THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR By Gladstone and El-Mohtar NOTE: Meeting Online

Lez Read
Wednesday, April 12, 7:30 pm

Lez Read meets online the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. Our first meeting occurred on April 13, 2011. Currently, we anticipate reading a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books on lesbian and queer themes or titles that were written by lesbian or queer-identified writers. Readers should read the book in advance of the meeting so we can have an active and lively discussion! If you have any questions or would like further information about the Lez Read book group online, please contact on Meet-Up.

This Is How You Lose the Time War By Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone Cover Image

This Is How You Lose the Time War (Paperback)

$15.99


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
5 on hand, as of Mar 31 1:19am
Politics and Prose at 70 District Square SW
2 on hand, as of Mar 31 1:33am
Politics and Prose at Union Market
1 on hand, as of Mar 31 1:33am
HUGO AWARD WINNER: BEST NOVELLA

NEBULA AND LOCUS AWARDS WINNER: BEST NOVELLA

“[An] exquisitely crafted tale...Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay...This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review).

From award-winning authors Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone comes an enthralling, romantic novel spanning time and space about two time-traveling rivals who fall in love and must change the past to ensure their future.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win. That’s how war works, right?

Cowritten by two beloved and award-winning sci-fi writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Amal El-Mohtar is an award-winning author, editor, and critic. Her short story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Aurora, and Eugie Foster awards. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey, and contributes criticism to NPR Books and The New York Times. Her fiction has most recently appeared on Tor and Uncanny Magazine, and in anthologies such as The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. She is presently pursuing a PhD at Carleton University and teaches creative writing at the University of Ottawa. She can be found online at @Tithenai.

Max Gladstone is the author of the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence, which Patrick Rothfuss called “stupefyingly good.” The sixth book, Ruin of Angels, was released September 2017. Max’s interactive mobile game Choice of the Deathless was nominated for the XYZZY Award, and his critically acclaimed short fiction has appeared on Tor and in Uncanny Magazine, and in anthologies such as XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. John Crowley described Max as “a true star of 21st-century fantasy.” Max has sung in Carnegie Hall and was once thrown from a horse in Mongolia.
Product Details ISBN: 9781534430990
ISBN-10: 1534430997
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Publication Date: March 17th, 2020
Pages: 224
Language: English
* “[An] exquisitely crafted tale…. Part epistolary romance, part mind-blowing science fiction adventure, this dazzling story unfolds bit by bit, revealing layers of meaning as it plays with cause and effect, wildly imaginative technologies, and increasingly intricate wordplay… This short novel warrants multiple readings to fully unlock its complexities.”
— Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

"If Iain M. Banks and Gerard Manley Hopkins had ever been able to collaborate on a science fiction project, well, it wouldn’t be half as much fun as this novella. There is all the pleasure of a long series, and all the details of a much larger world, presented in miniature here.”
— Kelly Link

"This book has it all: treachery and love, lyricism and gritty action, existential crisis and space-opera scope, not to mention time traveling superagents. Gladstone's and El-Mohtar's debut collaboration is a fireworks display from two very talented storytellers."
— Madeline Miller, Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction

“Seditious and seductive, lush and lustrous, allusive and elusive, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those rare stories where one struggles to decide whether to heap more praise upon its clever structure and prose or its brilliant ideas and characters. Never mind ... sit back and let it wind its way into your mind, until, with a start, you realize that you no longer know where the story ends and you start.”
— Ken Liu author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet. An absolutely lovely read from two talented writers.”
— Ann Leckie, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice

“An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history, with a captivating conversation between characters—and authors. Read it.”
— New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi

"This Is How You Lose the Time War is rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse, and you shouldn’t miss a moment.”
— Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries

“A time travel adventure that has as much humanity, grace, and love as it has temporal shenanigans, rewriting history, and temporal agents fighting to the death. Two days from now, you've already devoured it.”
— Ryan North, New York Times Bestselling and Eisner Award winning author of How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide For The Stranded Time Traveler

“Poetry, disguised as genre fiction. I read several sections out loud — this is prose that wants to be more than read. It wants to be heard and tasted.”
— Kelly Sue DeConnick, author of Captain Marvel

"A twisting, sapphic time travel fantasy love story that never stops surprising: El-Mohtar and Gladstone have written the ultimate in enemies-to-lovers romance.”
— Booklist, Starred Review

“Seditious and seductive, lush and lustrous, allusive and elusive, THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR is one of those rare stories where one struggles to decide whether to heap more praise upon its clever structure and prose or its brilliant ideas and characters.”
—Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Tenderness, danger, daring, wit — Time War has them all... In other words, these pages are strewn with myriad delights.
— Nisi Shawl

DESERT OF THE HEART By Jane Rule NOTE: Meeting online

Lez Read
Wednesday, March 8, 7:30 pm

Lez Read meets online the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. Our first meeting occurred on April 13, 2011. Currently, we anticipate reading a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books on lesbian and queer themes or titles that were written by lesbian or queer-identified writers. Readers should read the book in advance of the meeting so we can have an active and lively discussion! If you have any questions or would like further information about the Lez Read book group online, please contact on Meet-Up.

