In this exhilarating cross between The Da Vinci Code and The Birth of Venus, an irrepressible young woman in 15th-century Italy must flee for her life after stumbling upon a deadly secret when she serves as a model for Botticelli... When part-time model and full-time prostitute Luciana Vetra is asked by one of her most exalted clients to pose for a painter friend, she doesn't mind serving as the model for the central figure of Flora in Sandro Botticelli's masterpiece "Primavera." But when the artist dismisses her without payment, Luciana impulsively steals an unfinished version of the painting--only to find that somone is ready to kill her to get it back. What could possibly be so valuable about the picture? As friends and clients are slaughtered around her, Luciana turns to the one man who has never desired her beauty, novice librarian Brother Guido. Fleeing Venice together, Luciana and Guido race through the nine cities of Renaissance Italy, pursued by ruthless foes who are determined to keep them from decoding the painting's secrets. Gloriously fresh and vivid, with a deliciously irreverent heroine, The Botticelli Secret is an irresistible blend of history, wit, and suspense. Views: 11
The debut novel from the PEN/Faulkner Award Winning Author of *The Buddha in the Attic*On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines.Amazon.com ReviewA precise, understated gem of a first novel, Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine tells one Japanese American family's story of internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II. We never learn the names of the young boy and girl who were forced to leave their Berkeley home in 1942 and spend over three years in a dusty, barren desert camp with their mother. Occasional, heavily censored letters arrive from their father, who had been taken from their house in his slippers by the FBI one night and was being held in New Mexico, his fate uncertain. But even after the war, when they have been reunited and are putting their stripped, vandalized house back together, the family can never regain its pre-war happiness. Broken by circumstance and prejudice, they will continue to pay, in large and small ways, for the shape of their eyes. When the Emperor Was Divine is written in deceptively tranquil prose, a distillation of injustice, anger, and poetry; a notable debut. --Regina MarlerFrom Publishers WeeklyThis heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental debut describes in poetic detail the travails of a Japanese family living in an internment camp during World War II, raising the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. After a woman whose husband was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy sees notices posted around her neighborhood in Berkeley instructing Japanese residents to evacuate, she moves with her son and daughter to an internment camp, abruptly severing her ties with her community. The next three years are spent in filthy, cramped and impersonal lodgings as the family is shuttled from one camp to another. They return to Berkeley after the war to a home that has been ravaged by vandals; it takes time for them to adjust to life outside the camps and to come to terms with the hostility they face. When the children's father re-enters the book, he is more of a symbol than a character, reduced to a husk by interrogation and abuse. The novel never strays into melodrama-Otsuka describes the family's everyday life in Berkeley and the pitiful objects that define their world in the camp with admirable restraint and modesty. Events are viewed from numerous characters' points of view, and the different perspectives are defined by distinctive, lyrically simple observations. The novel's honesty and matter-of-fact tone in the face of inconceivable injustice are the source of its power. Anger only comes to the fore during the last segment, when the father is allowed to tell his story-but even here, Otsuka keeps rage neatly bound up, luminous beneath the dazzling surface of her novel.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 11
A chance encounter in the woods causes a recluse to dredge up old memories He meets her in a stranger's backyard. Harry is a child walking home from school, and Agnes is a young girl playing in the creek behind her house. While their parents speak, the children play, and Agnes explains the supernatural. She uses cookie dough to make statues of ghosts, she tells him, which she sets free in the river. So begins an enchantment that will last the rest of Harry's life. Years later he is a disbarred lawyer, living a reclusive life outside a Westchester commuter town. Memories of Agnes, dead for a decade, haunt him. He befriends a shivering young runaway, an encounter which forces him to confront his past for the first time, unearthing a mystery which stretches back to the Holocaust, and revolves around that strange young girl he met so long ago. Views: 11
