During aviation's pioneering years Francis Kennedy McClean used his vast inherited wealth to help the now famous Short Brothers company become established as one of Britain's greatest aircraft manufacturers and, in doing so, he helped the Royal Navy's first pilots into the air. In effect, he was Godfather to British naval aviation.But McClean did much more than even that. He was himself a balloonist and pioneer aviator, flying with Wilbur Wright in France in December 1908. He provided the Royal Aero Club with one of the first flying grounds in the UK; personally purchased no fewer than sixteen aeroplanes from Short Brothers before the First World War, and also acted as the company's unpaid test pilot. Convinced that aviation was destined to play a vital role in the nation's defence, he made his own aeroplanes freely available for training and ensured that the Navy had a suitable site from which to fly, founding England's first naval flying school, at Eastchurch in Kent. His... Views: 64
Suicide is 'not a kind thing to do...when your friend killed himself, the meaning of it all just fell through your hands like mist between your fingers.'Max's best friend Lou is dead, by choice, at 17 and Max is lost and confused at his act and at the loss of friendship. How he tries to make sense of this is the territory traversed by this book. Max finds himself on an increasingly self-destructive trail of confrontation with the police and taking dangerous risks kayaking. His graffiti forays offer a kind of metaphysical consolation but even the significance of what he writes is elusive. Dave, his loving father, struggles to understand and support him; an understanding school principal cuts him some slack and two friends, the beautiful Mai and the hermit Nick, allows him space for confession and catharsis of sorts. But when he tests his own mortality, there is little they can do. He is on his own.While the central impetus for this book is suicide, what it explores is the... Views: 63
At thirty-six, private detective Jared McKean is coming to terms with his unjust dismissal from the Nashville Murder Squad and an unwanted divorce from a woman he still loves. Jared is a natural horseman and horse rescuer whose son has Down Syndrome, whose best friend is dying of AIDS, and whose teenage nephew, Josh, has fallen under the influence of a dangerous fringe of the Goth subculture. When the fringe group's leader - a mind-manipulating sociopath who consideres himself a vampire - is found butchered and posed across a pentagram, Josh is the number one suspect. Jared will need all his skills as a private investigator and former homicide detective to match wits with the most terrifying killer he has ever seen. When he learns that Josh is next on the killer's list, Jared will risk his reputation, his family, and his life in a desperate attempt to save the boy he loves like a son Views: 63
Come for the apocalypse.
Stay for cupcakes.
Die for love.
Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the
Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect
subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him
down for the sittings.
None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing
into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling
dust into the wind.
Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth
would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero
of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must
make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.
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Here’s an elegant and darkly ironic look at the proposition that some things in life are better not to know… Views: 63
The Forsyte Saga is John Galsworthy's monumental chronicle of the lives of the moneyed Forsytes, a family whose values are constantly at war with its passions. The story of Soames Forsyte's marriage to the beautiful and rebellious Irene, and its effects upon the whole Forsyte clan, The Forsyte Saga is a brilliant social satire of the acquisitive sensibilities of a comfort-bound class in its final glory. Galsworthy spares none of his characters, revealing their weaknesses and shortcomings as clearly as he does the tenacity and perseverance that define the strongest members of the Forsyte family. Views: 63
"Perillo's poetic persona is funny, tough, bold, smart, and righteous. A spellbinding storyteller and a poet who makes the demands of the form seem as natural as a handshake, she pulls readers into the beat and whirl of her slyly devastating descriptions."Booklist"Whoever told you poetry isn't for everyone hasn't read Lucia Perillo. She writes accessible, often funny poems that border on the profane."Time Out New YorkThe poetry of Lucia Perillo is fierce, tragicomic, and contrarian, with subjects ranging from coyotes and Scotch broom to local elections and family history. Formally braided, Perillo gathers strands of the mythic and mundane, of media and daily life, as she faces the treachery of illness and draws readers into poems rich in image and story.When you spend many hours alone in a roomyou have more than the usual chances to disgust yourselfthis is the problem of the body, not that it is mortalbut that... Views: 63
