Sarah Hall

Peter Hobbs

Sex and Death

Sex and death are two of the most powerful, exhilarating and terrifying forces that define and shape the human experience. In this provocative and haunting collection of short stories edited by two masters of the form, some of today's most compelling writers from around the globe - including Kevin Barry, Yiyun Li, Ben Marcus, Jon McGregor, Taiye Selasi and Ali Smith - explore these challenging themes with honesty, empathy and psychological acuity, in stories that are utterly dazzling.

"What else is there?" -- Alice Munro, on why so much of her work deals with the twin themes of sex and death. The drive for life -- for survival and reproduction -- and the drive for death -- for violence and self-destruction -- are the two dominant, instinctive urges of human behaviour. These conflicting compulsions, characterized by Freud as Eros and Thanatos, are also the central themes of great literature. In Sex and Death, some of today's most compelling writers from around the globe -- Kevin Barry, Lynn Coady, Robert Drewe, Ceridwen Dovey, Damon Galgut, Petina Gappah, Sarah Hall, Peter Hobbs, Yiyun Li, Alexander MacLeod, Ben Marcus, Jon McGregor, Guadalupe Nettel, Courttia Newland, Taiye Selassie, Ali Smith, Wells Tower, Alan Warner, Claire Vaye Watkins, Clare Wigfall -- explore these challenging themes with honesty, psychological acuity, brutality, tenderness, and empathy, in stories that are illuminating, disquieting, funny, and utterly dazzling.

Stories

A Guardian Book of the Year and Chapters/Indigo Best Book In the foothills of a mountain range in northern Pakistan is a beautiful orchard. Swallows wheel and dive silently over the branches, and the scent of jasmine threads through the air. Pomegranates hang heavy, their skins darkening to a deep crimson. Neglected now, the trees are beginning to grow wild, their fruit left to spoil on the branches. Many miles away, a frail young man is flung out of prison gates. Looking up, scanning the horizon for swallows in flight, he stumbles and collapses in the roadside dust. His ravaged body tells the story of fifteen years of brutality. Just one image has held and sustained him through the dark times -- the thought of the young girl who had left him dumbstruck with wonder all those years ago, whose eyes were lit up with life. A tale of tenderness in the face of great and corrupt power,In The Orchard, The Swallowsis a heartbreaking novel written in prose of exquisite stillness and beauty.

In the Orchard, the Swallows

A. A. Bronson

From 2008 to 2010, A.A. Bronson and Peter Hobbs brought together small groups of men - in Banff, New Orleans, Winnipeg, Manhattan and Fire Island - in a secret group ritual that was different every time and yet always the same. This book explores each location in five chapters of photographic images.

Queer Spirits

In the foothills of a mountain range in northern Pakistan is a beautiful orchard. Swallows wheel and dive silently over the branches, and the scent of jasmine threads through the air. Pomegranates hang heavy, their skins darkening to a deep crimson. Neglected now, the trees are beginning to grow wild, their fruit left to spoil on the branches. Many miles away, a frail young man is flung out of prison gates. Looking up, scanning the horizon for swallows in flight, he stumbles and collapses in the roadside dust. His ravaged body tells the story of fifteen years of brutality. Just one image has held and sustained him through the dark times - the thought of the young girl who had left him dumbstruck with wonder all those years ago, whose eyes were lit up with life. A tale of tenderness in the face of great and corrupt power, In The Orchard, The Swallows is a heartbreaking novel written in prose of exquisite stillness and beauty

Clouds: Their Formation, Optical Properties, and Effects deals with the formation of clouds as well as the theoretical and experimental aspects of their microphysical and optical properties. Discussions are grouped under the headings of structure of clouds, interaction of passive radiation with clouds, and interaction of active radiation with clouds. This book is organized into three sections and has 11 chapters. After analyzing the spatial and temporal scales involved in the formation and organization of clouds and precipitation, this text examines the microphysical measurement techniques used in probing the microstructure of clouds. The reader is then methodically introduced to the microstructure of atmospheric clouds and precipitation; the formation and structure of fog; and basic shortwave characteristics of “ideal clouds. The temporal behavior of clouds and their interaction with the radiation field are considered, along with the possible effects of cloud models in general circulation studies. The remaining chapters explore the light scattering properties of ice crystals and the radiative characteristics of ice clouds; the laser measurements in clouds; the transmission and reflectivity of ice clouds by active probing; and the theory of multiple scattering of laser beams in clouds. The book concludes by presenting the measurements of the temporal and spatial spreading of a blue-green pulse through clouds and fogs as a function of optical thickness and receiver field-of-view. This text will be helpful to advanced researchers and program managers in terms of reviewing the state of the art and identifying those areas requiring further research efforts.

