Books with author Jonathan Nathan

“Summons up a small American town at precisely the right moment in our history . . . a bold, vital, and view-expanding novel.”—George SaundersA rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times—fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan.A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK Mark Firth is a contractor and home restorer in Howland, Massachusetts, who feels opportunity passing his family by. After being swindled by a financial advisor, what future can Mark promise his wife, Karen, and their young daughter, Haley? He finds himself envying the wealthy weekenders in his community whose houses sit empty all winter. Philip Hadi used to be one of these people. But in the nervous days after 9/11 he flees New York and hires Mark to turn his Howland home into a year-round “secure location” from which he can manage billions of dollars of other people’s money. The collision of these two men’s very different worlds—rural vs. urban, middle class vs. wealthy—is the engine of Jonathan Dee’s powerful new novel. Inspired by Hadi, Mark looks around for a surefire investment: the mid-decade housing boom. Over Karen’s objections, and teaming up with his troubled brother, Gerry, Mark starts buying up local property with cheap debt. Then the town’s first selectman dies suddenly, and Hadi volunteers for office. He soon begins subtly transforming Howland in his image—with unexpected results for Mark and his extended family. Here are the dramas of twenty-first-century America—rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism—played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time. Praise for The Locals“After 9/11, New York hedge fund billionaire Philip Hadi retreats to his summer home in the Berkshires. In thrall to his new town, he runs for office to keep it sleepy, sweet and free from tax hikes. Is he benevolent, arrogant or both? No one gets off the moral hook in this propulsive, brilliantly observed study.”—People (Book of the Week) “Thoughtful . . . [Jonathan Dee’s] prescient sensitivity has never been more unnerving. . . . Amid the heat of today’s vicious political climate, The Locals is a smoke alarm. Listen up.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

On the Sixth Day God created Man. On the Seventh Day He rested. Then all Hell broke loose.Lucifer has seen the creation of humanity and he is afraid. Will the angels be cast out of Heaven in favor of God's new creation? They have built a mighty kingdom in the Lower Realm but the Prophecy of the Dragon looms as a storm on the horizon. Lucifer would sooner upset the balance of power than allow the angelic host to be cast out. Can his younger brother, Michael, maintain his faith and conquer his fear? Can he hold fast to his choir of warrior cherubim in the face of angelic heresy? Can their youngest sibling, Gabriel, overcome his desire to protect his choir of seraphim at all costs?Who will stay loyal to the White Throne and who will choose to follow Lucifer on his quest for the Phoenix Empyrean? Though the angelic host has trained for millennia to defeat the Dragon, nothing can prepare them for the maelstrom their Morning Star is fomenting in the shadowy nadir of his luminous heart. Saints will sour to villains. A kingdom will come under siege. But amidst a Heavenly Realm torn by war, the Sons of God will find their faith.Seen as a revelation through the eyes of Archangel Gabriel's last prophet, Heavenly Realms: Empyrean Falling is an epic romance of faith and hope, love and fear. It is a recounting of the war that is neither fact nor fiction, but a myth that can make a believer out of anyone....

“One man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages.”In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before.Here is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in The Merchant of Venice won a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I’s passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from Hamlet to Macbeth; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal. Finally, Shakespeare enters oblivion, with sonnets that suggest he actively sought immortality through his art and secretly helped shape his posthumous image more than anyone ever knew.Equal parts masterly detective story, brilliant literary analysis, and insightful world history, Soul of the Age is more than a superb new recounting of Shakespeare’s experiences; it is a bold and entertaining work of scholarship and speculation, one that shifts from past to present, reality to the imagination, to reveal how this unsurpassed artist came to be.

A chronicle of the 1947 baseball season during which Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier is a sixtieth anniversary tribute based on interviews with Robinson's wife, daughter, and teammates that covers such topics as his relationship with fellow players, the St. Louis Cardinals' proposed boycott of the Dodgers, and Robinson's associate with segregated hotel roommate and sportswriter Wendell Smith. 125,000 first printing.

