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Angela's Ashes

Imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion. This is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic. "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy-- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling-- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors--yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
Views: 5 644

The Lunatic Cafe

In Laurell K. Hamilton's *New York Times* bestselling novels, Vampire Hunter and zombie animator Anita Blake is an expert at sniffing out the bad from the good. But she's about to learn that nothing is ever as it seems-especially in matters of the not-so-human heart... Dating a werewolf with self-esteem issues is stressing Anita out. Especially when something-or someone-starts taking out the city's shapeshifters.
Views: 5 513

Finding the Dream

In the final novel of Nora Roberts’s Dream Trilogy, Laura struggles to mend a broken heart and broken family—until someone from her past makes all of her dreams come true …  Laura Templeton found out the hard way that nothing in life is guaranteed. The daughter of a wealthy hotelier, she had always known comfort, privilege, and security. But by the age of thirty, her storybook marriage had been destroyed by her husband’s infidelity. Laura’s divorce left her both emotionally and financially devastated—but determined to rebuild her life without the Templeton fortune.  Laura had always defined herself as a wife, a daughter, or a mother. Now, she must finally discover Laura the woman ...
Views: 5 328

The Princess and the Goblin

How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Illustrated About The Princess And The Goblin by George MacDonald The Princess and the Goblin is a children's fantasy novel by George MacDonald. It was published in 1872 by Strahan & Co. The sequel to this book is The Princess and Curdie. Anne Thaxter Eaton writes in A Critical History of Children's Literature that The Princess and the Goblin and its sequel “quietly suggest in every incident ideas of courage and honor." Jeffrey Holdaway, in the New Zealand Art Monthly, said that both books start out as “normal fairytales but slowly become stranger”, and that they contain layers of symbolism similar to that of Lewis Carroll’s work.
Views: 4 996

The Green Mile

When it first appeared, one volume per month, Stephen King's THE GREEN MILE was an unprecedented publishing triumph: all six volumes ended up on the *New York Times* bestseller lists—simultaneously—and delighted millions of fans the world over. Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk the Green Mile, keeping a date with "Old Sparky," Cold Mountain's electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working the Mile. But he's never seen anyone like John Coffey, a man with the body of a giant and the mind of a child, condemned for a crime terrifying in its violence and shocking in its depravity. In this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about Coffey, a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefes... and yours.
Views: 4 826

Without A Trace

AVAILABLE DIGITALLY FOR THE FIRST TIME Disillusioned spy Trace O\'Hurley has nothing left to lose or prove, until the beautiful Gillian Fitzpatrick asks him to save her family in this compelling O\'Hurley novel from "the queen of romantic suspense" ("The Columbus Dispatch"). "Without a Trace" includes an exclusive preview of Nora Roberts\'s new book "The Witness."
Views: 4 674

Infinite Jest

A gargantuan, mind-altering comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human - and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Views: 4 671

Alias Grace

In this astonishing tour de force, Margaret Atwood takes the reader back in time and into the life and mind of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the nineteenth century. In 1843, at the age of sixteen, servant girl Grace Marks was convicted for her part in the vicious murders of her employer and his mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Grace herself claims to have no memory of the murders. As Dr. Simon Jordan – an expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness – tries to unlock her memory, what will he find? Was Grace a femme fatale – or a weak and unwilling victim of circumstances? Taut and compelling, penetrating and wise, *Alias Grace* is a beautifully crafted work of the imagination that vividly evokes time and place. The novel and its characters will continue to haunt the reader long after the final page.
Views: 4 123

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

Of course, everyone always predicted it would happen! And in this book it does--the Wizard comes back to Oz to stay. Best of all, he comes with Dorothy, who is having adventure number three that leads her to Oz, this time via a California earthquake.
Views: 3 970

The Thief

The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities. What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.
Views: 3 771

Neverwhere

Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.
Views: 3 753

Blood of the Fold

The Sword of Truth series follows Richard Cypher, a young forester intent on tracking down his father's murderer. His quest will take him far from home, embroiling him in an ancient war, three-millennia past, that is about to re-ignite with world-shattering violence. The New World is besieged. To the South, the Great Barrier between the Old World and the New has fallen, unleashing the Imperial Order, an enemy constrained for three thousand years. To the West, the Blood of the Fold rise, railing against the corrupting taint of magic. Together, they threaten the very freedom of humankind. Richard Cypher's only option is to unite all free kingdoms and provinces under one rule and one command – his. War and treachery plague the world, and only he can save it from an armageddon of unimaginable savagery and destruction.
Views: 3 736

Undaunted Courage

In this sweeping adventure story, Stephen E. Ambrose, the bestselling author of D-Day, presents the definitive account of one of the most momentous journeys in American history. Ambrose follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson's hope of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping moments of the actual trip, to Lewis's lonely demise on the Natchez Trace. Along the way, Ambrose shows us the American West as Lewis saw it -- wild, awsome, and pristinely beautiful. Undaunted Courage is a stunningly told action tale that will delight readers for generations.
Views: 3 735

The Beach

Late at night in a seedy hotel, Richard is drawn into a strange conversation with a fellow guest. Through a narrow strip of mosquito netting he hears for the first time of a secret beach, and island Garden of Eden hidden somewhere in the scattered islands of a Thai marine park. The next morning, Richard finds a map pinned to his door, and the man who put it there has slashed his wrists. The challenge is irresistible, and Richard sets off on a perilous journey in search of Shangri-La.
Views: 3 415