Sara Nović

Jon Papernick and Sara Novic Tuesday, May 19th at 7pm Jon Papernick's The Book of Stone is a searing psychological thriller set in pre-9/11 Brooklyn in which a family's dark history and an estranged son's attempt to find meaning and purpose converge. Matthew Stone has inherited a troubling legacy: a gangster grandfather and a distant father--who is also a disgraced judge. After his father's death, Matthew is a young man alone. He turns to his father's beloved books for comfort, perceiving within them guidance that leads him to connect with a group of religious extremists. As Matthew immerses himself in this unfamiliar world, the FBI seeks his assistance to foil the group's violent plot. Caught between these powerful forces, haunted by losses past and present, and desperate for redemption, Matthew charts a course of increasing peril--for himself and for everyone around him. From the author of The Ascent of Eli Israel and There is No Other, The Book of Stone examines the evolution of the terrorist mentality and the complexities of religious extremism, as well as how easily a vulnerable mind can be exploited for dark purposes. Lyrical and incendiary, The Book of Stone is a masterfully crafted novel that reveals the ambiguities of "good" and "evil." Jonathan Papernick's fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals including, Nerve, Post Road, Green Mountains Review, and Night Train. Papernick has taught fiction writing at Pratt Institute, Brandeis University, Bar Ilan University, Emerson College, Grub Street Writers and Emerson College. A Toronto native, Papernick lives with his wife and two sons outside of Boston. For readers of The Tiger's Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl's coming of age--and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war. Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia's capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana's idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana's sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world. New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she's tried to move on from her past, she can't escape her memories of war--secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country's difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before. Moving back and forth through time, Girl at war is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl--and its legacy on all of us. It's a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today. "An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual, Girl at war is a remarkable debut by a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind." --Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story Sara Nović was born in 1987 and has lived in the United States and Croatia. She is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, where she studied fiction and translation. She is the fiction editor at Blunderbuss Magazine and teaches writing at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Columbia University. She lives in Queens, New York.

Location: Street: 125 Water Street City: Exeter, Province: New Hampshire Postal Code: 03833-2456 Country: United States (added from IndieBound)… (more)