Master storyteller Rosanne Hawke effortlessly interweaves ancient Mughal history and settings, fables and traditional story threads to bring to life a magical fantasy. Told over two books – the second book, The Leopard Princess out in October 2016. Daughter of Nomads contains a sample chapter from The Leopard Princess.First Moon of Summer, 1662: Fourteen-year-old Jahani lives peacefully in the village of Sherwan. But havoc is brewing in the Mughal Empire with tyrants and war lords burning villages in their quest to rule the northern kingdoms.After an assassin strikes in a bazaar, Jahani discovers her life is not as it seems. Before long, she is fleeing with her mysterious protector Azhar.Will their journey to the Qurraqoram Mountains lead Jahani to danger or to her destiny? Views: 42
At thirty-seven, Christine Moore had a world-class case of burnout: frustrating career, a few dead-end romances, and a less-than-perfect figure. Little did she know her life was about to change completely...."Come out of the shadows, Christine. You've spent far too much time hiding in shadows." The man who spoke to her was gorgeous — long sable hair, faded T-shirt, black motorcycle jacket — all astride a 1340cc Harley-Davidson, mysteriously parked on a moonlit beach near her home. Christine was inexplicably drawn to this stranger — who seemed to know everything about her — and as a sweet serenity settled over her, she surrendered to his words: "We have a lot of work to do, but it won't feel like work. It will feel quite wonderful." So begins Christine's journey, a voyage of the spirit that frees her to appreciate each precious moment of life — and reveals to her six wondrous precepts that lead to the deepest peace and... Views: 42
Renowned physicist and global warming skeptic Freeman Dyson selects the year's best science and nature writing. Views: 42
Jack Fallon's life is being downsized. His wife of twenty-four years is dumping him, and the only company he's ever worked for is about to do the same....The head honchos at Waters Cable have implemented a "workforce imbalance correction," which includes canning Jack and his coworkers, all of whom are middle-aged executives in the 50/50 class — at least fifty years old and making $50,000 or more. Refusing to become fossils, Fallon and his cohorts dub themselves "The Dinosaur Club," and prepare to strike like ferocious T-rexes. Using clandestine maneuvers, corporate intrigue, good old-fashioned office politics, and a secret weapon — Samantha Moore, a beautiful young attorney — The Dinosaur Club vows to reverse evolution and drive the company's greedy Young Turks into extinction.Award-winning author William Heffernan puts a scathing spin on corporate America in a novel that is both hilarious and compellingly on the money. Views: 42
Strider has a new habit. Whenever we stop, he places his paw on my foot. It isn't an accident because he always does it. I like to think he doesn't want to leave me.Can a stray dog change the life of a teenage boy? It looks as if Strider can. He's a dog that loves to run; because of Strider, Leigh Botts finds himself running—well enough to join the school track team. Strider changes Leigh on the inside, too, as he finally begins to accept his parents' divorce and gets to know a redheaded girl he's been admiring. With Strider's help, Leigh finds that the future he once hated to be asked about now holds something he never expected: hope. Views: 42
Like Twain -- or more contemporary humorists Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor -- Patrick McManus shares the belief that life's eternal verities exist primarily to be overturned. In McManus's world, all steaks should be chicken-fried, strong coffee is drunk by the light of a campfire, and fishing trips consist of men acting like boys and boys behaving like the small animals we've always assumed they were.In this, the tenth hilarious collection of his adventures, wry observations, and curmudgeonly calls for bigger and bigger fish stories, McManus takes on everything from an Idaho crime wave to his friend Dolph's atomic-powered huckleberry picker to the uncertain joys of standing waist-deep in icy water, watching the fish go by. Views: 42
Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for short fiction, Under the Red Flag features twelve stories which take place during China's Cultural Revolution--stories which display the earnestness and grandeur of human folly and, in a larger sense, form a moral history of a time and a place.From Kirkus ReviewsA peek behind the Bamboo Curtain, where Chinese poet Ha Jin, winner of the latest Flannery O'Connor Award, works out the conflicts between tradition and constraint that animate his second collection (after Ocean of Words, 1996). Ha Jin, who writes in English, is a Chinese veteran of the People's Liberation Army and, although he doesn't address political dissidence directly in his work, the 12 stories here all contain that undercurrent of cynicism in the