To the River is the story of the Ouse, the Sussex river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape – and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the... Views: 66
In the game of chess, the strongest piece—the Queen—is often referred to as "bitch," and being female has been long considered a major disadvantage.Chess Bitch, written by the 2004 U.S. Woman’s Chess Champion, is an eye-opening account of how today’s young female chess players are successfully knocking down the doors to this traditionally male game, infiltrating the male-owned sporting subculture of international chess, and giving the phrase "play like a girl" a whole new meaning.Through interviews with and observation of the young globetrotting women chess players who challenge male domination, Chess Bitch shines a harsh light on the game’s gender bias. Shahade begins by profiling the lives of great women players from history, starting with Vera Menchik, who defeated male professionals with incredible frequency and became the first woman’s World Champion in 1927. She then investigates the women’s chess dynasties in Georgia and China. She interviews the famous Polgar sisters, who refused to play in separate women's tournaments. She details her own chess adventures—traveling to tournaments from Reykjavik to Istanbul. And Shahade introduces us to such lesser-known chess personalities as the flamboyant Zambian player Linda Nangwale and the transgendered Texan Angela Alston and the European female chess players who hop from one country to another, playing chess by day and partying long into the night. For those who think of chess as two people sitting quietly across a table, Shahade paints a colorful world that most chess fans never knew existed. Views: 66
From Publishers WeeklyIn Finlay's meandering first novel, a heroic quest fantasy, loyal retainers spirit the human infant Claye away from his home, a castle under siege, but they die before they can bring him to safety. Adopted by a troll and renamed Maggot, Claye grows up among the trolls, who regard him as weak and puny but smart. Eventually realizing that he has to find his destiny among his own kind, Maggot first befriends humans in a clan culture, who involve him in their impossible war, fought against a far superior army. Next, he seeks to learn more about the marauders, a decadent city folk. Throughout, he keeps his eye on an elusive prize—Portia, a woman of the marauders, who falls in love with Maggot after a brief meeting. The narrative strives to be both funny and moving, but the humor tends to the slapstick and clashes with the tone of the rest of the book. Despite the emphasis on matriarchal societies, all we see are men doing warlike things (or trolls being spectacularly stupid). Still, Maggot's distance from humans and his role as the ultimate outsider ring true. Since Maggot never really completes his quest, a sequel seems in the offing. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromYoung Claye is the infant son of Lord Gruethrist, smuggled out of the castle before it fell in one of those bloody feudal wars that are the plot springs of so many fantasy novels. Unfortunately, Claye's caretakers are killed, and he survives only through the kindness of a bereaved female troll and despite the loud objections of her husband--and a loud troll is very loud indeed. Growing up under the name Maggot, Claye learns a formidable array of survival skills from his neighbors, some of whom are creatures even weirder than trolls. It develops that he wants to win the hand of Lady Portia without using so many of his nonhuman skills that she will wonder what he really is and spurn him. Finlay's short stories have given him a reputation for originality, to which this novel should add reputations for characterization, for world building, and for satire that never goes over the edge into bad taste. Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 66
From WikipediaClash of the Sky Galleons is a children's fantasy novel by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, first published in 2006. It is the ninth volume of The Edge Chronicles and the third of the Quint Saga trilogy; within the stories' own chronology it is the third novel, preceding the Twig Saga and Rook Saga trilogies that were published earlier. The story is set aboard the Sky pirate ship The Galerider. Wind Jackal wants revenge against his previous quartermaster, Turbot Smeal, for burning down the Western Quays in Undertown along with most of Wind Jackal's family. Meanwhile the Leagues of Undertown begin making preparations for war with the sky pirates. The Galeriders crew encounter several dangerous traps as Wind Jackal carries out his quest to find Smeal. The crew of The Galerider are puzzled but it soon becomes clear, as it turns out in the end that the alleged Turbot Smeal was an imposter, greater and far more envious. Read more - Shopping-Enabled Wikipedia on AmazonIn the article: Plot summary | Characters | FootnotesReview“Stunningly original.” – Guardian“Entertaining fantasy at its finest.” –Times Literary Supplement Views: 66
