SUMMARY: Four of these stories are set on the shimmering desert fringes of Albert Camus' native Algeria, and all of them first appeared in 1957, the year when he became the youngest French writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Views: 50
Sarah Court. Meet the resident.The haunted father of a washed-up stuntman. A disgraced surgeon and his son, a broken-down boxer. A father set on permanent self-destruct, and his daughter, a reluctant powerlifter. A fireworks-maker and his daughter. A very peculiar boy and his equally peculiar adopted family.Five houses. Five families. One block.Ask yourself: How well do you know your neighbours? How well do you know your own family? Ultimately, how well do you know yourself? How deeply do the threads of your own life entwine with those around you? Do you ever really know how tightly those threads are knotted? Do you want to know?I know, and can show you. Please, let me show you.Welcome to Sarah Court: make yourself at home.From Publishers WeeklyDavidson (The Fighter) delivers a dark, dense, and often funny collection of intertwined tales that are rewarding enough to overcome their flaws. The five families in the squirrel-infested homes on the titular street are made up of broken and dysfunctional characters. Patience shoplifts for a hobby; daredevil Colin has no sense of fear; hit man Jeffrey was raised in a foster home and might have Asperger's, synesthesia, or some entirely different neurological weirdness; Nick still rankles from the years his father forced him to try his hand at boxing; and Donald is trying to sell a strange box that he says contains a demon. Davidson delivers his story at a leisurely pace with only a hint of gonzo gore, aiming for readers who appreciate nonlinear narrative structure, flawed characters often unsure of their own motivations, and an evocative sense of place. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistLives of the people who live in five houses in one block on Sarah Court, just north of Niagara Falls, intertwine in these five chapters of tightly packed prose. River man Wesley Hill, who picks up the “plungers,” can’t dissuade his daredevil son, Colin, from going over the falls. Patience Nanavatti, whose basement was blown up by Clara Russell’s pyromaniac foster child, finds a preemie in a Walmart toilet. Competitive neighbors Fletcher Burger and Frank Saberhagen pit their children, pending power-lifter Abby Burger and amateur boxer Nick Saberhagen, against each other athletically. And there’s much more, as Davidson loops back and forth, playing with chronology to finish stories. There is a strong emphasis on fatherhood here, with wives and mothers largely absent, and the masculine bent is particularly obvious in a stupid bet—a finger for a Cadillac—over a dog’s trick. Given that a handful of characters suffer significant brain damage, caused as often by intent as by accident, the introduction of a mysterious alien being seems superfluous. In Davidson’s vividly portrayed, testosterone-fueled world, humans cause enough pain all by themselves. --Michele Leber Views: 50
It was brilliant. After another world economic crisis and total financial meltdown, to be able to trade young women as commodities was a sure-fire solution to restore prosperity. Everyone appeared to gain; the young woman’s family who were paid a substantial sum for their daughter, the young woman herself who was provided with gainful employment, and the financial markets suddenly boosted by this new and exciting commodity. Except... once contracted, the women were no more than slaves, and, inevitably, sex slaves. Opposition from a feminist group, the Preservation Of Humanity Organization, was fierce, persistent, but unsuccessful. Eventually, the only option for the feminists was for their own daughters, who had been kept isolated from the real world since birth, to be submitted to the contracted training to gather evidence and to destroy it from the inside. Views: 50
The real rodeo starts when the spurs are hung up and the chaps come off. Twenty-four stories of ropin’ and ridin’ on the open range.Saddle up and go for a long, hot ride. There's nothing in this world like a sexy cowboy...mounting another cowboy. In this fiery collection of gay erotic fiction, today's top erotica writers offer up stories of devious cattle rustlers seducing naive farm hands; dangerous outlaws breaking in small-town deputies; young, hung buckaroos wrangling each other; and duels not on the streets but between the sheets. These maverick writers take readers on a hot and heavy, no-holds-barred trip through the Old West to the New West, where "ramrod," "six-shooter," and "hog-tied" take on entirely new meanings. Views: 50
Eleven-year-old Danny Ryan and 19-year-old Wendy Marshall think their friendship is only about looking after two baby raccoons that Danny has rescued. But when a bank holdup upsets Wendy so much that she can hardly stand to be around people, she leaves her job as a teller, retreats to a farm, and surrounds herself with injured and orphaned wildlife. Danny, neglected at home and considered weird in a town where other boys are into hunting, finds peace on the farm, too, plus excitement, as he and Wendy adopt ever more exotic animals such as llamas, bobcats, a serval, an ocelot, and a blind lynx.Over time the two friends develop a bond that goes beyond care of the animals to caring for each other. As it turns out, Wendy rescues not just wildlife but Danny, as well. What's more, the bank robbers are still at large and still a threat, and Danny, now 14, must act to save Wendy's life. Views: 50
What if God fell in love and the person was already married? A bitter story of the very first love triangle between a man, his wife, and their GodFirst came Adam, whose fall soured His quest for absolute authority, then Noah, whose dreary sense of duty He found dull. God resolves for a third and final time to get it right, to select a vessel through whom He can direct human affairs, and to whom He can communicate directly His will. He chooses a solitary figure whose trust must be wooed, but whose faith, once secured, will surely reflect even greater glory and love. Were matters only that simple. In Only Human, Jenny Diski's brilliant and affecting retelling of the Abraham and Sarah story, God learns that no man, chosen or not, is solitary, and that the bonds forged by the human heart are resilient even to divine commandment. Diski transforms an archetypal tale of Old Testament obedience into a fierce love triangle, a test of wills over not only... Views: 50
Cinderella gets her mouse friend, Gus, ready for bed. Views: 50
Fantasy. 39184 words long. Views: 50
