'Look after your sister, Tinashe.' When Hazvinei was born, Tinashe knew at once that there was something different about her. Growing up in a rural Rhodesia still haunted by memories of the recent guerilla wars, Tinashe knows he must take extra care of his sister. But Hazvinei is a wild spirit and soon the village starts to whisper - dark talk of curses and spirits. Tinashe is prepared to follow his sister anywhere - but how far can he go to keep her safe when the forces threatening her are so much darker and more sinister than he suspected? Views: 50
After losing the family fortune to a fraudulent psychic, inventor Henry Strauss is determined to bring the otherworld under control through the application of science. All he needs is a genuine haunting to prove his Electro-Séance will work. A letter from wealthy industrialist Dominic Gladfield seems the answer to his prayers. Gladfield’s proposition: a contest pitting science against spiritualism, with a hefty prize for the winner.The contest takes Henry to Reyhome Castle, the site of a series of brutal murders decades earlier. There he meets his rival for the prize, the dangerously appealing Vincent Night. Vincent is handsome, charming…and determined to get Henry into bed.Henry can’t afford to fall for a spirit medium, let alone the competition. But nothing in the haunted mansion is quite as it seems, and soon winning the contest is the least of Henry’s concerns.For the evil stalking the halls of Reyhome Castle wants to claim not just Henry and Vincent’s lives, but their very souls.Novel: 69,409 words Views: 50
Fake House, the first collection of short stories by poet Linh Dinh, explores the weird, atrocious, fond, and ongoing intimacies between Vietnam and the United States. Linked by a complicated past, the characters are driven by an intense and angry energy. The politics of race and sex anchor Dinh's work as his men and women negotiate their way in a post-Vietnam War world. Dinh has said of his own work, "I incorporate a filth or uncleanness to make the picture more healthy--not to defile anything." While Fake House delves into the lives of marginal souls in two cultures, the characters' dignity lies, ultimately, in how they face the conflict in themselves and the world.From Publishers WeeklyAward-winning poet Dinh's (Drunkard Boxing) hit-or-miss first collection of short stories examines postwar Vietnamese in the U.S. and in Vietnam. The 22 stories, often more memorable for their imagery than their plots, are narrated in the no-holds-barred, graphic language distinguishing the author's poetry. The first half of this collection focuses on Vietnamese immigrants living in the U.S. In the title piece, Josh is a free-spirited ne'er-do-well visiting his successful younger brother (whom he nicknames "Boffo," short for "Boffo Mofo") in order to squeeze a few bucks out of him. Boffo tries to disparage Josh's lifestyle, but can't help secretly admiring his brother's world, compared to his own shallow, American dream-like "Fake House." Becky, "The Ugliest Girl," is so plain that "Not counting the freaks, the harelips, the Down's Syndromes, the ones with lye splashed on their face, born without a nose, an extra mouth, five ears, and so on, I am the ugliest girl." The author does not shy away from jarring narrative perspectives. Part Two takes a look at life in Vietnam after the war. Characters like Lai's father, a legless NVA veteran who cares for his grandson while his daughter works as a hostess (prostitute) in a disco, explore the war's lasting effects with a bittersweet humor. His grandson is half African-American, and the vet, who spared an African-American soldier in the war, says to himself, "A karmic joke: Since you liked the first one so much, here! Have another one." Not every literary tone poem presented here is successful. "Two Who Forgot" is more of a rant than a story. But the train wreck of war is hard to look away from, and Dinh, the poet, holds a mirror to the lives of all who suffered and dares the reader to look away. Yet his inveterate use of profane language and raw sexual detail may limit the book's readership. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistDinh, a poet and short-story writer, left his native Vietnam in 1975 at age 12 and lived in the U.S. until 1998, when he returned to Saigon. This intimacy with two disparate cultures linked by war imbues his terse and edgy stories with an unsettling blend of anger and resignation. Writing from the point of view of both men and women, Americans and Vietnamese, Dinh portrays a spectrum of hapless characters, from a white man considering ordering an Asian mail-order bride, to a Vietnamese man wondering why more young women in his village don't accept money to marry foreigners, to a white woman who believes she's the ugliest female in the world, to a Vietnamese soldier who, as the only literate man in his battalion, reads everyone else's mail while receiving none himself. Dinh's painful stories feature tricky dialogue rife with pointedly racist misinformation, linguistic confusion, and dunning vulgarities, and evoke a skeptical yet tender vision of humanity, similar in spirit, if not in literary artistry, to that of Sherman Alexie and Aleksandar Hemon. Donna SeamanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 50
