In Modern American Memoirs, two very discerning writers and readers have selected samples from 35 of the finest memoirs written in this century, including contributions by such diverse writers as Margaret Mead, Malcolm X, Maxine Hong Kingston, Loren Eisely, and Zora Neale Hurston. Chosen for their value as excellent examples of the art of biography as well as for their superb writing, the excerpts present a broad range of American life, and offer vivid insight into the real-life events that shaped their authors. Here, readers can learn about the time when Harry Crews, playing as a boy, fell into a vat of boiling water with a dead hog; Chris Offutt joined the circus and watched a tattooed woman swallow a fluorescent light; and Frank Conroy practiced yo-yo tricks. Views: 692
Karen is learning all about bike safety in school. She is even going to enter a bike-a-thon. But Karen's bike is too small for her. So with Daddy's help, Karen buys a new bike. Then Karen's new bike is stolen. Can Karen catch the thief and get her bike back? Views: 685
Lancaster and York. For much of the fifteenth century, these two families were locked in battle for control of the English throne. Kings were murdered and deposed. Armies marched on London. Old noble names were ruined while rising dynasties seized power and lands. The war between the royal houses of Lancaster and York, the most complex in English history, profoundly altered the course of the monarchy. Alison Weir, one of the foremost authorities on British history, brings brilliantly to life both the war itself and the larger-tha-life figures who fought it on the great stage of England. The Wars of the Roses is history at its very best—swift and compelling, rich in character, pageantry, and drama, and vivid in its re-creation of an astonishing period of history.
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"Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story."
--The Washington Post Book World
"A GUT-WRENCHING PIECE OF WORK. . . Carcaterra's graphic narrative grips like gunfire in a dark alley."
--The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"In his controversial memoir SLEEPERS, Carcaterra remembers harrowing months in the Wilkinson Home for Boys and the elaborate vengeance he and his friends exacted against the guards. He tells it all in spare, stylish prose . . . [with] relentless momentum and sheer drama. . . . SLEEPERS is a thriller, to be sure, but it is equally a wistful hymn to another age."
--The Washington Post Book World
"A TERRIFYING ACCOUNT OF BRUTALITY AND RETRIBUTION, searing in its emotional truth, peopled with murderers, sadists, and thugs, but biblical in its passion and scope."
--People
"SLEEPERS is so many things: a Dickensian portrait of coming of age in Hell's Kitchen, a terrifying and heartbreaking account of the brutalization of youth, a shocking--and disturbingly satisfying--climax worthy of the finest suspense novel. A brilliant, troubling, important book."
--Jonathan Kellerman
"COMPELLING."
--USA Today
From the Paperback edition. Views: 681
Carly Quester was once a professional telelinker with a powerful and corrupt mediation firm. Now she lives as an outlaw among the underground in San Francisco, wanted by the authorities for dubious crimes against Data Control. But with a new assignment from a mysterious sengine—and the help of a standalone AI entity, Pr. Spinner—she seeks the fast-track back into public telespace and the Prime Time.Her assignment, however, comes with sticky strings attached. For it has made Carly the target of a ruthless mercenary ultra, the love obsession of the young shaman of a savage urban tribe—and a possible pawn of the Silicon Supremacists plotting no less than the annihilation of humankind.Cyberweb is the sequel to Lisa Mason's cyberpunk classic, Arachne."Powerful . . . Entertaining . . . Imaginative."—People Magazine"In humanity's daring to enter the cybernetic heaven (and hell) of telespace, Lisa Mason reveals the... Views: 680
The life of Spokane Indian Thomas Builds-the-Fire irrevocably changes when blues legend Robert Johnson miraculously appears on his reservation and passes the misfit storyteller his enchanted guitar. Inspired by this gift, Thomas forms Coyote Springs, an all-Indian Catholic band who find themselves on a magical tour that leads from reservation bars to Seattle and New York--and deep within their own souls. Views: 678
On the planet Xhaldia, ordinary men and women are mutating into bizarrecreatures with extraordinary powers. But is this a momentous evolutionary leap or an unparalleled catastrophe? The very fabric of Xhaldian society is threatened as fear and prejudice divide the transformed from their own kin.Dispatched to cope with the growing crisis, Captain Picard and the crew of theStarship Enterprise™ receive some unexpected visitors from another reality -- in the form of the group of mutant heroes known as the uncanny X-Men®. Storm, leader of the X-Men, offers their help in resolving a situation that is agonizingly similar to the human/mutant conflicts of their own time and space.But when hostile aliens appear in orbit around Xhaldia to try and abduct thetransformed for use as a superpowered force in an attack on the Federation, eventhe combined forces of the crew of Starfleet and the X-Men may be unable toprevent an inferno of death and destruction.Starfleet's ... Views: 678
While the warlike and merciless Aenir wreak havoc upon the territory outside the mountain stronghold of the clans, Sigarni, the Hawk Queen, arrives in a parallel version of her own universe through a gate in space and time. Taliesen, last of the gatekeepers, has no idea why she has come. But he knows that heroes are needed and grants her passage into the ravaged land.
