A light-hearted collection of stories and anecdotes from two vets working in the heartland.Peter Anderson and Peter Jerram have rounded up a selection of highly entertaining yarns about the animals, and owners, they've come across during their more than thirty years in practice together. Among these hard case and humorous tales are stories of a narrowly escaped attack from a lame bull, a tough pig hunter who fainted at the sight of a syringe, a young green vet confronted by a bull with a prolapsed prepuce, and chasing clients reluctant to cough up.These two Marlborough vets treat both large and small animals and Peter Anderson is known locally as the flying vet, visiting clients in the back country of Marlborough and North Canterbury. These glimpses into the reality of a rural vet's life are essential reading for animal lovers or anyone interested in stories from the heartland of New Zealand. Views: 60
In the style of Blake Nelson's cult favorite, Girl comes a brand-new story about the moments in life that change how you see everything and everyone you always thought you knew—including yourself.Every school has them: the cool kids. The insiders. Gavin Meeks is one of them. He lives an easy life of parties, girls, snowboarding adventures and whatever else comes his way. But when dark, dramatic Antoinette crash-lands at Evergreen High, the entire school feels the impact. Antoinette has seen things, been places, experienced deep tragedy first-hand. She's not just a rebel, she's a force of nature. Gavin, for one, is captivated and is soon pursuing interests he never knew he had. With a camera in hand, he finds a way to express his own truth, including his feelings for his favorite subject: Antoinette. It all leads to one passionate, life-altering night in this achingly authentic story from bestselling author Blake Nelson. Views: 60
An inspired collection of short stories by an all-star cast of best-selling storytellers based on the thought-provoking illustrations in Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.For more than twenty-five years, the illustrations in the extraordinary Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg have intrigued and entertained readers of all ages. Thousands of children have been inspired to weave their own stories to go with these enigmatic pictures. Now we've asked some of our very best storytellers to spin the tales. Enter The Chronicles of Harris Burdick to gather this incredible compendium of stories: mysterious, funny, creepy, poignant, these are tales you won't soon forget.This inspired collection of short stories features many remarkable, best-selling authors in the worlds of both adult and children's literature: Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Lois Lowry,... Views: 60
In a world where security cameras prove what you have done and databases define who you are, the few who know how to manipulate the technology can play God. They can change the future; they can alter the past. They can make big money, they can save the world, and they can get away with murder over and over again.
Danielle Leaf grew up believing she was safe. Now she knows she was wrong.
Award-winning author Jon Evans returns with a compulsive, fast-paced story that examines issues of Third World exploitation and the extreme edge of anti-capitalist activism. Invisible Armies is Cold War suspense for the modern age, a thriller that looks behind the power of protests and the politics of big business. Views: 60
RetailA championship basketball coach caught between his team, his family and the rabid partisans in his town. A traveling salesman consigned to a late-night bus ride. A prison inmate stripped of everything but his pride. A teenage runaway. Mismatched lovers. In his debut collection of short fiction, award-winning novelist Craig Lancaster (600 Hours of Edward, The Summer Son) returns to the terrain of his Montana home and takes on the notion of separation in its many forms - from comfort zones, from ideas,from people, from security, from fears. These ten stories delve into small towns and big cities, into love and despair, into what drives us and what scares us, peeling back the layers of our humanity with every page.From BooklistThe success of any short-story collection hinges on the author’s ability to create characters that immediately connect with readers. Lancaster (The Summer Son, 2011) excels on this point, ironically so because the inability to connect is his underlying theme. The stories, set in small towns along back roads, are populated with a sad-sack lot: an estranged father and son, a disgruntled newspaperman, miserable husbands and wives. Many of these individuals are actively engaged in running away from or toward something, the art of departure referenced in the title, often with no goal in mind other than to escape loneliness. On occasion, Lancaster, who has a gift for illuminating workaday life, relies on surprise twists to juice the plot or provide speedy resolution, as if he doesn’t quite trust the innate drama of everyday situations. He’s at his best in “Alyssa Alights,” a tale about a teenage runaway that unfolds honestly and organically. Though generally bleak in tone, Lancaster’s collection offers a glimmer of hope, concluding on a grace note with the aptly titled “Comfort and Joy.” --Patty Wetli Review"Have you ever felt in your pocket and found a twenty you didn't know you had; how 'bout a hundred dollar bill, or a Montecristo cigar or a 24-karat diamond? That's what reading Craig Lancaster's Quantum Physics and the Art of Departure is like--close and discovered treasures."