face of authority that's common to military (as well as Communist) societies. Thus, the soldier of A Man-to-Be,'' who holds back from taking part in a gang-rape, not only finds himself defensive about his own manliness but is eventually shunned by his fianc‚e's family, who doubt his ability to father children, whereas the hooligan boys who terrorize their fellow classmates inEmperor'' discover that their popularity and status increase ever higher with each new atrocity they perpetrate. The abiding tensions of peasant life prove themselves again and again to be deeper than the Party's ideal of the New Communist Man, as in New Arrival'' (where a childless couple refuses to adopt a beloved young boy entrusted to their care because of their fear of bad luck) orFortune'' (in which an old man's faith in fortune-telling remains so absolute that he becomes willfully deluded rather than admit that his life has been ruined). Honor remains a powerful primordial force as well, best illustrated in the predicament of the dutiful Party member who disobeys his dying mother's wish for a traditional funeral and is promptly denounced by his comrades for filial impiety; or in the public degradation of a prostitute (``In Broad Daylight''), which, however harrowing, remains a less vivid spectacle than the degradation of her accusers. Splendidly fluid and clear: Ha Jin has managed to make an utterly alien world seem as familiar as an old friend. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.Review"Ha Jin's Dismount Fort teems with vivid life and people who grow ever less strange as their struggles unfold. An exotic subject matter helps, but narrative talent proves victorious." -- Time Magazine"Splendidly fluid and clear: Ha Jin has managed to make an utterly alien world seem as familiar as an old friend." -- *Kirkus Reviews"Ha Jin is a master satirist, not so much of Chinese politics as of the human psyche when it's being twisted and pummeled by some higher authority." -- *The Chicago Tribune"[Ha Jin] infuses his tales with unforgettable characters who are grappling with questions of honor and shame, passion vs. respectability." -- *San Jose Mercury News"Mr. Jin's haunting portraits of life in China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, are shattering conventional expectations of what it is to be a "Chinese writer," and at the same time attracting torrents of praise." -- The Asian Wall Street Journal Views: 42
The affair is a military wedding. The groom's parents are the Bradwins, one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Virginia. The family head, General "Boss" Bradwin, is a famous army officer. Of all his prized sons, his youngest, "Clipper" Bradwin, is the most promising. First in his class at Blue Ridge Military Academy, graduate with all honors, he is now entering into holy matrimony and then into wartime service of his country. What will begin, however, with the solemnity of his marriage vows will end in the echoing screams of the damned-an ungodly spectacle of spilled blood and sobbing, throat-aching terror. For this distinguished family is like no other on earth. There is a curse on their blood. Their family history is rooted not in magnolia and honeysuckle, but in darkness and demonism, in frightening forces beyond their knowledge and control. Their august history begins not in antebellum mansions, but with supernatural sorcery in the ancient rites and rituals of... Views: 42
From China 's first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes an exquisite new book of fictions, none of which has ever been published before in English. A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the mountains, and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his beloved grandfather, who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire! Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom – and will delight anyone who loved Gao's bestselling novels, Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible. *** These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the title story, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories. Everywhere in this collection are powerful psychological portraits of characters whose unarticulated hopes and fears betray the never-ending presence of the past in their present lives. *** "Beautiful… Suffused with the melancholy of nostalgia." – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "[Gao's] narrators walk as if in a dream through a private landscape of memory and sensation." – Boston Globe "Precisely detailed and delicately suggestive: the best work of Gao's yet to appear in English translation." – Kirkus Reviews "Beautiful." – Village Voice "These spare, evocative pieces… offer a sample of Nobel-winner Gao's sharp, poetic early work." – Publishers Weekly "Observant… For variety of content, stylistic experimentation, graceful language, and poignant insight, Xingjian is a writer who does it all beautifully." – Booklist Views: 42
