Originally published by McSweeney’s in hardcover and met with wide acclaim, Arkansas is a darkly comic debut novel written by John Brandon about a pair of drug runners, Kyle and Swin, set in the rural southeast. Drawing comparisons to a striking range of storytellers, from Quentin Tarantino and Mark Twain to Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, John Brandonan MFA graduate of Washington University who worked an array of odd jobs while writing the novel, including at a rubber factory and a windshield warehousedelivers a tightly written, bitterly funny story that chronicles the monochromatic landscape of the American southeast and gives a glimpse into the mindset of his wildly troubled yet seemingly real characters. Views: 65
After Aubrey narrowly escapes the worst fate he can imagine, he realises there is only one thing to do: he must confront his nemesis. With George and Caroline at his side, he travels to Holmland - the home of Dr Tremaine and the heart of hostile territory - only to face magical conundrums, near-death experiences, ghosts, brigands and enemies on their own ground. Fisherberg is a city on a knife edge. Can Aubrey solve its mysteries before Dr Tremaine's warmongering machinations tip the world into chaos? Views: 65
"Boy, I told you to bring me some pickles," said Major Billcord, a passenger on a Lake Champlain steamer, to a boy in a white jacket, who was doing duty as a waiter at dinner in the cabin. "Yes, sir; and I brought them," replied Dory Dornwood, as he took the dish of pickles almost from under the passenger\'s nose, and placed it quite under his nose. Views: 65
"If the characters from Less Than Zero and The Secret History woke up in a novel by Philip K. Dick, they'd get along famously with the precocious students of Stansbury."-Dustin Thomason, bestselling author of The Rule of FourA thriller set in the future at an ultra-elite prep school that asks: what is the price of perfection?In the year 2036, the world's best boarding school is the Stansbury School. The students, better known as specimens, are screened at a young age and then given twelve years of the finest education — and developmental drug regiment —available. Stansbury graduates — physically and mentally — are in a class all by themselves. Four out of five go onto Harvard, Yale or Princeton; twenty out of the top thirty Forbes 500 companies have Stansbury CEOs, eight graduates have become U. S. Senators, and two sit on the Supreme Court. But when a string of alumni are... Views: 65
Four chronically homeless people–Amelia One Sky, Timber, Double Dick and Digger–seek refuge in a warm movie theatre when a severe Arctic Front descends on the city. During what is supposed to be a one-time event, this temporary refuge transfixes them. They fall in love with this new world, and once the weather clears, continue their trips to the cinema. On one of these outings they meet Granite, a jaded and lonely journalist who has turned his back on writing “the same story over and over again” in favour of the escapist qualities of film, and an unlikely friendship is struck. A found cigarette package (contents: some unsmoked cigarettes, three $20 bills, and a lottery ticket) changes the fortune of this struggling set. The ragged company discovers they have won $13.5 million, but none of them can claim the money for lack proper identification. Enlisting the help of Granite, their lives, and fortunes, become forever changed.Ragged Company is a journey into both the future and the past. Richard Wagamese deftly explores the nature of the comforts these friends find in their ideas of “home,” as he reconnects them to their histories.From the Hardcover edition.Review“Wagamese writes with brutal clarity…. [and] finds alleviating balance through magical legend and poetic swells of sensate imagery.”— The Globe and Mail“[Ragged Company] has … melancholy tenderness and spiritual yearning. Wagamese evokes each character’s consciousness and history with compassion, deep understanding and a knowledge of street life.”— Vancouver SunFrom the Hardcover edition.About the AuthorRichard Wagamese is an Ojibway from the Wabasseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario. After winning a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing, he published two novels in the 1990s: Keeper’n Me and A Quality of Light. His autobiographical book, For Joshua, was published in 2002 and his most recent novel, Dream Wheels, was published in 2006. He lives outside Kamloops, British Columbia.From the Hardcover edition. Views: 65
**A moving tale of the triumph of the human spirit amidst heartbreaking tragedy, told through the eyes of a charming, impish, and wickedly observant Afghan boy**
The Taliban have withdrawn from Kabul's streets, but the long shadows of their regime remain. In his short life, eleven-year-old Fawad has known more grief than most: his father and brother have been killed, his sister has been abducted, and Fawad and his mother, Mariya, must rely on the charity of parsimonious relatives to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence.
Ever the optimist, Fawad hopes for a better life, and his dream is realized when Mariya finds a position as a housekeeper for a charismatic Western woman, Georgie, and her two foreign friends. The world of aid workers and journalists is a new one for Fawad, and living with the trio offers endless curiosities - including Georgie's destructive relationship with the powerful Afghan warlord Haji Khan, whose exploits are legendary. Fawad grows resentful and worried, until he comes to learn that love can move a man to act in surprisingly good ways. But life, especially in Kabul, is never without peril, and the next calamity Fawad must face is so devastating that it threatens to destroy the one thing he thought he could never lose: his love for his country.
A big-hearted novel infused with crackling wit, Andrea Busfield's brilliant debut captures the hope and humanity of the Afghan people and the foreigners who live among them. Views: 65
Zygradon Chronicles Book 2: A new enemy arises to challenge
Mrillis and Ceera as they battle plagues, an unknown enemy and treachery
within the Noveni and Rey'kil alliance. Has the Nameless
One survived, or has someone else taken his power? Endor's sister,
Triska, is Ceera's heir as Queen of Snows, but arrogant and temperamental. Are
they what they seem, or something else, something dangerous?
During a star-shower, Ceera has a vision of the star-metal sword.
She brings together the surviving makers of the Zygradon to forge the sword,
Braenlicach. The children of the makers of Zygradon and Braenlicach inherit
their parents' links with the magical objects.