--Craig Johnson, author of The Cold Dish and Hell is Empty "Craig Lancaster understands the human condition, all of it. The funny, the absurd and the fault-ridden awesomeness that is each and every one of us--or at least someone we know."--Megan Ault Regnerus, managing editor of Montana Quarterly"It's a real delight to inhabit Lancaster's lonely, darkly majestic Montana locations and desperate characters, a look at a slowly eroding 21st-century America that's as strong as many more well-known titles by major presses. It comes strongly recommended." - Chicago Center for Literature & Photography "While it is a literary work that deals with serious themes, there isn't an ounce of pretentiousness between the covers. It's absorbing, attention-grabbing, and well-written." - Gary Robson, owner of Red Lodge Books in Red Lodge, Montana. "Lancaster continues to weave together hope and hopelessness with his cast of haunting, unpredictable characters." - Montana State of the Arts newspaper Views: 60
The future's not so rosy for Lady Rose Summer ... Longing for a life of emancipation, Lady Rose Summer has abandoned the comforts of her parent's house to become self supporting. But life as a working woman isn't quite as liberating as Rose has imagined - fortunately for her, though, her drudgery comes to an end when old acquaintance Freddy Pomfret is murdered and her help - and upper class connections - are required by amateur sleuth Captain Harry Cathcart. So as Rose and Harry prepare to take on the usual Edwardian social rounds, little do they expect to uncover a devious blackmail plot and an unexpected killer. Views: 60
About the Story: Del Rey wrote the original (and much longer) version of this novella many years earlier, was unable to place it and only hauled it from the trunk when Horace Gold in mid-1950 solicited something for his new magazine. THE WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS is at least in conception a standard ASTOUNDING problem-solving story (interstellar matter transmitter is sabotaged; Earth and alien ports are in danger, resourceful engineer-protagonist figures out the solution) with a standard STARTLING STORIES subplot (engineer and his pretty female assistant are deeply attracted but he’s too dedicated to his job to get fresh). The premise however is ingenious - alien cultures intervene and as a result of this Earth is given the means for interstellar trade before the planet has even achieved space travel. Teleportation as an instrument of routine commerce (and profit) was a fairly original concept at the time this story was published. Del Rey’s altered culture is lived-in, letting the story act as a letter from the future. Gold wanted the story significantly cut and del Rey of course complied; in THE EARLY DEL REY he used the original version and appended some notes on the nature of Horace’s intervention. About the Author: Lester del Rey (1915-1993) was born Leonard Knapp (but this became known only long after his death), somewhere in the Midwest and after a spotty, abbreviated education and itinerant existence headed to New York where he became almost immediately a significant constituent of ASTOUNDING and John Campbell’s celebrated GOLDEN AGE. Del Rey sold his first story to John Campbell in the first months of Campbell’s editorship and over the next several years he sold him many more, including his female-android story HELEN O’LOY (1938), perhaps the first true science fiction romance and NERVES (1942, novelized in 1956), a brilliant novella of atomic pile disruption, amazingly prescient of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Del Rey’s apostosaic and profoundly controversial short novel FOR I AM A JEALOUS PEOPLE (1956), positing a malevolent Deity, is also very well known. Del Rey worked (at the same time as Damon Knight and James Blish) in the Scott Meredith Fee Department in the late 1940’s, edited science fiction magazines in the early 50’s, published some noted juveniles (THE RUNAWAY ROBOT) in the mid-fifties and eventually became the founding editor of Del Rey Books, a fantasy & science fiction imprint under the aegis of Ballantine. In collaboration with his third wife, Judy-Lynn, del Rey’s imprint became the most successful fantasy & science fiction publisher in history. The two of them nurtured fantasy writers like Stephen Donaldson, Anne McCaffrey and Terry Brooks to bestselling status. In 1991, del Rey was named a Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He died only a few months after his retirement from Ballantine. About The Galaxy Project: Horace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field. The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold. Views: 60
Zakes Mda is the most acclaimed South African writer of the independence era. His eight novels tell stories that venture far beyond the conventional narratives of a people's struggle against apartheid. In this memoir, he tells the story of a life that intersects with the political life of his country but that at its heart is the classic adventure story of an artist, lover, father, teacher, and bon vivant. Zanemvula Mda was born in 1948 into a family of lawyers and grew up in Soweto's ambitious educated black class. At age fifteen he crossed the Telle River from South Africa into Basutoland (Lesotho), exiled like his father, a "founding spirit" of the Pan Africanist Congress. Exile was hard, but it was just another chapter in Mda's coming-of-age. He served as an altar boy (and was preyed on by priests), flirted with shebeen girls, feared the racist Boers, read comic books alongside the literature of the PAC, fell for the music of Dvorák and Coltrane, wrote his... Views: 60
