A young orphaned girl in modern-day China discovers the meaning of family in this inspiring story told in verse, in the tradition of Inside Out and Back Again and Sold.Kara never met her birth mother. Abandoned as an infant, she was taken in by an American woman living in China. Now eleven, Kara spends most of her time in their apartment, wondering why she and Mama cannot leave the city of Tianjin and go live with Daddy in Montana. Mama tells Kara to be content with what she has…but what if Kara secretly wants more? Told in lyrical, moving verse, Red Butterfly is the story of a girl learning to trust her own voice, discovering that love and family are limitless, and finding the wings she needs to reach new heights. Views: 35
A woozy logic dominates these poems: a heart can become a buzzing hive of bees, a rooster can trigger a series of bombs, a young man can embrace a city bus as his spirit animal. Yet Bazzett slices through his poems with a dangerous sense of humor. Your humor is deft and cutting / my fingers off one by one," as one poem puts it. Once dismembered, Bazzett's poems can re-member us and piece together the ways in which we once thought we knew ourselves, creating a new, strange sense of self.A meditation on who we are, who we've been, and what we might become, Bazzett's writing is like a note written in invisible ink: partially what we see on the page, but also but also the many dozen doorways that we don't walk through each day." You Must Remember This is a consistently slippery, enrapturing collection of poems. Views: 35
Märit Laurens is a young woman of British descent who comes to live with her husband, Ben, on their newly purchased farm along the border of South Africa. Shortly after her arrival, violence strikes at the heart of Märit's world. Devastated and confused but determined to run the farm on her own, Märit finds herself in a simmering tug of war between the local Afrikaner community and the black workers who live on the farm, both vying for control over the land in the wake of tragedy. Märit's only supporter is her black housekeeper, Tembi, who, like Märit, is alone in the world. Together, the women struggle to hold on to the farm, but the quietly encroaching civil war brings out conflicting loyalties that turn the fight for the farm into a fight for their lives.Thrilling to read, A Blade of Grass is a wrenching story of friendship and betrayal and of the trauma of the land that has shaped post-colonial Africa.Amazon.com ReviewLewis De Soto's debut novel, A Blade of Grass, tells the story of Marit Laurens, a young woman of British descent, recently orphaned, who has moved with her new husband Ben to a remote farm on the contested borderland between South Africa and an unnamed country. When Ben is killed by a bomb in an act of guerilla warfare, she decides to stay on and run the farm. Alone in the world, she befriends Tembi, the daughter of her black housemaid, who has also been killed, in an accident. Struggling to transform herself as the surrounding countryside descends into bloody conflict, Marit finds herself caught between the fear and prejudices of the local Afrikaner community and the shifting loyalties and growing feeling of entitlement of the indigenous black workers. When first the Afrikaners and then the blacks flee the area, and the outside world starts to encroach menacingly on the isolated farm, Marit is stripped of everything that gave her a sense of self and a sense of belonging to this place.A Blade of Grass is a delicate, if at times naively sentimental, exploration of the arc of a courageous relationship between two women from different societies, each an outcast from her own, during the death throes of apartheid: from the rigid structure of master and servant, through the tenderness of the shared experience of aloneness and defiance in the face of societal pressures, to betrayal. De Soto has transformed the quiet immensity of the South African veldt into spare, luminous prose. He contains everything--repression and ownership, belonging and loss, humiliation and hope--in the small gesture, the seed, the blade of grass. The story's brutality is barely graphic in its depiction, but the terror is present nonetheless, lurking insistently beneath the surface, waiting at the edge of the farm. --Diana Kuprel, Amazon.caFrom BooklistPart historical fiction, part war-survivor story, this beautiful first novel is above all an intimate drama of two young South African women who cross apartheid barriers in their search for home. The time is the 1970s somewhere near the border. When the civil war comes close and a farmer is killed, his widow refuses to leave with the other whites. Her housekeeper, Tembi, is the only black person to stay on when the government soldiers drive away her people. The story is told from the women's alternating viewpoints as they break down the mistress-servant relationship, care for each other, and work the land, even when they lose electricity, running water, crops, cattle, and all outside contact. Tembi's voice is sometimes too distant, but her personal story brings close the apartheid atrocity of family breakup. With lyrical simplicity, DeSoto evokes the elemental landscape of the veldt that survives even the screaming military jets. In the tradition of Olive Schreiner's classic Story of an African Farm (1883), the focus is on women, their loneliness and strength. Hazel RochmanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 35
Thirteen-year-old Rosie Beckett has never strayed further from her family's farm than a horse can pull a cart. Then a letter from her Aunt Euterpe arrives, and everything changes. It's 1893, the year of the World's Columbian Exposition-the "wonder of the age"-a.k.a. the Chicago World's Fair. Aunt Euterpe is inviting the Becketts to come for a visit and go to the fair! Award-winning author Richard Peck's fresh, realistic, and fun-filled writing truly brings the World's Fair-and Rosie and her family-to life. Views: 35
Something is amiss at a small primary school in the village of Horton. A local man, Joshua Baldwin, has been sitting in his car outside the school watching the children as they play. So DI Joanna Piercy is called out to investigate. She meets with the teachers and with Baldwin and eventually decides there is nothing to worry about.She is terribly wrong. A few days later little Madeline Wiltshaw goes missing. Joanna is distraught that she trusted her gut instinct so implicitly, that she was not more suspicious of Baldwin. The coming weeks will be a testing time for Joanna, as she desperately tries to find the child. But with foot and mouth disease ruling the surrounding countryside, Joanna’s task looks almost impossible.ReviewA gripping whodunit, which keeps you guessing to the last. -- Sentinel Sunday Masters has a couple of tricks up her sleeve before the mystery is resolved. -- Birmingham PostAbout the AuthorPriscilla Masters was born in Halifax and is one of seven adopted children. The family moved to South Wales where she lived until she was sixteen when she went to Birmingham to work and then to train as a nurse. She is married to a GP and now lives in Shropshire. She works part-time as a nurse. Views: 35
Cole has wanted Tess for years. And he's warned her of this several times. He's also warned her HOW he wants her. Tied down in his bed, under his domination, surrendering to his desires...
