Writer’s retreat Windy Corner becomes a sanctuary of a different kind when a man and his foster daughter are harassed by a social worker, with tragic consequences. Emily and Luke have returned from their honeymoon and are caught in a whirlwind of activity. Emily’s half-brother, Oscar, and his fiancée want to be married at St Bede’s Church in Stony Beach with a reception at Windy Corner. But they’re not the only guests arriving at Emily’s writers’ retreat. Emily finds herself unexpectedly playing host to the family of the artist repairing the church’s stained-glass window as well as Moses Valory and his foster daughter, Charlotte, who are seeking sanctuary after being harassed by social worker Janine Vertue. When Janine appears and is then discovered hanged in her hotel room, Emily uncovers shocking links between Janine, the rest of her guests at Windy Corner. Which one of them despised Janine enough to kill her?

The past few years have witnessed a resurgence in the study of British literary modernism. With recent publications on modernist American poetry and increasingly appreciative attitudes toward modern British novelists like Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster, many scholars are experiencing a renewed interest in modernism. In The Modernist as Pragmatist, Brian May investigates modernist works that have been, until recently, regarded largely as mere exercises in stale Victorian liberal ideology. Breaking from one current interpretation of Forster as an innovative and perhaps objectionable representative of modernist fictional audacity, May keenly argues that Forster is neither a traditional liberal nor an imperial modernist stylist. He is, rather, a pragmatic liberal critic of both unreconstructed Victorian liberalism and unreckoning modernist aestheticism. May also looks at the debate between two contemporary progressive pragmatists, Richard Rorty and Cornel West, who have turned to the liberalism of the past as an avenue toward the future. First clarifying the terms of the debate, May then tries to resolve it using the writings of E. M. Forster to discuss some of the major political and philosophical statements of Rorty and West. In turn, the works of these two philosophers are used as tools to gain insight into Forster's literary texts and cultural contexts. By bringing British literary history to American neopragmatist philosophy, May allows the reader to understand both more concretely, historically, and imaginatively. Persuasive new readings of A Passage to India, Howards End, and The Longest Journey are used to illustrate how Rorty and West offer a choice between pragmatisms. May's well-argued study offers an exploration of how literature and philososphy can lead to a fruitful dialogue that can complement formalism as well as traditional types of contextualism. It also persuasively connects Forster to the contemporary debates between liberalism and pragmatism, making this an important contribution to all scholars of modernism.

Don’t give up, Erin. I’m waiting for you. Find me. What happened to Gina Washington? Twelve-year-old Erin’s world was turned upside down twenty years ago when her mother suddenly vanished and never returned. Arriving at the Seafarer’s Rest B&B in the coastal resort of Pacific Grove in California for a much-needed vacation, Erin is stunned to learn that her mother stayed at the inn shortly after disappearing all those years ago, and makes a disturbing discovery in the grounds. Did Gina lay clues in the hope that Erin would one day try to find her? Drawn into a life-changing quest to unravel the truth, Erin uncovers deception, conspiracy and passion. But as she finally starts to find answers to the many questions around her mother’s disappearance, Erin’s own life is in grave danger . . .

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

This is a book about terminals and boundaries, mortality and closure, the infinitesimals of style and the finite limits of representational language, about least and last things together. It is a book, to start with, about three vast and familiar facts of life and art: death, content, and form. Only by their particular triangulation in the genre of prose fiction do they mark out the hypothesis of the present study: that death in fiction is the fullest instance of form indexing content, is indeed the moment when content, comprising the imponderable of negation and vacancy, can be found dissolving to pure form. Death in narrative yields, by yielding to, sheer style.