Bøger udgivet af Ecco Press

Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buck-ley had been a normal geeky teen-ager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the side-walk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.Inspired by Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a sub-urban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.

One of the most unusual literary innovations ever produced, A Life Full of Holes is the result of a singular collaboration between two remarkable individuals: Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, an illiterate North African servant and street vendor, and legendary American novelist and essayist Paul Bowles. The powerful story of a shepherd and petty trafficker struggling to maintain hope as he wrestles with the grim realities of daily life, it is the first novel ever written in the Arabic dialect Moghrebi, faithfully recorded and translated into English by Bowles. Straightforward yet rich in complex emotions, it is a fascinating inside look at an unfamiliar culture--harsh and startling, yet interwoven with a poignant, poetic beauty.

It is 1950 and, after a disastrous honeymoon night, Ariah Erskine's young husband throws himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Ariah, "the Widow Bride of the Falls," begins a relentless seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, who is unexpectedly drawn to this plain, strange woman. What follows is a passionate love affair, marriage, and family--a seemingly perfect existence. But the tragedy by which they were thrown together begins to shadow them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder.Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-twentieth century, this haunting exploration of the American family in crisis is a stunning achievement from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation).

Ross Monroe is a boxing railwayman with a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes. Kate Lyle is a headstrong young woman desperate to escape a nightmarish household. As mid-century India sheds its colonial skin and the shadow of violence rises, these young lovers find themselves facing their own "tryst with destiny."In twenty-first-century London, Owen Monroe is writing this story of his parents' lives in an effort to avoid the problems in his own. But keeping past and present apart isn't easy, and before long Owen is deep in the one story he never wanted to tell....

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Adrien Brody and Salma HayekIn the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known. As Isaac navigates the terrors of prison, and his wife feverishly searches for him, his children struggle with the realization that their family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.

Although Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist's sensibilities. In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe and the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.

Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis, and he is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris's house, and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race-blindness, and their view of themselves as essentially good people.

Twenty-seven extraordinary chefs tell the personal stories behind their culinary triumphs.Over the past decade, our culture's interest in the world's great chefs has grown phenomenally. Once known to only the most dedicated gourmets, these supremely talented men and women have become high-profile stars with restaurants as their stages--masterful artists working in the medium that binds us all: food!A wonderful companion volume to The French Culinary Institute's hit public television series, Chef's Story takes us into the private world of more than two dozen maestros of the kitchen--twenty-seven remarkable individuals who share their memories, their beliefs, and their passion for quality to reveal what helped them all become modern culinary legends.

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father--a former high school teacher--is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace--on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly "American" triumph.

Denis Cooverman wanted to say something really important in his high school graduation speech. So, in front of his 512 classmates and their 3,000 relatives, he announced: "I love you, Beth Cooper."It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is. And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species. And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, who's in town on furlough from the United States Army. Complications ensue.

In the 1970s and '80s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces--with a new preface by the author--assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heartbreaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

Thrill of a RomanceIt's different when you have hiccups.Everything is--so many glad hands competingfor your attention, a scarf, a puff of soot,or just a blast of silence from a radio.What is it? That's for you to learnto your dismay when, at the end of a long queuein the cafeteria, tray in hand, they tell you the gate closed downafter the Second World War. Syracuse was declared capitalof a nation in malaise, but the directoratehad other, hidden goals. To proclaim logica casualty of truth was one.Everyone's solitude (and resulting promiscuity)perfumed the byways of villages we had thought civilized.I saw you waiting for a streetcar and pressed forward.Alas, you were only a child in armor. Now when ribald toastssail round a table too fair laid out, why the consequencesare only dust, disease and old age. Pleasant memoriesare just that. So I channel whateverinto my contingency, a vein of mercurythat keeps breaking out, higher up, more on timeevery time. Dirndls spotted with obsolete flowers,worn in the city again, promote open discussion.

A former nuclear weapons designer, Stephen M. Younger understands, as few others can, humankind's potential for violence. He knows that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction means that any nation, group, or even individual could cause unimaginable carnage--and the accelerating pace of communications and transportation means that things can happen faster than we can think about them.In Endangered Species, Younger peers into the heart of modern civilization to present a practical plan for ending mass violence, the scourge of our times and a threat to our survival as a species. Looking across our knowledge of psychology, history, politics, and technology, Younger presents a convincing argument that we can escape our spiral into global destruction. But we haven't a moment to lose.

What should we teach our children about where we come from?Is evolution a lie or good science?Is it incompatible with faith?Have scientists really detected evidence of a creator in nature?From bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Humes comes a dramatic story of faith, science, and courage unlike any since the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Monkey Girl takes you behind the scenes of the recent war on evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, when the town's school board decision to confront the controversy head-on thrust its students, then the entire community, onto the front lines of America's culture wars. Told from the perspectives of all sides of the battle, it is a riveting true story about an epic court case on the teaching of "intelligent design," and what happens when science and religion collide.

That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered. Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.

On the day of her father's funeral, twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iver-ton discovers that he wasn't her biological father after all. Her mother disappeared fourteen years earlier, and her fiancé has just revealed a life-changing secret to her. Alone and adrift, Clarissa travels to mystical Lapland, where she believes she'll meet her real father. There, at a hotel made of ice, Clarissa is confronted with the truth about her mother's his-tory, and must make a decision about how--and where--to live the rest of her life.

