Otto Biersma Books

An incredible publishing story, this epic war novel was crafted over thirty years by a decorated Vietnam veteran and became a New York Times best seller for sixteen weeks, as well as a National Indie Next and USA Today best seller. Hailed as a "brilliant account of war," it tells the timeless tale of young Marine lieutenant Waino Mellas and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are thrust into the mountain jungles of Vietnam. As they transition from boys to men, they face not only the North Vietnamese but also the relentless monsoon rains, mud, leeches, tigers, disease, and malnutrition. Compounding their struggles are the racial tensions, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers within their ranks. When the company finds itself surrounded by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines confront the raw terror of combat, an experience that will change them forever. This visceral and spellbinding narrative captures the essence of youth at war, transforming the tragedy of Vietnam into a powerful story of courage, camaraderie, and sacrifice. It serves as a parable of war, highlighting the redemptive power of literature and the universal themes of human resilience and brotherhood.

When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: 'Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.' It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California and then in New York, where he discovered a long forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, as well as with a group of patients who would define his life, it becomes clear that Sacks' earnest desire for engagement has occasioned unexpected encounters and travels - sending him through bars and alleys, over oceans, and across continents. With unbridled honesty and humour, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions - bodybuilding, weightlifting, and swimming - also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual, his guilt over leaving his family to come to America, his bond with his schizophrenic brother, and the writers and scientists - A.R. Luria, W.H. Auden, Francis Crick - who influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer - and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human

Where does it come from? How is it produced? What are the economic, social and environmental effects? Are there animals that it is straightforwardly right to eat? Are there situations in which not eating animals is wrong? This title gives an account of where meat comes from.

The inspiring story of a son and his dying mother, who form a "book club" that brings them together as her life comes to a close.

The narrator of THE GARGOYLE is recovering from a horrid car crash that leaves horrible burns over much of his body. During his convalescence, a sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears and tells him that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. She relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England. He falls in love with her and is release from the hospital into her care. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she only has twenty-seven sculptures left to complete - and her time on earth will be finished.

I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah dead. I thought I'd managed to erase all traces of that night within myself. But I was wrong. Every night when I tried to sleep, I'd close my eyes and see her again, exactly as I found her, hanging from a pine tree by an orange elctrical cord, her neck twisted like a tulip stem, her eyes seeing nothing. Or else that was the problem. They'd seen everything. This mesmerizing debut, uncannily uniting the trials of a postmodern upbringing with a murder mystery, heralds the arrival of a vibrant new voice in literary fiction.

Winner of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas. One of the Ten Best Books of the Year - The New York Times Book Review 'Vivid, graphic and poignant' Washington Post 'Powerful and moving . . . An impressive success' New York Times Book Review '[A] jazzy, sinewy debut . . . Thomas's urgent, quicksilver prose makes even the darkest moments of this novel shine' O' the Oprah Magazine On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator of Man Gone Down finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them to live in. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we discover a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.