Are we living on borrowed time?From climate change to the Murdoch empire, from refugees to WikiLeaks –Robert Manne applies his brilliant mind to the issues and people that shape our world. This provocative and informative book includes essays on Donald Trump's links to Russia, Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, the ideas driving Islamic State, and Jonathan Franzen's views on climate activism. In the title essay, Manne shares a life-altering personal story that is frank, moving and unforgettable.Robert Manne is emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University. His books include The Petrov Affair, The Culture of Forgetting, Left, Right, Left, Making Trouble and The Mind of the Islamic State. He has written three Quarterly Essays and is a regular contributor to the Monthly and the Guardian. Views: 59
The very day Liz Sullivan, freelance writer, returns to Denver to visit her estranged family, her ex-husband’s body is dumped at her parents’ door. Since Liz had once tried to kill her extremely abusive husband, the police think she’s their killer. Liz finds it necessary to do some dangerous sleuthing, if she doesn’t want to find herself in prison again—or dead. 3rd Liz Sullilvan Mystery by Lora Roberts; originally pulished by Fawcett Views: 59
The eleven stories in Wendy Brenner's debut story collection concern people who are alone or feel themselves to be alone: survivors negotiating between logic and faith who look for mysterious messages and connections in everyday life, those sudden transformations and small miracles that occur in mundane, even absurd settings.Brenner's stories range in setting from the rural and southern (a rotating country music bar, a dog track/jai alai compound, a grocery store, a natural cold springs sinkhole) to the urban and high-tech (absurdly bureaucratic companies and academic departments and a food irradiation plant). Often young and tough women seeking to hone their survival sensibilities, Brenner's characters are a mix of the everyday and the fantastic: frustrated secretaries and scientists, a young supermodel, precocious children, fierce plumbers and mechanics, a psychic grandmother, an unhappy lottery winner, a desperate grocery-store mascot in an animal suit. And then there are the animals—real ones of all kinds who turn up at unlikely moments and often seem to be trying to help.From Publishers WeeklyThe characters in Brenner's sharp, witty debut story collection-winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction-come out springing, with voices as stimulating as a blast of cold air in the freezer aisle of a Winn-Dixie. In her chosen world of revolving country music bars, dog tracks, hotel swimming pools and food irradiation plants, Brenner's band of misfits, loners and uncommon individuals cope with longing, loneliness and other pitfalls of late 20th-century life. In "The Round Bar," a short, fat country singer in a tractor cap puts the moves on his sometime girlfriend while his wife and baby wait back home in the double-wide. Tiptoeing breathlessly out of her static, neatly organized life, the lonely brochure-stuffer of "Success Story" starts an affair with the hunky brother of the girl upstairs. An "outraged, overeducated" woman who dresses as a polar bear handing out ice cream cones in a supermarket has a run-in with the local supermodel in "I Am the Bear." Many of the protagonists are acutely observant, big-boned women who know their own minds but aren't quite sure what to make of those around them. "Delicate, well-groomed men often treated me this way," one says. "As though I were likely to breathe up all their air or just fall on them like a tree." By turns determined and resigned, they find comfort in strange places: a fat neighbor's gentlemanly face; the memory of secretly recorded sex on an erased audiotape. Chock-full of pitch-perfect dialogue and dead-on descriptions. Brenner's stories, intoxicatingly original, are precise life studies that linger uncannily in the upper right-hand corner of the mind. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalIn this collections, a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, Brenner breathes life into very ordinary people. Frustrated loners, they relate briefly and badly to strangers while remaining distanced from family, friends, and significant others. Yet they survive to find strange connections to other people, animals, and events. In "A Bear's Life," for instance, a woman who dresses as a polar bear to promote ice cream at a grocery store finds that she can "look through beauty and ugliness to the true...hearts of all men," while the protagonist of "The Round Bar" relates simultaneously her affection for men and dogs. These stories, which have appeared in such publications as the New England Review and Southern Exposure, are at once witty and graceful, and their little sorrows are delived with a light touch. Recommended for public libraries.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 59
Navy SEAL Rick Pierce is being auctioned off to benefit a charity auction. He doesn’t know that a kink club has infiltrated the event and he’s about to get an introduction he’ll never forget. Leslie Adams loves to dominate and tie up powerful men—tying up a SEAL will be the ultimate high. She purchases Rick at the auction for a weekend in Cabo and learns there’s no tying down a SEAL. Views: 59
