A haunted orchard turns out to be a crime scene when the Aldens discover that valuable antiques have been stolen. Views: 308
As a young girl in a working-class neighborhood of Sydney, Australia, Geraldine Brooks longed to discover the places where history happens and culture comes from, so she enlisted pen pals who offered her a window on adolescence in the Middle East, Europe, and America. Twenty years later Brooks, an award-winning foreign correspondent, embarked on a human treasure hunt to find her pen friends. She found men and women whose lives had been shaped by war and hatred, by fame and notoriety, and by the ravages of mental illness. Intimate, moving, and often humorous, Foreign Correspondence speaks to the unquiet heart of every girl who has ever yearned to become a woman of the world.Amazon.com ReviewThe leap between dreamy child living in a provincial Australian neighborhood and journalist hopscotching through war zones is massive. In Foreign Correspondence, Geraldine Brooks (Nine Parts of Desire) unravels the rope that pulled and tugged her toward adventure and away from "a very small world" where her family had no car and had never boarded a plane or placed an international phone call. "I'd never imagined myself as someone whose packing list would include a chador, much less a bulletproof vest," she says. Preserved in the cellar of her parents' home in Sydney were letters Brooks had received as a teenager from several international pen pals, around whom she spun a romantic view of the world. Wondering about the reality of their lives and the progression of her own, she tracks them down in France, Japan, the Middle East, and New York. En route, Brooks delivers a wonderful meditation on childhood and adolescence lashed with rich details and quirky humor. Speaking of a current pen pal, she notes: "Raed, from the West Bank, stoned my car in 1987; now he writes to tell me how he's faring in college." From School Library JournalYA-Bored with her insular life in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, 11-year-old Geraldine Brooks turned to pen pals as an antidote. Her correspondence began across town with the daughter of a favorite journalist whose cosmopolitan life was a striking contrast to that of her own working-class family. Other pen pals included Joanie from New Jersey; Mishal, an Israeli Christian Arab; Cohen, an Israeli Jew; and Janine, a farmer's daughter who wrote from a tiny French village. Geraldine's global correspondence is enlightening, entertaining, myth shattering, and heartbreaking. In Joanie, she found a true and rare soulmate; however, the girl suffered a hidden anguish, hints of which were dismissed by her Australian friend. When Joanie died from anorexia, Geraldine's grief and regret moved her to greater knowledge and deeper compassion. The author grew up to become a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, living the life she sought vicariously from her pen pals. Her return home upon her father's death and the rediscovery of the letters prompted her to find out what happened to those individuals. Her efforts were met with enthusiasm by all except Mishal, and the subsequent meetings with the reluctant Israeli as well as with Joanie's mother provided satisfying closure. The last pages of the memoir find the mature adventurer coming full circle to an appreciation for the small-town life she had once so derided. The desire to explore the lives of others and to express one's individuality is strong in most young adults, who will readily identify with this intriguing memoir.Jackie Gropman, Kings Park Library, Burke, VACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 301
Simone is 38, a district judge whose husband Donald is on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. Whilst she is at court, passing judgement on the lives of others, Donald stays at home and looks after their two young sons. One morning a letter arrives; someone she has tried to forget has not forgotten her and Simone's private history is about to collide with her public world. Views: 297
From master storyteller Barbara Taylor Bradford comes a magnificent new novel, a powerful, moving story of two women, two families, and an extraordinary friendship challenged by tragedy and a devastating secretfrom the past....
Some secrets are too terrible to share--even with your best friend....
Nothing hurts like the truth. A truth that has haunted Claire Benson all herlife. A truth that Claire has revealed to no one, not even to her best friend, International art dealer Laura Valiant. But the friendship that has sheltered both women throughout childhood, marriage and divorce is about tomeet its greatest test. Suddenly old nightmares surface as Claire turns to her dearest friend for help. And as Laura's career leads her into the past, in an investigation of artworkstolen by the Nazis, she uncovers disturbing links to the present, to Claire, and a profoundly personal reason to follow a twisted trail to its surprising end.... "From the Paperback edition." Views: 296
Thirteen-year-old Alice sets long- and short-term priorities for her life as she experiences the complexities of young love. Views: 296
1 New York Times bestselling author and "queen of royal fiction" (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory brings to life the passionate, turbulent times of seventeenth-century England as seen through the eyes of the country's most famous royal gardener.
John Tradescant's fame and skill as a gardener are unsurpassed in seventeenth-century England, but it is his clear-sighted honesty and loyalty that make him an invaluable servant. As an informal confidant of Sir Robert Cecil, adviser to King James I, he witnesses the making of history, from the Gunpowder Plot to the accession of King Charles I and the growing animosity between Parliament and court.
