Dall'autore del controverso e sconvolgente romanzo 'L'Alfabeto di fuoco', una raccolta di racconti che torna a indagare la vulnerabilità umana. Di racconto in racconto avviene un lento spostamento della narrazione tradizionale verso una sperimentazione che è ormai cifra caratteristica di questo maestro della forma breve. Immersi in contesti quasi ultraterreni, i personaggi ricorrono a strategie di sopravvivenza sempre più estreme per affrontare le paure legate all'età adulta: qualcuno opta per rifugiarsi in una caverna buia, qualcun altro si adopera per riportare in auge uno stato di purezza infantile; un automa scopre l'amore e deve reinventare un linguaggio che ne tenga conto; un figlio apprende che la lealtà verso i propri genitori altro non è che una debolezza da estirpare; un impiegato attraversa il proprio ufficio come una landa deserta, un paesaggio esistenziale che esige atti eroici. In questi ritratti di fallibilità umana, spesso sono proprio le affermazioni più assurde e aliene a catturare verità profonde.

Le parole uccidono. E non solo in senso metaforico. In un'America apocalittica si è diffusa una piaga mortale: inizialmente solo i bambini sembrano portatori sani di questa malattia che colpisce gli adulti, li fa ammalare, avvizzire e infine morire, ma con l'andare del tempo si scopre che tutta la comunicazione - parlata, scritta, mimata - è nociva. Sam e Claire, giovani genitori, si rifiutano di accettare che lo stato di letargia e malessere in cui sono precipitati sia causato dalle parole di fuoco della figlia adolescente, Esther, ma si trovano infine costretti ad accettare che l'unica via di salvezza sia allontanarsi da lei e mettersi in viaggio. Abbandonarla, però, non è così semplice. La sera della partenza Claire scompare misteriosamente e Sam, deciso a trovare una cura alla tossicità del linguaggio, intraprende un percorso solitario in un mondo sconosciuto nel tentativo di salvare la sua famiglia. In questo romanzo, a metà strada fra distopia e horror, l'autore riflette sul potere nascosto del linguaggio e su cosa significhi essere genitori.

'Ben Marcus, one of the most innovative and vital writers of this generation, delivers a stellar anthology of the best short fiction being written today in America In New American Stories, Ben Marcus has collected a diverse, exciting, and wholly unique book of contemporary American fiction writers. Herein are the luminaries of the form like Deborah Eisenberg, George Saunders, and Denis Johnson, as well as the best new voices of today, like Wells Tower, Claire Vaye Watkins and Rivka Galchen. Practitioners of deep realism like Anthony Doerr and Yilun Li brush shoulders with genre-bending wonders like Charles Yu and Kelly Link. Finally there are the true emerging stars, like Tao Lin and Rachel Glasser standing next to long established writer like Joy Williams. Nothing less than the American short story renaissance distilled down to its most relevant, daring, and interesting works, New American Stories puts on wide display the true art of the short story'--

By turns hilarious and heartfelt, dark and illuminative, Ben Marcus’s Leaving the Sea is a ground breaking collection of stories from one of the single most vital, extraordinary, and unique writers of his generation.

In the heartfelt “I Can Say Many Nice Things,” a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian “Rollingwood,” a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In “Watching Mysteries with My Mother,” a son meditates on his mother’s mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we watch as the narrator’s marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to the brink of suicide. Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming,Leaving the Sea is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.

From one of the most innovative and vital writers of his generation, an extraordinary collection of stories that showcases his gifts—and his range—as never before.

In the hilarious, lacerating “I Can Say Many Nice Things,” a washed-up writer toying with infidelity leads a creative writing workshop on board a cruise ship. In the dystopian “Rollingwood,” a divorced father struggles to take care of his ill infant, as his ex-wife and colleagues try to render him irrelevant. In “Watching Mysteries with My Mother,” a son meditates on his mother’s mortality, hoping to stave off her death for as long as he sits by her side. And in the title story, told in a single breathtaking sentence, we watch as the narrator’s marriage and his sanity unravel, drawing him to the brink of suicide.

As the collection progresses, we move from more traditional narratives into the experimental work that has made Ben Marcus a groundbreaking master of the short form. In these otherworldly landscapes, characters resort to extreme survival strategies to navigate the terrors of adulthood, one opting to live in a lightless cave and another methodically setting out to recover total childhood innocence; an automaton discovers love and has to reinvent language to accommodate it; filial loyalty is seen as a dangerous weakness that must be drilled away; and the distance from a cubicle to the office coffee cart is refigured as an existential wasteland, requiring heroic effort.
In these piercing, brilliantly observed investigations into human vulnerability and failure, it is often the most absurd and alien predicaments that capture the deepest truths. Surreal and tender, terrifying and life-affirming, Leaving the Sea is the work of an utterly unique writer at the height of his powers.

The first and only comprehensive reference and technical guide to Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012,'System Center Orchestrator 2012 Unleashed' joins Sams' market-leading series of books on Microsoft's System Center product suite: books that have achieved go-to status amongst IT implementers and administrators worldwide. This book is authored by an expert team of current and former Microsoft MVPs who wrote the industry's leading guide to Opalis 6.3, Orchestrator 2012's predecessor product. Almost entirely new, this book thoroughly illuminates Orchestrator 2012's massive improvements, demonstrating how to use this product to implement best-practice IT process automation in any environment, including new 'private clouds.' The authors' end-to-end feature implementation perspective will help readers optimize their deployments by covering all related topics, step-by-step, in each feature area. The authors begin with an overview of Orchestrator 2012's capabilities and goals; then move through architecture, installation, policy basics and design, activities (previously known as objects), integration with the rest of Systems Center, 'Dynamic Data Center' solutions, and much more. Throughout, the authors share best practices based on their unsurpassed experience with Orchestrator, Opalis, and real-world IT process automation.