Charlotte Goodtree is descended from the wealthiest white family in the area, and she should be the heir apparent--valedictorian, local historian, and true of heart. There's just one problem: she's black.Daniel Sage thinks of himself as a red-neck contractor, but nothing stirs his heart like the beautiful woman who wants to rescue the ruined plantation that's his next big renovation project. How can he face telling her why he's really come to Monterray?When circumstances bring them together the sexual tension explodes into raw ecstasy, taking kinky turns Charlotte certainly never expected and Daniel never dared to hope for--but neither of them is prepared for how that makes them feel.Will they be able to let go of their inhibitions long enough to fall in love? DEEPER is a 20,000 word novella that explores letting go of the past, love with a twist, and naughty sex when you know it's right. Views: 19
The Brooklyn Dodgers finally have a shot at the pennant—if they can stay together as a teamIt's Spike Russell's second year in the majors with his brother, Bob, and the Brooklyn Dodgers are in the pennant race, thanks in part to rookie pitcher Bones Hathaway. Spike is finding it difficult to balance playing shortstop and managing the players, but he knows he's up for the challenge.But when the club secretary, Bill Hanson, starts criticizing Spike's managerial skills and implying that the young manager is running the team into the ground, the crew Spike had such high hopes for begins to fall apart. Spike will have to prove himself to his teammates to regain their trust and lead them to victory. Views: 19
Brought up in a stifling, emotionless home in the north of England, Clara finds freedom when she wins a scholarship and travels to London. There, she meets Clelia and the rest of the Denham family: brilliant and charming, they dazzle Clara with their flair for life, and Clara yearns to be part of their bohemian world. But while she will do anything to join their circle, she gives no thought to the chaos that she may cause... In this captivating story of growing up and moving on, Margaret Drabble explores what it means to leave a disregarded childhood and family behind. WINNER of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction Views: 19
From Publishers WeeklyThe cold northern islands of St. Hauda's Land are home to strange creatures and intertwining human secrets in Shaw's earnest, magic-tinged debut. Ida Maclaird returns to the archipelago to find a cure for the condition her last visit brought her—she is slowly turning into glass. The landscape is at once beautiful and ominous, and its residents mistrustful, but she grows close to Midas Crook, a young man who, despite his intention to spend his life alone, falls in love with Ida and becomes desperate to save her. Their quest leads them to Henry Fuwa, a hermit biologist devoted to preserving the moth-winged bull, a species of insect-sized winged bovines; to Carl Mausen, a friend of Ida's family whose devotion to her mother makes him both ally and enemy; and finally to Emiliana Stallows, who claims to have once cured a girl with Ida's affliction. Each of these characters' histories intertwine, though their motivations surrounding Ida are muddled by their loyalties. Both love story and dirge, Shaw's novel flows gracefully and is wonderfully dreamlike, with the danger of the islands matched by the characters' dark pasts. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"Fantastically imagined.... The hybrid form of the book—fairy tale, myth, psychological realism and fantasy—impresses. But Shaw’s most delightful offerings are the vivid details he provides to make the magical real.... As Ida turns to glass, Midas must continue his own transformation, from hardened to human. The end of the book, saturated with color and emotion, is risky and brave like the message it imparts. Only a heart of glass would be unmoved."—Robin Romm, New York Times Book Review"Ali Shaw has created a memorable addition to [the] fabulist pantheon in his gorgeous first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet.... Over the course of this eerie, bewitching novel, the mixture of love and grief and the imminence of death become as memorable as Ida’s mysterious, dreadful transformation and Midas’s more achingly human one ... Shaw acknowledges the influence of writers like Andersen, Kafka and Borges (Shaw's menagerie of perfectly detailed, marvelous creatures could have stepped from the pages of "The Book of Imaginary Beings"). But it’s Andersen’s melancholy tales, steeped in loss and a brooding sense of fatedness, that shimmer around the edges of The Girl with Glass Feet. Every character in this novel yearns for a love that seems just out of reach: Midas's unhappy parents; Henry Fuwa; Carl Maulsen, who loved Ida's mother; Emiliana, the island woman who might have a cure for Ida's illness; Ida herself—all of them are bound by threads of betrayal and desire and hope, until Fate cuts those threads, calmly and without remorse."—Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post"The Girl with Glass Feet is a love story, not just about two people falling in love, but also about love itself: its power, its limits, and its consequences.... Although Shaw’s novel is set in the present, everything’s turned askew, resulting in a world that is at once banal—the car won’t start; the coffee’s getting cold—and fantastical—glass feet; glass hearts. Shaw makes the crucial decision to leave the human emotions and relationships in the realm of the believable, while embedding them in terrain that is ever so slightly surreal. Somehow it’s never implausible. Shaw is at his best when describing the fantastical world he’s created. His language manages to be poetic and economical.... The look, the sound, and the scent of St. Hauda’s Land stay with you after turning the last page of this beautiful novel."—Buzzy Jackson, The Boston Globe"Ali Shaw’s engrossing and moving debut novel ... is a story of a strange land and its strange inhabitants, but at heart it’s a sincere but unsentimental love story.... The joy that Ida and Midas share, after Midas takes those first risky steps toward love, is so beautifully captured that their happiness beats back the drear and shadows.... The dreamy atmosphere curls around you until you see, hear and smell the moors and bogs.... The ending bridges the gap between fairy tales old and new."—Lisa McLendon, Wichita Eagle"Ali Shaw shows immense promise with his deft use of language, which sings in a book that is at its heart filled with sadness. The soft light on the island plays coyly with the thick vegetation, casting glorious shadows and producing a riot of images all ably captured by Midas’ camera and Shaw’s prose."—Vikram Johri, The Chicago Sun-Times"Ali Shaw has a gift for storytelling and an obvious love of language. His descriptions are poetic and original.... The Girl With Glass Feet is a work of great imagination and talent. Mr. Shaw never tells us what causes the glassification, but that leaves the reader open to decide whether the tale is merely a modern fairy tale, or whether turning into glass is in itself a metaphor for a larger, human condition that creates change bringing moments of pain and pleasure."—Corinna Lothar, The Washington Times"The cold northern islands of St. Hauda’s Land are home to strange creatures and intertwining human secrets in Shaw’s earnest, magic-tinged debut.... Both love story and dirge, Shaw’s novel flows gracefully and is wonderfully dreamlike, with the danger of the islands matched by the characters’ dark pasts."—Publishers Weekly "Ali Shaw offers the rare delight of a world freshly and richly imagined.... The story is soothingly spellbinding, pulling the reader with steady delicacy into the hearts and minds of its characters amid the enthralling murmur of the fantastical."—Ariel Berg, The San Francisco Book Review“On the surface, the book is magical, seemingly as transparent as Ida's toes. Like all the best fairy tales, though, it's tinted with a pervading sense of unease that sticks with the reader long after the cover is closed. Midas's love for a woman who is leaving the real world he despises, Ida's lost grip on humanity, the very land on which they meet, are all deeper and darker than they seem, making this a book well worth reading.”—BookSlut.com"This lovely fable is a chain of linked mysteries with accelerating suspense that propels the reader deep into Shaw’s world of marvels. That world is crafted with elegance and swept by passionate magic and the yearning for connection. A rare pleasure."—Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love"Written in the tradition of magical realists like Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Girl with Glass Feet is a singular, slippery narrative that defies easy categorization. Shaw writes finely honed prose and knows how to wring maximum suspense out of a tightly woven plot. His is an accomplished first novel—a hypnotic book with an atmosphere all its own."—Julie Hale, Bookpage "Emotional entanglements on a faraway frozen island are shaped by romance and tragedy in a melancholic yet whimsical British debut.... [A] strikingly visual novel.... captivatingly ethereal."—Kirkus Reviews "The Girl with Glass Feet is weirdly beautiful and highly entertaining." —Minneapolis Star Tribune"Shaw has worked the great tradition of European fairy tales and come up with an ingenious story ... A magical fable of fate and resignation."—The Guardian (UK)"The Girl with Glass Feet is not just special—it’s remarkable.... [This] debut novel conjures up the extraordinary and fantastic, yet places it firmly in our digital world.... It’s a very visual novel—readers who enjoy using their imagination will adore it."—Helen Peacock, The Oxford Times (UK)"A haunting and magical tale.... One of the most original and memorable love stories I’ve read in a long time.... It takes a real talent to create such an imaginative setting yet still make readers believe and care about the characters, but first-time novelist Ali Shaw pulls it off in dazzling style, spinning an unforgettable story so vividly described that the reader is only too willing to suspend disbelief in order to be transported into his sad and lovely world."—Morag Lindsay, Aberdeen Press and Journal Views: 19