Tradescant's talents soon come to the attention of the most powerful man in the country, the irresistible Duke of Buckingham, the lover of King Charles I. Tradescant has always been faithful to his masters, but Buckingham is unlike any he has ever known: flamboyant, outrageously charming, and utterly reckless. Every certainty upon which Tradescant has based his life--his love of his wife and children, his passion for his work, his loyalty to his country--is shattered as he follows Buckingham to court, to war, and to the forbidden territories of human love. Views: 286
Helen Ross is a 29-year-old biologist, sent into a hostile place to protect the wolves from those who seek to destroy them. She struggles for survival and for self-esteem, embarking on a love affair with the 18-year-old son of her most powerful opponent, brutal and charismatic rancher, Buck Calder. Views: 279
Collected together here for the first time are twelve stories by the incomparable Greg Egan, one of the most exciting writers of science fiction working today. In these dozen glimpses into the future Egan continues to explore the essence of what it is to be human, and the nature of what - and who - we are, in stories that range from parables of contemporary human conflict and ambition to far-future tales of our immortal descendants. Return to the universe of the meta-civilisation known as the Amalgam, which Egan explored in his critically acclaimed novel Incandescence: 'Riding the Crocodile', which recounts an epic endeavour a million years from now to bridge the divide between the Amalgam and the reclusive Aloof; 'Glory', set in the same future, in which two archaeologists strive to decipher the artefacts of an ancient civilisation, and 'Hot Rock', where an obscure, sunless world conceals mind-spinning technological marvels, bitter factional struggles, and a many-layered secret history. This superb collection also includes the title story, the Hugo Award-winning 'Oceanic': a boy is inducted into a religion that becomes the centre of his life, but as an adult he must face evidence that casts a new light on his faith.
Contents:
Border Guards (1999)
Crystal Nights (2008)
Dark Integers (2007)
Glory (2007)
Hot Rock (2009)
Induction (2007)
Lost Continent (2008)
Oceanic (1998)
Oracle (2000)
Riding the Crocodile (2005)
Singleton (2002)
Steve Fever (2007) Views: 279
From master storyteller An Na comes the Printz Award–winning novel about a Korean girl who tells her firsthand account of trying to find her place and identity in America from the day she leaves Korea as a child to her rocky journey through the teenage years.At age four, Young Ju moves with her parents from Korea to Southern California. She has always imagined America would be like heaven: easy, blissful, and full of riches. But when her family arrives, she finds it to be the opposite. With a stubborn language barrier and cultural dissimilarities, not only is it impossible to make friends, but even her family's internal bonds are wavering. Her parents' finances are strained, yet her father's stomach is full of booze. As Young Ju's once solid and reliable family starts tearing apart, her younger brother begins to gain more freedom and respect simply because of his gender. Young Ju begins to lose all hope in the dream she once held—the heaven she longs for.... Views: 278
Connor Fitzgerald is a professional's professional. Holder of the Medal of Honor. Devoted family man. Servant of his country. But for the past twenty-eight years, Fitzgerald has been leading a double life as the CIA's most deadly assassin. And only days before his retirement from the CIA, he comes across an enemy who, for the first time, even he cannot handle. The enemy is his own boss - Helen Dexter - the director of the CIA. Dexter's stranglehold on the agency is threatened by one decision, and her only hope of survival is to destroy Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a formidable new foe is threatening the United States: a ruthless hard-line Russian president, who is determined to force a new military confrontation between the two superpowers.
From emergency meetings in the Oval Office to a Russian mafya boss's luxurious hideaway outside St. Petersburg, The Eleventh Commandment sweeps readers off their feet from the first paragraph. As in Jeffrey Archer's previous bestsellers, The Eleventh Commandment features enough plot-twisting ingenuity, exotic characterization, and narrative surprise to take the art of thriller writing to a new level. In his latest novel, Jeffrey Archer is at the peak of his page-turning powers. Views: 276
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. Views: 276
A visionary novel from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is sooner than you might think. And the Earth’s climate is much changed – it’s colder than ever before in the north, and unbearably dry and hot in the south. Mara, who is seven, and her four-year-old brother Dann find themselves somewhere very strange, not home …
They are taken in by a kindly, grandmotherly woman, but this new life is hard: hunger, dirt, thirst and danger are the children’s constant companions. Drought and fire carry off their adoptive home and force them to set off northward into the unknown, to experience a series of adventures that bring them to an altogether altered world, where they can start to learn and build anew.
Doris Lessing has written a compelling, troubling and entertaining novel that, through the remarkable odyssey of a brother and sister living in the imagined future, manages to tell us a great deal about the present we perceive only dimly and scarcely know how to value. Views: 276
The Law of Similars is fast-paced and absorbing. Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power.-The New York Times Book Review From the number one bestselling author of Midwives comes this riveting medical thriller about a lawyer, a homeopath, and a tragic death. When one of homeopath Carissa Lake's patients falls into an allergy-induced coma, possibly due to her prescribed remedy, Leland Fowler's office starts investigating the case.
But Leland is also one of Carissa's patients, and he is begining to realize that he has fallen in love with her. As love and legal obligations collide, Leland comes face-to-face with an ethical dilemma of enormous proportions. Graceful, intelligent, and suspenseful, The Law of Similars is a powerful examination of the links between hope and hubris, love and deception. From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 275
When Stacey sits for the two Brooke kids, she can't help noticing that their dad is a very cute single father, and the perfect match for her single mom. Views: 275
