From the author of Indie Next Pick and New York Times Editors' Choice Goodnight, Beautiful Women comes a transportive and chilling debut novel of two sisters growing up on an isolated Northern European island in the shadow of their late mother and the Devil It’s 1825, four generations after Berggrund Island’s women stood accused of witchcraft under the eye of their priest, now long dead. In his place is Pastor Silas, a widower with two wild young daughters, Beata and Ulrika. The sisters are outcasts: imaginative, oppositional, increasingly obsessed with the lore and legend of the island’s dark past and their absent mother, whom their father refuses to speak of. As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen. Ever capable Ulrika shoulders the burden of keeping house, while Bea, alone with unsettling visions and impulses, hungers for companionship and attention. When an enigmatic outsider arrives at their door, his presence threatens their family bond and unearths – piece by piece – a buried history to shocking ends. All the while Berggrund’s neighboring island The Blue Maiden beckons, storied home of the Witches’ Sabbath and Satan’s realm, its misted shore veiling truths the sisters have spent their lives searching for. A Nordic Gothic laced with the horrors of life in a patriarchy both hostile to and reliant on its women, The Blue Maiden is a starkly beautiful depiction of lost lineage and resilience.
Interconnected stories of women of all ages. “If the fiction of Stephen King and Alice Munro had a literary love child, it might look like this” (The Washington Post). Moving along the Maine coast and beyond, the stories in Goodnight, Beautiful Women bring us into the sultry, mysterious inner lives of New England women and girls as they navigate the dangers and struggles of their outer worlds. With novelistic breadth and a quicksilver emotional intelligence, Noyes explores the ruptures and vicissitudes of growing up and growing old, and shines a light on our most uncomfortable impulses while masterfully charting the depths of our murky desires. A woman watches her husband throw—one by one—their earthly possessions into the local quarry, before vanishing himself; two girls from very different social classes find themselves deep in the throes of a punishing affair; a motherless teenager is sexually awakened in the aftermath of a local trauma; and a woman’s guilt from a childhood lie about her intellectually disabled cousin reverberates into her married years. Dark and brilliant, rhythmic and lucid, Goodnight, Beautiful Women marks the arrival of a fearless and unique new young voice in American fiction. “Anna Noyes’s stunning debut collection concerns girls and women struggling to break away, dealing with burdens like mental illness and neglect that threaten to transform and define them.” —The Wall Street Journal, “The Season’s Most Exciting Fiction Reads”
MODERN & CONTEMPORARY FICTION (POST C 1945). Anna Noyes has produced a powerful, mesmerizing debut collection of loosely interconnected short stories. Assured and atmospheric and imbued with the luminous beauty of the Maine coastline, these stories are bold, unflinching and utterly compelling. Ordinary lives are held under the microscope, making them vivid, extraordinary - steeped with promise yet mired by threat, driven mad with longing, muted by heartache and loss, trapped in the evanescence of memory. With breathtaking control and a rhythmic, lucid prose that is distinctly her own, Goodnight Beautiful Women marks Anna Noyes as an exhilarating new talent.
Summer Stories features a delightful series of paintings by Maine artist Leslie Anderson along with a dozen short stories inspired by these paintings. Anderson's works capture people and events characteristic of a summer in Maine-for example, Hauling Buoys, Fair Night, Clammer, Hay Day, and Last Night at the Lake. The accompanying stories, by ten acclaimed and award-winning Maine writers, animate the paintings, revealing and honoring the genuine uniqueness of a summer in Maine. There is tenderness and warmth, but also danger and torment, and throughout, an experience of the qualities that make Maine what it is-resourcefulness, determination, strength, and independence. If you know Maine, you may find yourself in one of these paintings or stories; if you've never been to Maine, this book will excite your imagination and make you want to visit Maine to craft your own summer story. Short stories in this book are by Maine writers Mary Lou Bagley, Nancy L. Brown, Meredith Nash Fossel, Claire Guyton, Kathryn Hall, David Karraker, Catherine J. S. Lee, Laura Levenson, John B. Nichols, Jr., and Anna Noyes
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.