Linh Dinh is already one of the secret masters of short fiction. Love Like Hate is something like a traditional cross-cultural novel that's been shocked into life by Dinh's uncanny ability to tell us stories we didn't even know we wanted to hear. -- Ed Park, editor of The BelieverIn Love Like Hate, Linh Dinh weaves a dysfunctional family saga that doubles as a portrait of Vietnam in the last half century. Protagonists Kim Lan and Hoang Long marry in Saigon during the Vietnam War, uniting in a setting that allows Dinh's dark, deadpan humor to flourish. Describing his mushrooming cast of characters in unsentimental and sometimes absurd ways, Dinh embraces contradictions with the surreal exuberance of Matthew Sharpe and the stylistic élan of Italo Calvino. Views: 19
The first definitive biography of Chicago Bears superstar Walter Payton.At five feet ten inches tall, running back Walter Peyton was not the largest player in the NFL, but he developed a larger-than-life reputation for his strength, speed, and grit. Nicknamed Sweetness" during his college football days, he became the NFL's all-time leader in rushing and all-purpose yards, capturing the hearts of fans in his adopted Chicago.Crafted from interviews with more than 700 sources, acclaimed sportswriter Jeff Pearlman has produced the first definitive biography of Payton. Sweetness at last brings fans a detailed, scrupulously researched, all-encompassing account of the legend's rise to greatness. From Payton's childhood in segregated Mississippi, where he ended a racial war by becoming the star of his integrated high school's football team, to his college years and his twelve-year NFL career, Sweetness brims with stories of all-American heroism, and covers Payton's... Views: 19
For Detective Alex Mendez, a routine rape investigation becomes a nightmare when DNA evidence points to him.When a rapist attacks three local women, Alex follows the trail of DNA evidence from the first two victims to his suspect. It’s an open and shut case, until evidence from the third victim is matched to Alex. To clear his name, Alex must disprove the evidence he has collected in the case, but in doing so, he could also vindicate a sadistic predator. Views: 19
The gods, makers of worlds, seek to create balance—between matter and
energy; and between mortals who strive toward the transcendent, and the
natural perils they must tame or overcome. But one of the gods fashions a
world filled with hellish creatures far too powerful to allow balance;
he is condemned to live for eternity with his most hateful creations in
that world’s distant Bourne, restrained by a magical veil kept vital by
the power of song. Millennia pass, awareness of the hidden
danger fades to legend, and both song and veil weaken. And the most
remote cities are laid waste by fell, nightmarish troops escaped from
the Bourne. Some people dismiss the attacks as mere rumor. Instead of
standing against the real threat, they persecute those with the
knowledge, magic and power to fight these abominations, denying the
inevitability of war and annihilation. And the evil from the Bourne
swells…. The troubles of the world seem far from the Hollows
where Tahn Junell struggles to remember his lost childhood and to
understand words he feels compelled to utter each time he draws his bow.
Trouble arrives when two strangers—an enigmatic man wearing the sigil
of the feared Order of Sheason and a beautiful woman of the legendary
Far—come, to take Tahn, his sister and his two best friends on a
dangerous, secret journey. Tahn knows neither why nor where they
will go. He knows only that terrible forces have been unleashed upon
mankind and he has been called to stand up and face that which most
daunts him—his own forgotten secrets and the darkness that would destroy
him and his world. Views: 19
It's 24/7 money, fame, and game on-and off-the court. But the real action is behind the scenes in Regina Hart's sizzling new pro b-ball series, where the stakes are everything and winning means playing for keeps...He's a two-time MVP and three-time championship winner. He lives to be the best. And now that he's a first-time coach, DeMarcus Guinn will lead the NBA's worst team to the top his way-or no way at all. But the team's fiery franchise owner, Jaclyn Jones, is fighting him at every turn. And their unexpectedly seductive one-on-one is the kind of game time he can't resist...Turning her family's team into winners is Jaclyn's only hope of saving them and her community. She's used to being in control, but DeMarcus' determination-and the way he makes her feel-are like no moves she's ever seen. And with everything they care about on the line, they'll have to play to win ... or lose their hearts. Views: 19
From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian, a fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joyIn the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing.Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation:... Views: 19