Clouds Their Formation, Optical Properties, And Effects

How we come in, and how we go out, sex and death: these are the governing drives, our two greatest themes. In this provocative and haunting collection of short stories, acclaimed writers probe the nature of, and connection between two of the most powerful, exhilarating and terrifying forces that define and shape the human experience: sex and death.

A provocative and haunting collection of short stories that probe two of the most powerful forces shaping the human experience. The drive for life — for survival and reproduction — and the drive for death — for violence and self-destruction — are the two dominant, instinctive urges of human behaviour. These conflicting compulsions, characterized by Freud as Eros and Thanatos, are also the central themes of great literature. In Sex and Death, some of today’s most compelling writers from around the globe — Kevin Barry, Lynn Coady, Robert Drewe, Ceridwen Dovey, Damon Galgut, Petina Gappah, Sarah Hall, Peter Hobbs, Yiyun Li, Alexander MacLeod, Ben Marcus, Jon McGregor, Guadalupe Nettel, Courttia Newland, Taiye Selassie, Ali Smith, Wells Tower, Alan Warner, Claire Vaye Watkins, Clare Wigfall — explore these challenging themes with honesty, psychological acuity, brutality, tenderness, and empathy, in stories that are illuminating, disquieting, funny, and utterly dazzling.

Following on from the success of Peter Hobbs's debut novel 'A Short Day Dying', this is a collection of comic, heartfelt, grotesque, other-worldly and fantastical stories.

I Could Ride All Day in My Cool Blue Train

Charles Wenmoth is a blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher in the wildest reaches of South-West England. It is 1870 and Wenmoth devotes his weekdays to work and the Sabbath to walking great distances to preach to dwindling congregations. Charles burns with faith - but it's a faith balanced by his pleasure in nature and the physical world around him. In his relationship with Harriet French, a blind girl who maintains her belief despite her debilitating condition, Wenmoth finds his fragile faith tested in the most trying of circumstances.

The Short Day Dying

"From 2006 to 2009, AA Bronson collaborated with artist Peter Hobbs on the project Invocation of the Queer Spirits. The rituals that resulted are evoked, and invoked in Queer Spirits, Bronson and Hobbs{u2019} diaristic and imagistic exploration of the project."--Note de l'éditeur.

This tale of innocence and corruption in Pakistan is “a beautiful, often painful, journey of a young man’s doomed yearning for love” (The Guardian). During a village wedding in Pakistan, a boy risks speaking to the beautiful daughter of a powerful local politician. As night falls, the two meet in his father’s orchard, inadvertently falling asleep as they wait for the light of dawn to reveal the orchard’s beauty, naive to the dangers posed by their innocent mistake. As first light approaches, and the girl’s father realizes the young couple’s mutual attraction, he has the boy sent to prison without explanation or the benefit of a trial. Fifteen years later, the boy—now a man—is released without a word. Bereft of family and weakened from years of abuse, he collapses on the side of the road and is taken in by a kindly scholar. As time passes, the man recovers enough to take daily walks to his father’s now abandoned orchard, where he last saw his young beloved among the trees, beneath soaring, fluttering swallows . . . In clear, crystalline prose, this novel reveals the ability of the human spirit to conquer the random cruelties of life, and how the power of love and hope, once known, can never truly be extinguished. “Hobbs’ prose is spare, clean, and lyrical, giving In the Orchard, the Swallows a timeless feeling; however, the markers of the Afghan war and the changes in the landscape remind the reader that this story is very contemporary.” —Booklist “A perfectly cut jewel of a book.” —The Financial Times

The story of four seasons in the life of Charles Wenmouth, a twenty-seven-year-old apprentice blacksmith and Methodist lay preacher in Cornwall in 1870 follows his faith journey as he travels to attend to the sick and help the poor, and as he discovers his attachment to a girl for the piety and patience she maintains despite her long illness. A first novel. Original. 25,000 first printing.

Peter Hobbs

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