Jessi is a little nervous when she's chosen to participate in the synchronized swimming event for the Stoneybrook Middle School Sports Festival. Although she's a great ballet dancer, performing ballet in water isn't easy. But when competition time comes, Jessi proves that practice makes perfect. Views: 369
Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. Highly inventive formally, the novel is mainly narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of four boys and identical twin girls, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam. Views: 365
**AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN eBOOK!
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In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact.
In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience. Views: 362
SUMMARY:
On Plenty, a ghetto planet populated by dysfunctional robots, looters, drunken spacers, and rabid survivalists, Tabitha Jute, a four-star astronavigator, makes her first move to take back Plenty from its present inhabitants Views: 359
During the war, Gird took in a refugee who soon became known as "Gird's luap" (luap being the word for assistant, or an army officer who was not in the chain of command.) Luap, as he was finally called, was in fact the bastard son of a former king. Though he had been cast aside when his father sired a legitimate heir, Luap believed that he had inherited the ability to rule...if not his father's kingdom, then one of his own, somewhere. But his essential dishonesty, his inability to face the truth about himself, doomed him and his followers, and set the Fellowship of Gird on a path very different from that Gird would have chosen. Views: 358
The coroner arrived with his pallbearer's mien, followed by two assistants, one carrying a rolled-up stretcher. "Where's the body?""In her dressing room," said Noel, "resting""Where do you find your amazing equanimity, Noel?""Like Little Jack Horner, I stick in my thumb and pull out aplomb
'Baxt's gung-ho enthusiasm, extensive use of movie lore, and wild narrative verve make his works a delirious...pleasure' said Booklist of the much-loved series of celebrity mysteries.
Now, add play wright/actor/singer/ man-about-town Noel Coward to the cast of luminaries who grace Baxt's pages with their insider gossip and acerbic wit.New York City, 1935: A trio of thugs who call themselves Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Bizet are funding a flashy nightclub, and the inimitable Noel Coward has been persuaded to tickle an ivory or two on opening night. Noel's droll, dry, and deadly wit never disappoints an audience — even after a showgirl meets her death onstage. Views: 355
Agony of Flies: Notes and Notations presents brief aphorisms selected from the German Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's writings.These short writings collected in this bilingual edition offer remarkable insight into the life and thinking of "one of our great imaginers and solitary men of genius" (Iris Murdoch). Views: 350
Another heartwarming romance from USA Today bestselling author Barbara Bretton Hunter Phillips didn't think of himself as a family guy . . . at least not until his newborn niece Daisy came into his life. If you'd told him last year that his life would revolve around diapers and formula, he would have laughed out loud. But eight months into instant fatherhood, he knew better. When it came to babies, Jeannie Ross was an expert. A professional baby wrangler, Jeannie knew how to coax coos from the crankiest little performer. And she also knew how to keep from falling in love with her adorable clients.At least she did until Hunter and Daisy came into her life and captured her heart.A bachelor father in over his head. A woman with a broken heart. And a baby who deserves a family of her own. Can Hunter and Jeannie turn their whirlwind wedding into a real marriage or are they doomed to failure the moment they say I do? Views: 346
Carson Drew's old friend Charlie invites Nancy and her friends to his 800-acre Highland Retreat in the Cascade Mountains where a legend of an untapped gold mine theatens Views: 346
Victor, an eighty-year-old multimillionaire, surveys his empire from the remoteness of his cloud-capped penthouse. Expensively insulated from the outside world, he nonetheless finds that memories of his impoverished childhood will not be kept so easily at bay. Focusing on the one area of vitality and chaos that remains in the streets below him, he formulates a plan to leave a mark on the city – one as indelible and disruptive as the mark the city left on him. Views: 345
Fans of Per Petterson's other books in English will be delighted by this opportunity to observe Arvid Jansen in his youth from a fresh perspective. In It's Fine By Me, Arvid befriends a boy named Audun. On Audun's first day of school he refuses to talk or take off his sunglasses; there are stories he would prefer to keep to himself. Audun lives with his mother in a working-class district of Oslo. He delivers newspapers and talks for hours about Jack London and Ernest Hemingway with Arvid. But he's not sure that school is the right path for him and feels that his life holds other possibilities. Sometimes tender, sometimes brutal, It's Fine By Me is a brilliant novel from the acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses and I Curse the River of Time. Views: 345
In the Irish town of Schancarrig, the young people carve their initials--and those of their loves-into the copper beech tree in front of the schoolhouse. But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 341
Hoping to cool off a twenty-five-year-old feud between two neighboring families, Cassie Stuart only succeeds in pouring kerosene on the flames. Both sides have warned her to get out of Texas pronto. . .or they will burn her father's ranch to the ground. What Cassie needs is a peacemaker but she ends up with a widow-maker instead.
He is called Angel , a ruggedly handsome hired gun with eyes as black as sin. Unwanted and unwelcomed by his ungrateful employer, he would just as soon leave Cassie to fend for herself. But a stubborn sense of duty , and a desire to taste the sweetness of her kiss steels Angel's resolve to make Cassie want him, come hell or high water. . .and for more than his gun alone. Views: 338
At the conclusion of The Elenium the company of Pandion Knights led by Sir Sparhawk, having freed Queen Ehlana of Elenia from the spell which threatened her life, had marched on Zemoch, routed their enemies and defeated or destroyed the evil god Azash. Sparhawk returned to Elenia, where he and Ehlana were married.
But their peaceful reign is destined not to last long. A few years later, in the Tamul Empire far to the east, unrest is brewing which threatens the nation’s stability. Investigations show that the trouble is clearly of paranormal origin, and suspicion at first falls upon the Styrics. These suspicions prove unfounded, and indeed it is the pre-eminent Styric magician Zalasta who suggests that the Empire look westwards for assistance in solving their problems... specifically, to the legendary warrior Sparhawk. Views: 336
Book One of David Zindell's epic trilogy set in Neverness, legendary City of Light, where inner space and outer space meet ... where the god program is up and running.Into its maze of color-coded streets of ice a wild boy stumbles, starving, frostbitten and grieving, a spear in his hand: Danlo the Wild, a messenger from the deep past of man. Brought up from Neverness by the Alaloi people, Neanderthal cave-dwellers, Danlo alone of his tribe has survived a plague –- because he is not, as he thought, a misshaped Neanderthal, but human with immunity engineered into his genes. He learns that the disease was created by the sinister Architects of the Universal Cybernetic Church. The Architects possess a cure which can save other Alaloi tribes. But the Architects have migrated to the region of space known as the Vild, and there they are killing stars.All of civilization has converged on Neverness through the manifold of space travel. Beyond science, beyond decadence, sects and disciplines... Views: 334