Who do you trust when you can't trust yourself?Having discovered who was behind her abduction, Samantha Campbell is still haunted by what happened. Memory lapses and a nagging suspicion that the cabin was only the beginning means Sam needs answers. Her only problem? The one person who might have them still wants to kill her.With Mack unwilling to forgive himself, and Blake refusing to let her anywhere near his brother, she must find other ways to piece together her missing time line. Hoping that returning to Tonbo's Islands will help, Blake and Sam are horrified to learn Kory's treachery runs even deeper. Ancients are missing, Kate's disappeared, and the worst part is Sam feels she may be responsible.She's willing to try almost anything to know what her other half has been up to, but with each new discovery, she slips deeper into something she may not be able to recover from. Driven by the need to set things right, she's thrown into a web of lies where she realizes she can't trust... Views: 11
Vale was born in battle seven hundred years ago, and in all this time, he's never encountered an enemy that poses a real challenge. Until now. Devi has been told terrifying tales of vengeful gods since her youth. She never thought that she would wake up in a world where she had to fight them. They're opposites, he gets on her nerves, she is under his skin, and if they're to survive, they must join forces. Disclaimer: Frostbound Throne is a trilogy. Book one: Song of Night. Book two: Song of Winter (October 2018) Book three: Song of Heaven and Ice (February 2019) Each book is novel length. This is a trilogy, the story ends at book three (cliffhanger warning.) Court of Sin is a series of adult fantasy novels unsuitable for clean readers. Views: 11
Josh is trying to swallow and chew at the same time. It's dodgy. Rivers of green are gushing down his chin...As bad as it is for Josh, it is worse for Finn. He has started to froth. Saliva foams from the corners of his mouth, spume slides from his nose, his eyes gush. His body is blistered with sweat. He's moaning incoherently. I catch the words dash of chilli as he goes down.He burps A bubble slips out. And then comes the fountain. Like a drilling rig that's hit oil, spraying the whole back yard.Following the success of So Gross! comes So Feral!, another wonderful display of cheeky humour from author J.A. Mawter. This time around we're treated to a bottled baby, putrid pickings, festy flatulence, death breath, goop soup and lots more.Another hilarious collection of seven of the funniest and most revolting stories ever, this book is not for those with a weak stomach.Ages 9+ Views: 11
Darcey Bussell, everyone's favourite ballerina has put together a collection of her favourite ballet stories that will delight budding ballerinas everywhere. With contributions from:Joan Aiken, Jean Estoril, Vivian French, Lorna Hill, Geraldine Kaye Margaret Mahy, Jhanna N. Malcolm, Bel Mooney, Jean Richardson, Jean Ure and Cynthia Voigt. Plus specially commissioned NEW stories from:Jamila Gavin, Antonia Barber and Harriet Castor. Views: 11
The world is drying. Twelve-year-old Tad—who is only a few inches tall—doesn't even notice it at first. Busy practicing with his new spear, arguing with his sister, Birdie, and living the normal life of a youngling of the Fisher Tribe, he thinks little of a stream slowed to a trickle here, a pond suddenly dwindling there. But Tad begins to have strange flashbacks—glimpses of the past that he knows can't possibly be his own. With these "rememberings" haunting him, he and Birdie begin an adventure marked by great sorrows, fierce battles, and unbreakable friendships. In this remarkable rite of passage, Tad grows to know who he really is and what his destiny holds. For only he can restore the water and save the forests and animals and Tribes. Only he can retrieve the Waterstone. Views: 11
For centuries the Celts held sway in Europe. Even after their conquest by the Romans, their culture remained vigorous, ensuring that much of it endured to feed an endless fascination with Celtic history and myths, artwork and treasures. A foremost authority on the Celtic peoples and their culture, Peter Berresford Ellis presents an invigoration overview of their world. With his gift for making the scholarly accessible, he discusses the Celts' mysterious origins and early history and investigates their rich and complex society. His use of recently uncovered firnds brings fascinating insights into Celtic kings and chieftains, architecture and arts, medicine and religions, myths and legends, making this esesntial reading for any search for Europe's ancient past. Views: 11
