"My mama was a whore, and a damn good one. Tricking and gambling put food on the table for the two of us. She was married to a black man. The day I was born he walked out on her, and I got the blame."Born in Texas in 1930, Albert Sample was the mixed-race product of Emma (a hard-drinking black prostitute and gambler) and Mr. Albert (a white cotton broker and one of her tricks). It is the classic story of the son of a troubled mother, of a young man gone bad, and of his tentative then tremendous steps toward reclaiming his own destiny. Sample emerged from an abusive childhood an angry young outcast, so it was no surprise when he became an alien of the free world.This book is the violent and triumphant story his journey to hell and back. Hell for Albert Sample was Retrieve, a unit of the Texas Prison System reserved for its worst black prisoners. A plantation prison where men slaved from dawn to dusk, it cracked the spirits of the weak and hardened the souls of the strong. For... Views: 526
As a boy he had a look of gaunt horror about him.As a man he had the cold look of the eternal searcher.The boy walked out of the wilderness in the late summer of 1855, carrying the sun-blackened remains of a jack rabbit he had been eating on for two days. He had been alone in there for ten days.Behind him he had left three graves. With him always was the memory of a family named Snelling, that he would one day hunt down and destroy - slowly, terribly.The boy became a man, bleak-eyed and dangerous, a man named Ed Cushman who rode, always alone, carrying only the grim comfort of a black memory. Searching, always searching.Murder lay at the end of his trail. Murder, and a girl he loved. Views: 522
Armor is, I believe, my favorite science fiction novel ever. It follows to basic plotlines -- one is the story of a desperate soldier fighting an impossible war, the other from the point of view of an ex-pirate escaped from prison who joined up with the wrong crew. The two plots do intertwine, but the plots aren't the appeal of this novel. Views: 519
Proud and beautiful, Heaven came back to the hills -- to rise at last above her family's shame!
As Logan's bride, she would savor now the love she had sought for so long. And free from her father's clutches, she would live again in her backwoods town, a respected teacher and cherished wife. But after a wedding trip to Boston's Farthinggale Manor and a lavish, elegant party, Heaven and Logan are persuaded to stay...lured by Tony Tatterton's guile to live amidst the Tatterton wealth and privilege. Then the ghosts of Heaven's past rise up once more, writhing around her fragile happiness...threatening her precious love with scandal and jealousy, sinister passions and dangerous dreams! Views: 501
THE DRIVE OF PROPHECY
The quest was over. The Orb of Aldur was restored. And once again, with the crowning of Garion, there was a descendant of Riva Iron-grip to rule as Overlord of the West.
But the Prophecy was unfulfilled. In the east, the evil God Torak was about to awaken and seek dominion. Somehow, Garion had to face the God, to kill or be killed. On the outcome of that dread duel rested the destiny of the world. Now, accompanied by his grandfather, the ancient sorcerer Belgarath, Garion headed toward the City of Endless Night, where Torak awaited him.
To the south, his fiancée, the princess Ce'Nedra, led the armies of the West in a desperate effort to divert the forces of Torak's followers from the man she loved.
The Prophecy drove Garion on. But it gave no answer to the question that haunted him: How does a man kill an immortal God? Views: 498
During the May of 1141, pilgrims gather at Shrewsbury. The news from the road is that a knight has been murdered in Winchester. Brother Cadfael suspects this distant crime has a solution close to home. Views: 486
In one generation, the Clark family of Virginia fought for our nation's independence, and explored, conquered, and settled the continent from sea to shining sea. This powerfully written book recreates the warm life of the family, the dangers of the battlefield, the grueling journeys across an untamed wilderness, and the soul-stirring Lewis and Clark Expedition. This mighty epic is a fitting tribute to the wisdom and courage of Ann Rogers Clark, her husband John, and the ten sons and daughters they nurtured and inspired. Views: 484
The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing poetry and peace found in the mundane: a memory, a scent on the wind, the grace in the curve of a street. Fishing the Sloe-Black River is a work of pure augury, of the channeling and re-spoken lives of people exposed to the beauty of the everyday. Views: 482
In this most gothic of Robert McCammon's novels, setting is key: the continuing saga of the Usher family (descended from the brother of Roderick and Madeline of Edgar Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher") takes place in the weird and picturesque heart of the North Carolina mountains. The haughty, aristocratic Ushers live in a mansion near Asheville; the poor but crafty mountain folk (whose families are just as ancient) live on Briartop Mountain nearby. At harvest time, when the book's action unfolds, the mountains are a blaze of color. Add to the mixture a sinister history of mountain kids disappearing every year, a journalist investigating those disappearances, a monster called "The Pumpkin Man," moldy books and paintings in a huge old library at the Usher estate, and a secret chamber with a strange device involving a brass pendulum and tuning forks--and you've got a splendid recipe for atmospheric horror.
Originally published: New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984. Views: 481
September 1140. It falls to Brother Cadfael to find the disturbing truth behind the violent nightmares of a young novice in the Abbey of Shrewsbury. Views: 476
Read this classic romance by New York Times bestselling author Penny Jordan, now available for the first time in e-book! This man is more than a match for her!As a model, Heather is accustomed to being regarded as a sex object, but she makes certain no one in her private life treats her that way. She keeps men at a distance, rejecting would-be lovers as retribution for the traumatic experiences of her past.But all that changes when she meets Race Williams. He is a master at the game of enticement and denial, and for the first time Heather knows what it is to burn for something she can't have...Originally published in 1984 Views: 473
In the first volume of Guy Gavriel Kay’s classic trilogy The Fionavar Tapestry, five Toronto university students encounter a man who will change their lives, taking them from our world to discover their roles in an epic war looming in the first of all the worlds: Fionavar. Views: 458
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government.
Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display.
Praise for The March of Folly
“A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.” —The New York Times Book Review*
*
“An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe
*
“A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.” —Chicago Sun-Times *
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 457
