After Kyle's ordeal at school, his mother packs him off to the safety of the countryside, where there will be no temptation to use his powers, and he can forget the bad things - like the fact that his dad is a monster determined to destroy the world.But here's the thing about the countryside: it's full of nature, and nature sometimes has claws.Followed by a spindly figure in the woods and attacked by crows, Kyle is about to discover that NOWHERE is safe from the invisible fiends... Views: 60
Have you ever wondered where the Easter Bunny comes from? How old is he? And how he happened to become a talking rabbit with a fondness chocolate eggs? And how this involved goblins and a feisty princess?Gather around, children, and I shall tell you the amazing legend of Peter Cottontail... Views: 60
'Wonky, idiosyncratic, fragmentary, paradoxical, drunk on words, the essay has . . . a uniquely human thumbprint.'—Geordie WilliamsonIn The Best Australian Essays 2015, Geordie Williamson compiles the year's outstanding short non-fiction. Read Helen Garner on condescension, DBC Pierre on travel, Ceridwen Dovey on autobiography, Tim Winton on injury, Anna Krien on first love, and Nicolas Rothwell on the northern coast. With bracing essays on politics, music, literature, history, art, sport and more, this impressive anthology will entrance, stimulate and entertain.Sebastian Smee Anwen Crawford Maria Tumarkin Tim Flannery Nadia Wheatley James Bradley Tim Winton Gerard Elson Rebecca Giggs Alison Croggon Mungo MacCallum Sophie Cunningham Jeff Sparrow Nicolas Rothwell Karen Hitchcock Tegan Bennett Daylight Drusilla Modjeska Noel Pearson Delia Falconer Kirsten... Views: 60
From the top, you can see everything...except yourself.When Casey McCloy steps into the elegant Bramford building, she's overwhelmed. Fresh from the Midwest, she's moved to New York's Upper East Side to live with her grandmother and attend the prestigious Meadowlark Academy. Here all that matters is who you know. The girl to know is Madison Macallister: popular, pretty, platinumblond. She's not just Casey's new classmate and neighbor; she's an icon. So Casey aims to get in with Madison and her gorgeous gal-pals from the start. As the reigning queen of coolness, Madison is capable of destroying reputations with one welltimed whisper. Better to be on her good side.But after a city-haute makeover from her new frenemy Madison, Casey is wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and meeting the right people—including Drew, the boy-about-town who Madison thinks belongs to her and her alone. Views: 60
John C. Inscoe is a luminary in the field of Appalachian studies. He has spent much of his career exploring the social, economic, and political significance of slavery and race in the mountain South as well as the complex nature of the region's Civil War loyalties and the brutal guerrilla warfare that stemmed from those divisions. Using intimate vignettes to focus on individuals, families, and communities, he keeps the human dimension at the forefront of his analysis. In this collection of essays, produced over the past two decades, Inscoe devotes equal attention to how historical truths have been reshaped by later generations with vastly differing agendas. Blending fact and fiction, reality and perception, Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South represents a multifaceted embodiment of a unique time and place in American history. Views: 60
Central China, 1264. When Mongol armies storm into the Middle Kingdom, the descendents of Yun Cai (Taming Poison Dragons) are trapped in a desperate siege that will determine the fate of the Empire. Guang and Shih are identical twins, one a heroic soldier idolised by the city he defends, the other a humble doctor. In the midst of war, jealous conflicts over Shih's wife and concubine threaten to tear the brothers apart. Enemies close in on every side - some disturbingly close to home. Can the Yun family survive imprisonment, ruthless treachery and Kublai Khan's bloody hordes? Or will their own reckless passions destroy them first? "Breaking Bamboo" is the second instalment of a trilogy set in Song and Yuan Dynasty China, charting the trials and adventures of the Yun clan. Views: 60
[Book Thirty-nine of The Dray Prescot series] Down in the southern half of the continent of Loh, in an isolated desert land where the belief in reincarnation as a punishment is firmly accepted, Prescot and his new comrade battle intrigue and assassins and attempt to follow the desires of the Star Lords. This new kregoinya is Mevancy nal Chardaz, a most spirited lady who means to keep Prescot thoroughly in his place. Not completely sure if the guardian Tuong Mishuro is the man the Star Lords wished protected, Prescot and the guards have been hoodwinked. Prescot races to Mishuro's assistance, to arrive too late. Thus continues the tale begun in Scorpio Reborn. Views: 60
"An uncannily honest writer." —New York Times Book ReviewThe novelist and journalist Amitav Ghosh has offered extraordinary firsthand accounts of pivotal world events over the past twenty years. He is an essential voice in forums like The Nation, the New York Times, the New Republic, Granta, and The New Yorker, Incendiary Circumstances brings together the finest of these pieces for the first time—including many never before published in the States — in a compelling chronicle of the turmoil of our times. Incendiary Circumstances begins with Ghosh's arrival in the Andaman and Nicobar islands just days after the devastation of the 2005 tsunami. We then travel back to September 11, 2001, as Ghosh retrieves his young daughter from school, sick with the knowledge that she must witness the kind of firestorm that has been in the background of his everyday life since childhood. With a prescience born of experience, Ghosh warned... Views: 60
Blaze Bellamy is the bad girl of the short track speed skating world. Looking like a roller derby bruiser when she's not in her Team USA uniform, she's an unlikely American heroine. She's got a punk attitude to match her provocative dress and her dyed hair, and she's determined to get onto the front pages of the papers regardless of how she has to do it.Maisy Harper is the workhorse of the Canadian women's figure skating team. Serious, modest, and above all, polite, Maisy would prefer to win her victory on the ice rather than in the press, and is exasperated by Blaze's antics. When she's not lusting after her anyway. After they both failed to make the medal podium at the last Snow and Ice Games, they drowned themselves in gin—and each other. Despite their hookup being drunken, they both harbor fond memories of their night together and are keen for a repeat. But they've got different ways of going about getting what they want, and Blaze's willingness to go to... Views: 60
Orange Prize winner and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008, Linda Grant has created an enchanting portrait of a woman who, having endured unbearable loss, finds solace in the family secrets her estranged uncle reveals. In vivid and supple prose, Grant subtly constructs a powerful story of family, love, and the hold the past has on the present. Vivien Kovacs, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from the world by her timid Hungarian refugee parents, who conceal the details of their history and shy away from any encounter with the outside world. She learns how to navigate British society from an eccentric cast of neighbors -- including a fading ballerina, a cartoonist, and a sad woman who wanders the city and teaches Vivien to be beautiful. She loses herself in books and reinvents herself according to her favorite characters, but it is through clothes that she ultimately defines herself. Views: 60
