Thinking-Training

Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girl's school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry-blonde classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them, as well as Callie's failure to develop, leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not a girl at all; due to a rare genetic mutation Callie is part girl, part boy.

Winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: the dazzling international bestseller from the author of The Virgin Suicides . a rollicking family epic like no other!

Tells the history of just one of the magistrates' courts in England and Wales. This work looks at the underlying backdrop of a part of the country: Middlesex, London and Westminster that is central to the English legal system.

Once home to over 60 flourishing villages, Middlesex County, in the heart of southwestern Ontario, has a rich history just waiting to be discovered. Anthropologist and local history enthusiast Jennifer Grainger has, through extensive research and much personal exploration, produced a valuable document chronicling the "rise and fall" of these pioneering settlements, truly the foundation of all that exist in the area today. Nostalgia buffs, armchair adventurers, genealogists and curious daytrippers alike will welcome the arrival of this timely publication with its many fascinating stories and countless visual reminders of the past.