Already struggling to keep their tiny congregation afloat, two Mormon missionaries stationed in the dangerous Latin American neighborhood of Vila Barbosa suspect the worst when Marco Aurelio, a man they recently baptized, disappears from a crowded street market. When the neighborhood's corrupt police force shows no interest, Elder Toronto and Elder Schwartz decide to investigate Marco Aurelio's disappearance themselves.Breaking mission rule after mission rule, the elders doggedly pursue any clues that might lead them to their friend. As they interview the people who knew him—his short-tempered, bodybuilding brother; his gun-toting ex-wife; his mercurial former business partner—a tangled portrait emerges of an enigmatic con artist in over his head. At the edges of the investigation lurks a shadowy, mythical figure known only as the Argentine, a man who poses an increasingly dire threat to the two young missionaries as they plunge recklessly forward.Tim... Views: 59
Videssos was beset by enemies. A pretender held the throne--a despot who cared little that barbarian hordes and rival realms carved away at his empire, so long as the wealth and booty of the land satisfied his unbridled appetites. Few stood against him. And those few soon found their heads on pikes. Only one name held hope for freedom: Maniakes. And from his exile on the very edge of the civilized world, young Maniakes took up the challenge, rallied his forces, and sailed off to topple the tyrant. But the tyrant would use every means at his disposal--fair or most hideously foul--to destroy the crusading upstart. And even if Maniakes could stay alive, he would still have to pull together a battered, divided land as well as fend off a host of enemies--and thwart the former friend who had become his empire's most deadly foe! Views: 59
Sharyn McCrumb, New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Ballad series, examines one of the most famous public executions in US history in her stunning and powerfully written Depression-era novel.Years later, after the tragedy, someone remembered the Dumb Supper and what had happened there. That was the cause of it, they said, because the ritual wasn't a game after all. It really was magic, but magic has rules, and she broke them. Suddenly thrust into the role of primary caretaker for her family following the tragic death of her husband, Ellie Robbins is appointed to serve out his term as sheriff of their rural Tennessee mountain town. The year is 1936, and her role is largely symbolic, except for the one task that only a sheriff can do: execute a convicted prisoner. Ellie has long proven she can handle herself. But becoming sheriff is altogether different, and the demands of the role are even more challenging when she is forced to... Views: 59
**THE NEW YORK TIMES-BESTSELLING CULT CLASSIC NOVEL**'I don't think you can even call this a drug. This is just a response to the conditions we live in.' Suzanne Vale, formerly acclaimed actress, is in rehab, feeling like 'something on the bottom of someone's shoe, and not even someone interesting'. Immersed in the sometimes harrowing, often hilarious unfolding of life in the drug hospital and wondering how she'll cope – and find work – back on the outside, she meets new patient Alex. Ambitious, good-looking in a Heathcliff sort of way and in the grip of a monumental addiction, he makes Suzanne realize that, however eccentric her life might seem, there's always someone who's even closer to the edge of reason. Carrie Fisher's New York Times-bestselling debut novel is an uproarious commentary on Hollywood, the home of success, sex and insecurity, and has become a beloved cult classic. 'A... Views: 59
Elsa Karr is a witch with a list of things to do as long as Thor’s hammer. Top of the list is saving her father's shop from ruin. She's not interested in romance or the vampire who rents the flat above her shop. But scrooge meets Scrooge. Dominant meets Dominant. In each other, they may unfold a tale that only comes to pass on the darkest of nights. Views: 59
*"Enough games," the man said, raising the gun yet again. "And enough of the Population Police, I say." This time he cocked the gun and aimed carefully.* This is real, Luke thought. This is really going to happen. "No, don't!" he screamed. Luke Garner is a third-born in a restrictive society that allows only two children per family. Risking his life, he came out of hiding to fight against the Population Police laws. Now, in the final volume of Margaret Peterson Haddix's suspenseful Shadow Children series, Luke inadvertently sets off a rebellion that results in the overthrow of the government. The people are finally free. But who is in charge now? And will this new freedom be everything they had hoped? With all of the plot twists and excitement Haddix's fans have come to expect, Among the Free brings the Shadow Children sequence to a chilling conclusion. Views: 59
The themes woven through The Woman in the Oil Field involve action and passivity and the different perspectives they inspire. Tracy Daugherty's characters walk the margins of life; seeking the safe periphery from which they assess their friends, lovers, and relatives who lead real lives. Daugherty treats perspective and insight as topics in themselves. Views: 59
Determined to know the truth about the gigantic creature in the cave and the piece of fabric bearing the international nuclear symbol of radiation, David and Andrew discovered in the limestone caves near old Rusty’s farm, they decide to research their information and make some startling findings. Views: 59