Uneasy years of peace pass, as they mature. Plagues return, and
the young guardians take Zygradon out to heal their land, but they are betrayed
from within. Traitors within the Stronghold attack, wantonly killing those
linked to bowl and sword. Mrillis is left to save his world, but in doing so,
may lose all that he loves.
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NYPD homicide detective Lieutenant Jimmy Sakura is back as he faces a series of gruesome murders. Views: 65
Garret Tulane is Darcy Rhodes's personal knight in shining armor. Not only did he rescue her from being stranded in the middle of a snowstorm, but he's also given her a place to stay. His close family ties and his caring support create the secure home life she wants to give her unborn child.That security is an illusion, however. Despite the growing closeness between Darcy and Garret, she knows he has obligations and commitments that don't include her—or another man's baby. But feeling as she does, when the time comes, will she be able to walk away? Views: 65
Benny is recovering in a Toronto hospital from a serious blow to the head. He has a condition called alexia sine agraphia; in layman's terms, it means he can still write but cannot read. And his memory has been affected too: although he can quote lines from his high-school production of Twelfth Night, he finds himself brushing his teeth with his shaving cream.When Benny learns that he was found unconscious beside a dead woman in a dumpster, he figures he must have been close to solving a case. With his girlfriend Anna working as field agent and two Toronto cops reluctantly sharing their discoveries, Benny tries to piece together the events that led to a murder―and his own injuries.Book 11 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series. Views: 65
RetailThe Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.As U.S. attorney general from 1969 to 1972, John Mitchell stood at the center of the upheavals of the late sixties. The most powerful man in the Nixon cabinet, a confident troubleshooter, Mitchell championed law and order against the bomb-throwers of the antiwar movement, desegregated the South’s public schools, restored calm after the killings at Kent State, and steered the commander-in-chief through the Pentagon Papers and Joint Chiefs spying crises. After leaving office, Mitchell survived the ITT and Vesco scandals—but was ultimately destroyed by Watergate. With a novelist’s skill, James Rosen traces Mitchell’s early life and career from his Long Island boyhood to his mastery of Wall Street, where Mitchell's innovations in municipal finance made him a power broker to the Rockefellers and mayors and governors in all fifty states. After merging law firms with Richard Nixon, Mitchell brilliantly managed Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and, at his urging, reluctantly agreed to serve as attorney general. With his steely demeanor and trademark pipe, Mitchell commanded awe throughout the government as Nixon’s most trusted adviser, the only man in Washington who could say no to the president. Chronicling the collapse of the Nixon presidency, The Strong Man follows America’s former top cop on his singular odyssey through the criminal justice system—a tortuous maze of camera crews, congressional hearings, special prosecutors, and federal trials. The path led, ultimately, to a prison cell in Montgomery, Alabama, where Mitchell was welcomed into federal custody by the same men he had appointed to office. Rosen also reveals the dark truth about Mitchell’s marriage to the flamboyant and volatile Martha Mitchell: her slide into alcoholism and madness, their bitter divorce, and the toll it all took on their daughter, Marty.*Based on 250 original interviews and hundreds of thousands of previously unpublished documents and tapes, The Strong Man resolves definitively the central mysteries of the Nixon era: the true purpose of the Watergate break-in, who ordered it, the hidden role played by the Central Intelligence Agency, and those behind the cover-up.A landmark of history and biography, *The Strong Man is that rarest of books: both a model of scholarly research and savvy analysis and a masterful literary achievement.**From Publishers WeeklyCasting the 66th attorney general and Watergate felon as the most upright man in the Nixon administration is faint praise indeed, to judge by this biography. Fox News correspondent Rosen applauds Mitchell for his tough law-and-order policies, school-desegregation efforts and hard line against leftist radicals, and for enduring wife Martha's alcoholic breakdowns and raving late-night phone calls to reporters. The book's heart is Rosen's meticulous, exhaustively researched study of Mitchell's Watergate role, absolving him of ordering the break-in and most other charges leveled against him. Instead, Mitchell is painted as a force for propriety who was framed by others—especially White House counsel John Dean, who comes off as Watergate's evil genius. (Rosen also claims Watergate burglar James McCord was secretly working for the CIA and deliberately sabotaged the break-in.) Unfortunately, Rosen's salutes to Mitchell's integrity and reverence for the law clash with his accounts of the man's misdeeds: undermining the Paris peace talks, suborning and committing perjury, tolerating the criminal scheming in Nixon's White House and re-election campaign. Mitchell may have blanched at the Nixon administration's sleazy intrigues, as Rosen insists, but he seems not to have risen above them. (Feb. 19) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The New YorkerAfter Richard Nixon lost the gubernatorial race in California, in 1962, he moved to New York to practice law and fell in with John Mitchell, a self-assured municipal-bond lawyer, who went on to run Nixon’s 1968 Presidential campaign and serve as Attorney General. Mitchell’s fame, such as it was, sprang from Watergate; in 1975, he went to prison for his role in the cover-up, and never broke his silence about the affair. Rosen, a correspondent for Fox News, believes that Mitchell’s story has not been properly told. He spent years researching his life and his downfall, and arrived at the fascinating—and disputed—theory that the White House counsel John Dean was the mastermind behind the Watergate break-in. Mitchell, with a public image of beady-eyed, pipe-smoking arrogance, was never a lovable figure, but he was in many ways a sad one. Particularly wrenching for him was the fate of his wife, Martha, who was regarded as a somewhat comical figure—a Southern Gracie Allen for the Nixon era—even as she was falling apart.Copyright © 2008 * Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker* Views: 65
At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China's vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts. In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts, come to view themselves as jahaj-bhais, or ship-brothers. An unlikely dynasty is born, which will span continents, races, and generations. The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, the exotic backstreets of Canton. But it is the panorama of characters, whose diaspora encapsulates the vexed colonial history of the East... Views: 65