being stalked by Aaron, a Black male classmate. Word quickly gets out to the rest of the cohort--but not wanting to get anyone kicked out, Ana refuses to name names. With their program director insisting there's nothing she can do to intervene if no one will name the perpetrator, the class becomes engulfed in a campaign to protect Ana that splits the group into two camps. Some of the men join the women to fight the harassment; some of the women join the harassers. In short order, the conflict becomes a fight for power that divides along race, sex, LGBTQ, and class lines--mirroring the heartbreaking history of the labor movement, and serving as a precursor to our current political landscape. A galvanizing behind-the-scenes look at the labor movement of the 1990s, Scabmuggers is ultimately a triumphant tale of women's empowerment. Ana and her friends may be outnumbered--but they won't go down without a fight.
2054
From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034, another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America's violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that's held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he'll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war. A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world's great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy. Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.