Judith Ryan Hendricks, who Booklist has said "calls to mind Barbara Kingsolver in her affinity for wise women and the power of close female friendships," continues the saga of the Queen Street Bakery in The Baker's Apprentice. Wynter Morrison -- first introduced in the bestselling Bread Alone -- has found contentment in a life very different from anything she ever imagined: making bread on the night shift, learning the fine points of running a bakery, and exploring the possibilities of a relationship with Mac, her on-again, off-again love interest. But Mac's failure to deal with issues in his past creates friction, Wyn's soon-to-be-ex husband is turning their divorce into guerrilla warfare, and she is reminded of how quickly life can reverse direction without warning. Mac's abrupt departure is a shock, but conflicts at the bakery and her friend Tyler's tragic loss afford Wyn little time for brooding. Then letters from Mac begin to arrive, casual and distant at first, but gradually becoming more personal and revealing. In his absence, Wyn finds she not only learns more about Mac but also about herself, as she becomes Tyler's mentor, passing on the wisdom and healing power of bread making. Her new self-awareness and resiliency will be tested when the Queen Street Bakery's existence is threatened, as well as when Mac returns and she must decide whether there is still a place for him in her life. From critically acclaimed author Judith Ryan Hendricks comes the next chapter of the Queen Street Bakery, where questions are answered and old friends are revisited. Views: 66
Cajun Blue By Dominique Adair
Elle Grayson is a woman with a taste for bondage
and handsome men who know how to wield a paddle. Using the name Ms. Scarlet,
she attends a B&D party with the intention of finding a man to satisfy her
dark, sensual nature for a one-night stand.
Remy 'Blue' DeLaughter is a Cajun with a taste
for the dangerous and an eye for sexy, curvaceous women. While attending his
business partner's party, he finds the woman of his bondage dreams only to have
her slip away in the night. He wants her for a lifetime. Finding her is the
problem.
Love and Kinks By Madeleine Oh
The story of Jane and
Alan from Power Exchange.
Jane knows Alan is offering much, much more than
a weekend in the country. Her choices are to play it safe and decline, or
accept and agree to his conditions. In her heart, she longs to step out of her
safe, predictable existence and satisfy her secret desires with a lover who
knows her better than she knows herself. She only hopes she has the courage to
live her fantasies.
South Beach Submissive By Jennifer Dunne
Alexandra Davidovitch finagles an invitation to
an exclusive BDSM party, but doesn't let on that she's really club reviewer
Sassy D on assignment to get the goods on how the South Beach elite party in
private. Then she meets fashion photographer Michael Jackman, a drop-dead
gorgeous dominant who makes her forget everything but the way she feels under
his control. She'd do anything and everything for her new Master.except tell
him who she is. Because the only way out of exposing him in the pages of her
paper is to expose herself, and either way, one of their careers will be over
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"My father lost my mother one evening in a final round of gambling at the poker table," writes the narrator of "When She Was Queen," the title story of a new collection by bestselling novelist and two-time winner of the Giller Prize, M.G. Vassanji. That fateful evening in Kenya becomes "the obsessive and dark centre" of the young man's existence and leads him, years later in Toronto, to unearth an even darker family secret.In "The Girl With The Bicycle," a man witnesses a woman from his hometown of Dar es Salaam spit at a corpse as it lies in state at a Toronto mosque. As he struggles to fathom her strange behaviour, he finds himself prey to memories and images from the past--and to perilous yearnings that could jeopardize his comfortable, middle-aged life.Still reeling from the impact of his wife's betrayal, a man decides to stop in on an old college friend in "Elvis, Raja." But he soon realizes that it's not always wise to visit the past as he finds himself... Views: 66
