New Releases by Richard Powers

Een pianist en een zanger, beiden kleurling, vechten zich in het Amerika van de jaren zestig van de 20e eeuw een weg naar de top van de klassieke westerse muziekwereld.

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Playground . " Plowing the Dark is virtual reality composed in a language that will never go obsolete." —Kevin Berger, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review In a digital laboratory on the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual-reality researchers races to complete the Cavern, an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a vast Byzantine cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage, chained to a radiator in another empty white room. What can possibly join these two remote places? Only the shared imagination, a room that these people unwittingly build in common, where they are all about to meet. Adie Klarpol, a skilled but disillusioned artist, comes back to life, revived by the thrill of working with cutting-edge technology. Against the collapse of Cold War empires and the fall of the Berlin Wall, she retreats dangerously into the cyber-realities she has been hired to create. On the other side of the globe, Taimur Martin, an English teacher recovering from a failed love affair, is picked up off the streets in Beirut by Islamic fundamentalists and held in solitary captivity. "Superb . . . Powers pulls off one of the most astonishing feats I''ve ever seen in literature . . . daring, unpredictable, and emotionally powerful." —Steven Moore, The Washington Post Book World "A fiercely visual book . . . the effect is spectacular . . . The most visceral prose Powers has ever written." —Daniel Zalewski, The New York Times Book Review "I don''t have the space to do justice to all the wonders of craftsmanship in Plowing the Dark . . . This is the first emblematic novel of the 21st century, a lesson and an inspiration." —Judy Doenges, The Seattle Times

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year Gain tells two parallel stories: one, of Laura Bodey, divorced mother of two and successful real-estate agent in the small town of Lacewood, Illinois, who one day discovers that she has ovarian cancer; and two, of Clare Soap & Chemical, the company begun by three merchant brothers in 19th-century Boston, which by the turn of the century has grown into a large multiconglomerate with factories in Laura''s hometown. As the history of Clare Soap changes through the history of America, so a modern-day Laura Bodey descends into a battle with her terminal illness. By the novel''s conclusion, we have learned how the largest enterprises affect us on the most personal level.

Something is wrong with Eddie Hobson Sr., father of four, sometime history teacher, quiz master, black humorist and virtuoso invalid. His recurring fainting spells have worsened, and with his ingrained aversion to doctors, his worried family tries to discover the nature of his sickness. Meanwhile, in private, Eddie puts the finishing touches on a secret project he calls Hobbstown, a place that he promises will save him, the world and everything that''s in it. A dazzling novel of compassion and imagination, Prisoner''s Dilemma is a story of the power of invalid experience.

Vlak voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog werden drie stiefbroers gefotografeerd op weg naar een dansfeest. Deze foto is de inspiratiebron voor drie verhalen.

Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award.

A national bestseller, voted by Time as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by Publishers Weekly, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.