Desert of the Heart By Jane Rule Cover Image

Desert of the Heart (Paperback)

$17.95


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
2 on hand, as of Mar 31 1:19am
Evelyn Hall arrives in Reno wanting only to be left alone while she waits six weeks for a painful divorce from her husband. Once there she meets Ann Child - 15 years her junior, who is both a free spirit and a lesbian.

Soon Ann refuses to let the controlled but vulnerable Evelyn ignore the powerful emotions that begin to unleash inside her...

Immortalized for a whole new generation by the film Desert Hearts, Jane Rule's classic DESERT OF THE HEART is arguably her finest novel. Joyce Carol Oates called it an intelligent and utterly believable novel. Told with all the wit and skill of this fine novelist, the book stands as a classic of lesbian literature.
Jane Rule

Jane Rule was born in New Jersey in 1931 and came to Canada in 1956, where she later taught at the University of B.C. Her first novel, "Desert of the Heart" (1991), was made into a movie in the 1980s. Rule emerged as one of the most respected writers in Canada with her many novels, essays and collections of short stories including "Theme for Diverse Instruments" (1975). Rule passed away in 2007.
Product Details ISBN: 9781594930355
ISBN-10: 159493035X
Publisher: Bella Books
Publication Date: July 1st, 2005
Pages: 216
Language: English


NIGHTWOOD by Djuna Barnes NOTE: Meeting Online

Lez Read
Wednesday, February 8, 7:30 pm

Lez Read meets online the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. Our first meeting occured on April 13, 2011. Currently, we anticipate reading a wide selection of fiction and non-fiction books on lesbian and queer themes or titles that were written by lesbian or queer-identified writers. Readers should read the book in advance of the meeting so we can have an active and lively discussion! If you have any questions or would like further information about the Lez Read book group online, please contact on Meet-Up.

Nightwood By Djuna Barnes, Jeanette Winterson (Preface by), T. S. Eliot (Introduction by) Cover Image

Nightwood (Paperback)

By Djuna Barnes, Jeanette Winterson (Preface by), T. S. Eliot (Introduction by)

$14.95


In Stock—Click for Locations
Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
1 on hand, as of Mar 31 1:19am

The fiery and enigmatic masterpiece—one of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.


Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.



The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another persona woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.



Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, and worked as a journalist in New York before leaving the country to spend many years in Paris and London. She returned to New York in 1941, and lived in Greenwich Village until her death.

Jeanette Winterson is the author of nine novels, including Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (which won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel), Lighthousekeeping, Sexing the Cherry, and Weight.

T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) was one of the fathers of modernism and a defining voice in English-language poetry. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
Product Details ISBN: 9780811216715
ISBN-10: 0811216713
Publisher: New Directions
Publication Date: September 26th, 2006
Pages: 208
Language: English
A novel of extraordinary and appalling force...a kind of symbol of sinister magnificence.
— The New York Times

One of the great masterworks of twentieth-century fiction.
— Vogue

Nightwood is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and strange, and reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass. You have taken in more than you know, and it will go on doing its work. From now on a part of your is pearl-lined.

— Jeanette Winterson

What I would leave the reader prepared to find is the great achievement of of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliant of wit and characterization and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy.
— T. S. Eliot

One of the greatest books of the twentieth century.
— William S. Burroughs

Djuna Barnes is a writer of wild and original gifts. . . .To her name there is always to be attached the splendor of Nightwood, a lasting achievement of her great gifts and eccentricities---her passionate prose and, in this case, a genuineness of human passions.

— Elizabeth Hardwick

A masterpiece of modernism.
— The Washington Post Book World

To have been madly and disastrously in love is a kind of glory that can only be made intelligible in a sublime poetry—the revelatory and layered poetry of Djuna Barnes's masterpiece, Nightwood.

— Dorothy Allison, author of the National Book Award-nominated novel Bastard Out of Carolina

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