ebooks for Everyone Lists

In Life Without Death, the latest short story collection from Peter Unwin, ordinary men and women search for meaning in lives subject to change, chance, coincidence, and catastrophe.

A man recalls a lifetime of love and loss while copying contacts out of his old little black book. A woman is left her dying father’s secret stash of pornography, and is entrusted with the unenviable task of disposing of it. A new father unexpectedly discovers a way of connecting to his autistic son. For one day, guests to a wedding set aside their various past misdeeds in order to celebrate a young couple’s union. A teenager newly introduced to a life of petty crime suddenly finds himself in way over his head. A man’s former acquaintance resurfaces decades later as the subject of a haunting art film.

Unwin’s characters live full, complex lives within each story. Though they may not find the simple answers they seek, if such answers even exist, they-and readers-gain something farmore valuable on their journeys: perspective.

Two novels, two young women at the frontiers of sex.

Like a series of Penthouse letters penned by Kathy Acker, Lie With Me recounts a woman’s sexual escapades, picking up random men in bars for a series of increasingly extreme encounters, hoping to understand love from the far side of sluttiness.

In The Way of the Whore, Mira, an introverted Jewish girl obsessed with JeanGenet, allows herself to be seduced by the sex industry, determined to find meaning in her tormented relationships with cruel men.

Tamara Faith Berger’s first two novels have been languishing out of print. They were scandalous when they were first published; substantially revised and returned to print, they’re just as titillating and troubling now.