In a little village deep in the aspen woods of the kingdom of Sephronia, there lives a girl named Alissa who raises fireflies for the village's lanterns. She is also kept very busy helping her father with his cows and her mother with the inn. It's a simple life that Alissa is quite content with, and her home is such a bright and peaceful place that it seems impossible it will ever be touched by the Curse that has fallen over Sephronia.Sadly when that day arrives, as it must, Alissa finds that the Curse could not have picked a more terrible way to come to the village. Now, facing a very grim future indeed, she must go on a perilous journey through the wilds to reach the palace in Sephron, to bring back the Court Wizard to help put things to rights.Luckily she won't go alone, for she's made some very good friends in a pair of traveling rats, and of course she has her firefly lantern. And as you can guess for a girl who can talk to rats and is brave enough to leave her village and travel through some very dangerous places, Alissa is more than just a simple firefly girl.

"As cities and populations grow, we need more and more energy to run and heat our homes and to power transportation. Readers will learn how energy engineers help make sure that our energy demands are met in a number of different ways. They discover new ways to convert natural resources into affordable and environmentally friendly forms of energy; they build and operate power stations for both renewable and non-renewable forms of energy; they manage electrical power networks; they also monitor how generating energy may harm the planet. Real-life examples and a design challenge help students understand key concepts related to the engineering process, and how energy engineers will play a vital role in our future."--

Will Burgess is used to hard knocks. Abandoned by his father, son of a drug-addicted mother, and charged with raising his six-year-old sister, Will has far more to worry about than most high school freshmen. To make matters worse, Mia Samuels, the girl of Will’s dreams, is dating his worst enemy, the most sadistic upperclassman at Shadeland High. Will’s troubles, however, are just beginning. Because one of the nation’s most notorious criminals—the Moonlight Killer—has escaped from prison and is headed straight toward Will’s hometown. And something else is lurking in Savage Hollow, the forest surrounding Will’s rundown house. Something ancient and infinitely evil. When the worst storm of the decade descends on Shadeland, Will and his friends must confront unfathomable horrors. Everyone Will loves—his mother, his little sister, Mia, and his friends—will be threatened. And very few of them will escape with their lives.

With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. The physical distance is 1,000 miles of difficult-and often treacherous-water, which Raban navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat.But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers-- between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class. Along the way, Raban offers captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss.

The long-awaited sequel to The Winshaw Legacy, the novel that introduced American readers to one of Britain's most exciting new writers--an acerbic, hilariously dark, and unflinching portrait of modern society. The novel opens in the early aughts: two ten-year-olds, Alison and Rachel, have a frightening encounter with the "Mad Bird Woman" who lives down the road. As the narrative progresses through time, the novel envelops others who are connected to the girls: Alison's mother, a has-been singer, competing on a hit reality TV show; Rachel's university mentor confronting her late husband's disastrously obsessive search for a German film he saw as a child; a young police constable investigating the seemingly accidental and unrelated deaths of two stand-up comedians; the ludicrously wealthy family who hire Rachel as a nanny--under whose immense London mansion Rachel will discover a dark and terrifying secret. Psychological insight, social commentary, vicious satire, and even surrealist horror are combined in this highly accomplished work to hold up a revealing, disquieting mirror to the world we live in today.

"Haven't you always thought there’s something WEIRD about this town, Miro?" Miro and Zia live in Aurora, a fishing town nestled in the shadow of an ancient castle. Miro lives in his books; Zia is never without her camera. The day they meet, they uncover a secret. The fishing works, the castle, and the town council are all linked to an ill-fated 1930s Antarctic expedition. But the diary of that journey has been hidden, and the sea is stirring up unusual creatures. Something has a powerful hold over the town. With Zia determined to find out more, Miro finds himself putting aside his books for a real adventure.