Orem Library

Evaluating his life on the eve of his death, atypical canine Enzo considers the sacrifices his master, Denny Swift, has made in his pursuit of becoming a professional race car driver, and the dog's own efforts to preserve the Swift family.

"Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all. Jenny Offill's heroine, referred to in these pages as simply "the wife," once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of...

This experimental work is an enthralling amalgamation of anecdotes, aphorisms, and quotations from writers and artists, interspersed with self-reflexive comments by the Writer who has assembled them. As the title implies, this is certainly not a novel -- not in the general sense of the term. And yet a reader who follows the flow will gradually notice certain novelistic conventions insinuating themselves. Writer -- as the narrator refers to himself...

In an apocalyptic future, humanity survives in temperature regulated geodomes. Dorner has committed himself to his career as a Planner, keeping the temperature of his colony constant through a system of furnaces as well as a strict code of human conduct. Extremes of human activity -- violence, extreme athleticism, and excessive sexual activity -- can threaten the thermal balance. His vow of abstinence, however, is threatened by a presence that has...

Butler's inventive third book is dedicated "For no one" and begins with an eerie prologue about the saturation of the world with a damaging light. Suitably forewarned, the reader is introduced to an unexceptional no-name family. All should be idyllic in their newly purchased home, but they are shadowed by an unwelcome "copy family." In the face of the copy mother, the mother sees her heretofore unrealized deterioration. Things only get worse as the...

If is an experimental novel of ideas. You are the nameless protagonist, a young dreamer from northern California. At the end of each chapter, you must make a decision. These decisions shape your identity as the novel swerves toward twenty-two possible endings. While your choices take you to rural Guatemala, Manhattan, or Berlin, the novel continually changes its form. What are the limits of freedom, and how much of life is within your control?

"The year is 1968, and as France is torn apart by social and political anarchy, the noted eccentric Anton Vowl goes missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, his best friends scour his diary for clues to his whereabouts. At first glance these pages reveal nothing but Vowl's penchant for word games, especially for compositions in which the use of a particular letter is suppressed. But as the friends work out Vowl's verbal puzzles, and as they investigate...

Based on a analogy between the reader's desire to finish the story and the lover's desire to consummate his or her passion, this book is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book are constantly and comically frustrated.

A tale spanning the years between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the end of World War I features characters who are caught up in such events as the labor troubles of Colorado, the Mexican revolution, and the heyday of silent-movie Hollywood.

"Named one of the best books of the summer by the Wall Street Journal, Elle, the Huffington Post and Purewow "Latin America's new literary star."--The New Yorker "Brilliant. Like a literary exercise for the mind, but strangely fun to decode."--Elle "The most talked-about writer to come out of Chile since Bolaño," (The New York Times Book Review), Alejandro Zambra is celebrated around the world for his strikingly original, slyly funny, daringly unconventional...