Only Caswallon–loner, warrior, and thief–realizes the true extent of the danger and the mayhem that his people will come to face. As Taliesen tries to discover Sigarni’s purpose, Caswallon must attempt to unite the clans to overcome their greatest peril.
From the Paperback edition. Views: 677
A rich collection of short stories by one of Ireland's contemporary literary masters.This long-awaited new collection from the noted Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty examines worlds in collision, relationships fragmenting, innocence coming face to face with real life and real death. A Catholic schoolboy playing football has a theological debate with a Protestant policeman; a chess game in Spain is a catalyst for grief and redemption; in the haunting title story a Belfast man out walking his dog is kidnapped at gunpoint.As always, MacLaverty's writing is vivid, exact, and pellucid, his characters perfectly observed, the surface of the prose deceptively still. It is only after we enter the world of the stories that we begin to make out the huge shapes that move there: loss, love, disappointment, fierce joy. This is a powerful, honest, and moving book by one of the great storytellers of our age. Views: 677
From the New York Times bestselling author of Circle of Friends and The Glass Lake comes This Year It Will Be Different, a stunning new work that brings us the magic and spirit of Christmas in fifteen stories filled with Maeve Binchy's trademark wit, charm, and sheer storytelling genius. Instead of nostalgia, Binchy evokes contemporary life; instead of Christmas homilies, she offers truth; and instead of sugarplums, she brings us the nourishment of holidays that precipitate change, growth, and new beginnings.
In "A Typical Irish Christmas," a grieving New York widower heads for a holiday in Ireland and finds an unexpected destination not just for himself, but for a father and daughter at odds. The title story "This Year It Will Be Different" also delves into the emotions of a person at mid-life--a woman with a complacent husband and grown children who are entering a season that can forever alter her life, and theirs. In "Pulling Together," a teacher not yet out of her twenties sees her affair with a married man at a turning point as Christmas Eve approaches--and she may be off on a new direction with some unusual friends. And in the delightful tale "The Hard Core," the four most recalcitrant residents of a nursing home are left alone at Christmas with the owner's daughter in charge: the result is sure to be disaster--or the kind of life-affirming renewal that only the spirit of the season can bring.
The stories in This Year It Will Be Different powerfully evoke many lives--step-families grappling with ex's, long-married couples faced with in-law problems, a wandering husband choosing between "the other woman" and his wife, a child caught in grown-up tugs-of-war--during the one holiday when feelings cannot be easily hidden. The time of year may be magical, imbued with meaning. But the situations are universal. And Maeve Binchy makes us care about them all. As the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, "Maeve Binchy's people come to life fully. They make you laugh and cry and disturb your sleep." They do precisely that in this extraordinary collection, on the night before Christmas when we are snug in our beds, or anywhere, any time of the year.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 676
You're the new girl in school. You're just trying to fit in - and it's not working. Then someone accuses you of theft, and you think things can't get any worse. Until you get caught in a freak storm . . .
The next thing you know, you're in the future. Being shot at for being out after curfew. You don't even recognise your hometown. And you're heading for a confrontation from your worst nightmare.
What if you could change the past to save the future? Views: 674
SUMMARY: A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman. "A lean, sensuous narrative...taut, chic, and strangely contemporary," The Garden of Eden represents vintage Hemingway, the master "doing what nobody did better" (R. Z. Sheppard, Time). Views: 674
Would we appreciate a superbeing for what they are, not for what we have made them? Views: 674
