Waiting for the End of the World

Madison Smartt Bell

Summary

An “exhilirating” novel of domestic terrorism in the gritty streets of 1980s New York from the National Book Award–finalist and author of Straight Cut (The New Yorker).   As a staff photographer at Bellevue hospital in Manhattan, Clarence Dmitri Larkin is exposed to the fraying underbelly of New York City. Drawn in by the stories of the sick, the lost, and the insane, Larkin’s own dark impulses lead him through the streets of Brooklyn’s shadowy warehouse district.   Increasingly isolated from the world around him, Larkin falls in with a disturbed cell of outcasts. Their ringleader, empowered by confused visions of grandeur and revolution, launches an outlandish scheme to plant an atomic bomb in the catacombs under Times Square.   Narrated with unsettling plausibility, Bell’s debut novel demonstrates the remarkable literary skill celebrated in his later novels, such as Soldier’s Joy and The Year of Silence. With “real brilliance . . . full of fire . . . Bell provides promise: promise of his own talent and promise that young American writers are not all retreating from ‘big’ subjects” (The New York Times).   “Every sentence [Bell] writes is a joy. His power is exhilarating.” —The New Yorker

Available since: 12/06/2011.

Print length: 330 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The Lady Travelers Guide to...

Victoria Alexander

An earl’s love language is Egyptian hieroglyphs in this sparkling adventure in the #1 New York Times-bestselling author’s Lady Travelers Society series. Harry Armstrong has spent years in Egypt, recovering relics and disregarding rules. Now he’s back in England with a new title and a new purpose: penning his exploits. But his efforts are overshadowed by London’s favorite writer about Egypt—a woman they call The Queen of the Desert, of all things. Worse, her stories—serialized in newspapers and reprinted in books—are complete rubbish. Miss Sidney Honeywell didn’t set out to deceive anyone. It’s not her fault readers assumed her Tales of a Lady Adventurer in Egypt were real! Admitting her inadvertent deception now would destroy her reputation and her livelihood. But when the Earl of Brenton challenges her to travel to Egypt to prove her expertise, accompanied by his dashing, arrogant nephew, what choice does she have but to pack her bags? With the matchmaking founders of the Lady Travelers Society in tow, Harry is determined to expose Sidney’s secret. But the truth might not be as great a revelation as discovering that love can strike even the most stubborn of hearts. “Alexander continues her celebration of multigenerational female bravado and intensifies the complexity of this delightfully over-the-top series through a fantastical Egyptian travelogue, and playfully praises the value of telling a good adventure tale through its imaginative, fiction-writing female lead.” —Publishers Weekly

Show book

The Toss of a Lemon - A Novel

Padma Viswanathan

A “superbly done” novel of a woman, her family, and a village in India that “makes a vanished world feel completely authentic” (Booklist).   Sivakami was married at ten, widowed at eighteen, and left with two children. According to the dictates of her caste, her head is shaved and she puts on widow’s whites. From dawn to dusk, she is not allowed to contaminate herself with human touch, not even to comfort her small children. Sivakami dutifully follows custom, except for one defiant act: She moves back to her dead husband’s house to raise her children. There, her servant Muchami, a closeted gay man who is bound by a different caste’s rules, becomes her public face. Their singular relationship holds three generations of the family together through the turbulent first half of the twentieth century, as India endures great social and political change. But as time passes, the family changes, too; Sivakami’s son will question the strictures of the very beliefs that his mother has scrupulously upheld. The Toss of a Lemon is heartbreaking and exhilarating, profoundly exotic yet utterly recognizable in evoking the tensions that change brings to every family.

Show book

The Unknown Heir

Anne Herries

A woman must make a match for an eligible American bachelor while trying to resist his charms in this captivating Regency romance. 
 
Miss Hester Sheldon believes the American heir to her adopted grandfather’s estate is a rogue and a rebel—with no fortune of his own. Now she has been instructed to teach him the ways of English society, and to find him a suitable wife! 
 
But Jared Clinton turns out to be powerful, very wealthy—and extremely handsome! Hester, who has always thought she was destined never to marry, is shocked by her building desire. Soon she is wishing that she could be his chosen bride . . .

Show book

Legion XXII: Bellatrix - Book 2

Simon Turney

Titus Cervianus is no ordinary soldier. And the Twenty Second is no ordinary legion...Egypt, 25 BC. Titus Cervianus marches into the unknown as he and the Twenty Second Legion contend with the armies of the Bellatrix: the Warrior Queen of Kush. The Kushites and the Egyptians are united against the Roman presence in their lands – but there are complex political and military forces at work. Deep in the deserts, Cervianus and his comrades must brace themselves for a furious onslaught as they take on the might of the Bellatrix.

Show book

One Two Buckle My Shoe - A...

Agatha Christie

The meticulous detective Hercule Poirot suspects the worst of the death of a dentist in this classic mystery by Queen of Whodunits, Agatha Christie. 
Even the great detective Hercule Poirot harbored a deep and abiding fear of the dentist, so it was with some trepidation that he arrived at the celebrated Dr. Morley's surgery for a dental examination. But what neither of them knew was that only hours later Poirot would be back to examine the dentist, found dead in his own surgery. 
Turning to the other patients for answers, Poirot finds other, darker, questions.…

Show book

The Last Hiccup - A Novel

Christopher Meades

“A strange and surprisingly touching novel about how people find good and evil where they look for them” (Booklist).   In 1930s Russia, an eight-year-old boy named Vladimir is suddenly stricken with a chronic case of the hiccups. He soon finds himself spirited away to a Moscow hospital by the famous physician Sergei Namestikov, who puts him through a series of extraordinary—and often bizarre—treatments in an effort to find a cure.   Then Sergei’s chief medical rival, the brilliant Alexander Afiniganov, determines that beneath Vladimir’s blank eyes lurks a pure, unbridled evil—and takes steps to remove the child from polite society. Abandoned by everyone but his hiccups, Vladimir is about to embark on a journey that is funny, poignant, and surreal—and that takes a close look at the nature of good and evil—in this novel, a winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction from the author of Hanna Who Fell From the Sky.   “A beautifully written novel, part folk tale, part parable.” —Will Ferguson, author of Happiness

Show book