Warning: The following material contains strong sexual content meant for mature readers. SURRENDER has been rated NC-17, erotic, by three individual reviewers. We strongly suggest storing this electronic file in a place where young readers not meant to view this ebook are unlikely to happen upon it. That said, enjoy… Views: 35
U.S. Marshal, Kate Briggs, is still posing as an Amish woman. When the cousin of one of the Amish Knitting Circle ladies is accused of murder, Kate once again throws herself into the investigation. However, the criminal looking for her has finally tracked her down to the small Amish community in which she is hiding. How will Kate protect not only herself, but the entire community, from the desperate criminal?When Kate's identity is revealed, how will everyone react, especially Detective Ryan Weaver? Views: 35
This is Book #4 in The Reason Series and should not be read without first reading Give Me Reason, Give Me Hope, and Give Me Desire as they are all continuations of each other. Mikah and Vivienne have crossed that line and their relationship now borders on breaking through the walls that have been put in place. Their relationship has only just begun, but the forces around them are determined to keep them apart.MIKAH BLAKE has been fighting with himself, discovering who and what he is has been harder than any challenge he’s ever faced in the past. But there is one thing he knows for certain - he will stop at nothing to protect the woman he loves. VIVIENNE CALLAHAN’s past has left her with scars for her future. Scars that only one man has managed to wipe away. But will those scars stay away forever? Or will Vivienne be forced to face her past once again in order to move on to their future?Reason Returned…Hope Blossomed…Desire Exploded…Will their love take flight? Content WarningThis story is rated MA for Mature Angels Only – Due to violence and sexual situations this book is not recommended for anyone under the age of 18. Views: 35
Serena Farnsworth, spinster, lives a life of service as nurse, companion, and household organizer for her extended family. Until her help is requested in a gloomy mansion in England's far north, where she encounters murder, witchcraft, mid-summer revels, shake holes, a variety of odd characters . . . and the lord of the manor—who might be a murderer. Views: 35
The Staff of Life suddenly and disconcertingly sprouted wings — and mankind had to eat crow! Views: 35
Pakistan may be making headlines—but Butterfly is set to conquer the world.'Everyone knows me. All of Lahore, all of Karachi, all of Isloo—oho, baba, Islamabad—half of Dubai, half of London and all of Khan Market and all the nice, nice bearers in Imperial Hotel also...No ball, no party, no dinner, no coffee morning, no funeral, no GT —Get-Together, baba—is complete without me.'Meet Butterfly, Pakistan's most lovable, silly, socialite. An avid partygoer, inspired misspeller, and unwittingly acute observer of Pakistani high society, Butterfly is a woman like no other. In her world, SMS becomes S & M and people eat 'three tiara cakes' while shunning 'do number ka maal'. 'What cheeks!' as she would say. As her country faces tribulations – from 9/11 to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto—Butterfly glides through her world, unfazed, untouched, and stopped short only by the chip in her manicure... Views: 35
The Battle of Trafalgar can claim to be one of the most known of the great human events. In Men of Honour, Adam Nicolson takes one of the greatest identifiable heroes in British history, Horatio Nelson, and examines the broader themes of heroism, violence and virtue.Trafalgar gripped the nineteenth century imagination like no other battle: it was a moment of both transcendent fulfilment and unmatched despair. It was a drama of such violence and sacrifice that the concept of total war may be argued to start from there. It finished the global ambitions of a European tyrant but culminated in the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson, the greatest hero of the era.This book fuses the immediate intensity of the battle with the deeper currents that were running at the time. It has a three-part framework: the long, slow six hour morning before the battle; the afternoon itself of terror, death and destruction; and the shocked, exultant and sobered aftermath, which finds its climax at... Views: 35