"Even if read while sober, Andy Lechter's Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, is a near-transcendent experience." -New York Times Book ReviewSince its rediscovery only fifty years ago, the magic mushroom: a hallucinogenic fungus once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, has inspired a plethora of folktales and urban legends. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher chronicles the history of the magic mushroom--from its use by the Aztecs of Central America and the tribes of Siberia through to the present day--stripping away the myths and taking a critical and humorous look at the drug's more recent manifestations.Informative, lively, and impeccably researched, Shroom is a unique and engaging exploration of this most extraordinary of psychedelics.

For many Americans, eating is a religion. We worship at the temples of celebrity chefs. We raise our children to believe that certain foods are good and others are bad. We believe that if we eat the right foods, we will live longer, and if we eat in the right places, we will raise our social status. Yet what we believe to be true about food is, in fact, quite contradictory.Part exposé, part social commentary, The Gospel of Food is a rallying cry to abandon the fads and fallacies in favor of calmer, more pleasurable eating. By interviewing chefs, food chemists, nutritionists, and restaurant critics about the way we eat, sociologist Barry Glassner helps us recognize the myths, half-truths, and guilt trips they promulgate, and liberates us for greater joy at the table.

Provocative and engaging, this collection brings together the premiere science writing of the year. Featuring the imprimatur of bestselling author and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata, one of the nation's foremost voices in science and medicine, and with contributions from Atul Gawande, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Oliver Sacks, among others, The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a compelling anthology of our most advanced, and most relevant, scientific inquiries.

Jimmy Stephens makes the worst mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife. With lawsuits pending, Jimmy's imperious new editor blackmails him into taking the place of the paper's injured front-line war correspondent. Shipped off to the desert and embedded with a group of foulmouthed but fraternal Marines, Jimmy provides a bewildered but unfiltered view of the invasion of Iraq that is alternately hair-raising, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

In his groundbreaking book, Marc Hauser puts forth a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

In this sparkling collection, award-winning writer Rishi Reddi weaves a multigenerational tapestry of interconnected lives, depicting members of an Indian American community struggling to balance the demands of tradition with the allure of Western life.In "Lord Krishna," a teenager is offended when his evangelical history teacher likens the Hindu deity to Satan, but ultimately forgives the teacher against his father's wishes. In the title story, "Karma," an unemployed professor rescues birds in downtown Boston after his wealthy brother kicks him out of his home. In "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy," which appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2005, an irascible retired judge reconnects with a childhood friend while adjusting to a new life with his daughter and her American husband. In "Devadasi," a beautiful young woman raised in the United States travels back to India and challenges the sexual confines of her culture. And in "Bangles," a widow decides to return to her native village to flee her son's off-putting American ways.Set mostly in the Boston area, with side trips to an isolated immigrant community in Wichita, Kansas, and the characters' hometown of Hyderabad, India, Karma and Other Stories introduces a luminous new voice.

In 1975 Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent death partway through their freshman year. Minette Swift had been assertive, fiercely individualistic, and one of the few black girls at their exclusive, "enlightened" college--and Genna, daughter of a prominent civil defense lawyer, felt duty-bound to protect her at all costs. But fifteen years later, while reconstructing Minette's tragic death, Genna is forced to painfully confront her own past life and identity...and her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world. Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of race and civil rights in post-Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time.

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller"An exceptional story collection." --New York Times Book ReviewThe well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera--including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist--are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.

Following his remarkable fiction debut, Rope Burns, author F. X. Toole's Pound for Pound is a big, brawny novel of honor, perseverance, family, and forgiveness, set in towns where violence is the norm and success stories take on an almost mythic importance. It is the story of Dan Cooley, an aging, legendary Los Angeles trainer, who takes on Chicky Garza, a troubled young fighter hungry for glory in the notoriously corrupt San Antonio boxing circuit. Written in the masterful style that has earned the author glowing comparisons to Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Frank McCourt, this unforgettable posthumous novel celebrates a unique and powerful bond, and the courage that overcomes insurmountable obstacles in and out of the ring.

Can Joe help it if he falls in love with people who don't make him happy? And what about Helena--she's in love, but somehow this isn't enough. Shouldn't it be? And if it isn't enough, does this mean she's not really in love? It certainly seems to be spoiling the love she's in. And let's say there's a volcano underneath the city--doesn't that make things more urgent? Does urgency mean that you should keep the person you're with, or search for the best possible person? And what if the best possible person loves someone else--like the Snow Queen, for instance?This novel may not answer these questions, but nevertheless the author and publisher hope it will be of interest.

Stem cell research, genetically modified crops, animals developed with personalized human organs for transplantation, and other previously inconceivable biotech applications could increase the quality of all human lives and maximize the health of the biosphere. But ironically, as the science becomes more precise and transparent, it also becomes more contentious. In Challenging Nature, Silver argues that although they seem to have little in common, Christian fundamentalists opposed to embryo research and New Age organic food devotees are both driven by a deeply rooted fear that biotechnology--in some guise--challenges the sovereignty of a higher or deeper transcendent authority. In the short term, Silver writes, Eastern spiritual traditions will give Asian countries a research advantage. But over the millennia, human nature may have the potential to remake Mother Nature in the image of an idealized world.

Harry March is something of a wreck and more than half nuts. Up until now, he has lived peacefully on an island in the Hamptons with his talking dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and unapologetic capitalist. But March's life starts to completely unravel when Lapham--an ostentatious multimillionaire who made his fortune on asparagus tongs--begins construction of a gargantuan mansion just across the way. To Harry, Lapham's monstrosity-to-be represents the fetid and corrupt excess that has ruined modern civilization. Which means, quite simply, that this is war.

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class--and pulls her dangerously close to another--which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.