Saki is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's 'Golden Afternoon' - the slow and peaceful years before the First World War. Although, like so many of his generation, he died tragically young, in action on the Western Front, his reputation as a writer continued to grow long after his death. The stories are humorous, satiric, supernatural, and macabre, highly individual, full of eccentric wit and unconventional situations. With his great gift as a social satirist of his contemporary upper-class Edwardian world, Saki is one of the few undisputed English masters of the short story. Views: 50
From the moment Henry Sparrow sees Magnus Sørensen—his roommate Jenna's father—at the airport, newly arrived for his daughter's imminent wedding, sparks fly. A long drive to Magnus' hotel and some tentative flirting turns into a sudden and deeply passionate encounter in Magnus' suite, one that both parties agree should never, for Jenna's sake and their own, happen again. But that's easier said than done when destiny—and Jenna—seems to have a way of throwing them together, until their desire and need reaches a point they can no longer ignore.Having given in to what seems like the demands of fate, Henry and Magnus plan to slowly explore their burgeoning relationship without Jenna finding out, in the hopes of discovering if what's between them is even worth telling the woman they both love. But interference from Henry's calculating mentor, Professor Rodgers Remmick, an old friend and rival of Magnus', may throw a disastrous monkey wrench in their plan and their... Views: 50
Mystery/Crime. 42300 words long. Views: 50
For fans of Wild, a searing memoir about one woman's road to hope following the death of her troubled brother, told through the series of cars that accompanied her Growing up in a blue-collar family in the Midwest, Melissa Stephenson longed for escape. Her wanderlust was an innate reaction to the powerful personalities around her, and came too from her desire to find a place in the world where her artistic ambitions wouldn't be thwarted. She found in automobiles the promise of a future beyond Indiana state lines. From a lineage of secondhand family cars of the late '60s, to the Honda that carried her from Montana to Texas as her new marriage disintegrated, to the '70s Ford she drove away from her brother's house after he took his life (leaving Melissa the truck, a dog, and a few mixed tapes), to the VW van she now uses to take her kids camping, she knows these cars better than she knows some of the people closest to her. Driven away from... Views: 50
Recorded in sacred Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, Hindu Myths are thought to date back as far as the tenth century BCE. Here in these seventy-five seminal myths are the many incarnations of Vishnu, who saves mankind from destruction, and the mischievous child Krishna, alongside stories of the minor gods, demons, rivers and animals including boars, buffalo, serpents and monkeys. Immensely varied and bursting with colour and life, they demonstrate the Hindu belief in the limitless possibilities of the world – from the teeming miracles of creation to the origins of the incarnation of Death who eventually touches them all. Views: 50
"Don't ever run from a mountain lion." Mother also warned me about people. But she didn't know Jane and Jussy, the children who left us hay when we were so hungry. I may be a little moose, but I'm no dummy. That hay was sooo good.... After our dangerous journey over the mountains, everything here seemed wonderful. I made friends with Raney and Sweet Pea, draft horses on the farm, and Chippy the beaver. I even found my old pal, Snow the wolf. Everything was perfect. Until we met Burly! A grizzly with insomnia, Burly was about the nastiest, scariest character I ever met. All I wanted to do was stay away from him. But when he went after my friends...well, what's a moose to do? Views: 50
