Lost to You, the prequel to Take This Regret Views: 16
Caleb has always batted with the same wood bat — until the other team accuses Caleb of cheating by tampering with the bat! Now Caleb is forced to use the aluminum bat. How is he supposed to help his team win when he keeps striking out? Views: 16
Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, was nominated for a National Book Award and reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. Her second novel, even more ambitious and brilliant, is the riveting story of a young artist and the worlds she encounters in New York and Rome in the mid-1970s—by turns underground, elite, and dangerous.The year is 1975 and Reno—so-called because of the place of her birth—has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world—artists have colonized a deserted and industrial SoHo, are staging actions in the East Village, and are blurring the line between life and art. Reno meets a group of dreamers and raconteurs who submit her to a sentimental education of sorts. Ardent, vulnerable, and bold, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the seventies. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow. The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.Amazon.com ReviewGuest Review of “Flamethrowers”By Lauren GroffEvery so often, you’ll come across a book that burns so hot and bright it’ll sear a shadow on your vision. For a while afterwards, everything you look at will have the book’s imprint on it; your world will be colored in the book’s tones, and you will glimpse the book’s characters on the street and feel your heart knocking in your chest for a few blocks, as if you’d escaped a close call.This is how I felt after I read Rachel Kushner’s brilliant The Flamethrowers. The night I finished it, I dreamt of racing motorcycles across sun-shot salt-flats and of floating in glimmering Italian swimming pools. In the morning, I tried to describe the book to a friend but I eventually faltered into silence.This is a beautiful book, I finally said, a book full of truth, a book about art and motorcycle racing and radicalism, about innocence and speed and stepping up to a dangerous brink, a book very deeply about the late seventies in New York City and its powerful blend of grittiness and philosophical purity.Oh, said my friend. So. What is it about?I tried again. I said: It’s a love story, about a young artist under the sway of an older, established artist, scion of a motorcycle family, who betrays her, and she joins up with an underground group in Italy. It feels like a contemporary European novel, philosophical and intelligent, with an American heart and narrative drive, I said.Oh, said my friend.Just read the book, I said and my friend did, and loved it to speechlessness, as well. Wow, is all he could say when he returned the book to me.I don’t blame him. The truth is, this is a strange and mysterious novel, a subtle novel. Much of its power comes from the precision of Kushner’s language and how carefully she allows the flashes of perception to drive the narrative forward. See Reno, the offbeat narrator, describing ski racing to her lover, Sandro, saying, “Ski racing was drawing in time.” Suddenly you can see what she means, a body’s crisp slaloming down the white slope, the way the skier draws a perfect serpent down the clock.Or see Reno, racing her motorcycle: “Far ahead of me, the salt flats and mountains conspired into one puddled vortex. I began to feel the size of this place. Or perhaps I did not feel it, but the cycle, whose tires marked its size with each turn, did. I felt a tenderness for them, speeding along under me.” There is something deeply eerie happening under the words, something on the verge of tipping over and spilling out; and, at the same time, a gentleness and innocence at the core of all that noise and speed.Rachel Kushner is an unbelievably exciting writer, a writer of urgent and beautiful sentences and novels that are vast in their ambition and achievement. I finished it months ago, but The Flamethrowers—startling, radiant—still haunts me.From BookforumThe Flamethrowers is about machines (motorcylces and guns, but also cameras) and the way they revolutionized the last century (its politics and violence, but also its art). In Telex From Cuba, Kushner took up a particular historical episode unwinding in a certain place and presented it from multiple angles. In The Flamethrowers, she's more concerned with a set of ideas and how they move through time, and especially where they end up. —Christian Lorentzen Views: 16
The Space Brigade are relaxing after their spectacular triumph over Princess Petronella and her evil plans to destroy Earth, when they receive an intriguing letter. The planet of Shobble wants to employ their services. Should they accept this new mission? After all, the letter mentions grave danger. On the other hand, the people of Shobble are apparently the nicest in the galaxy. As leader of the Brigade, Nicola Berry puts it to the vote and the decision is made. It's time to unpack the spaceship for another intergalactic adventure!When the Space Brigade land on the planet of Shobble they soon discover this beautiful planet has a dark secret. Most of the population are virtually slaves, forced to mine for marshmallow and drill for chocolate (the ingredients of Shobble-Choc, the most divine chocolate in the galaxy). Led by a teenage girl called Topaz, the workers are beginning to rebel. The commander-in-chief wants the Space Brigade to squash the rebellion.At first Nicola... Views: 16
Emma Caine is pushing forty and life is hitting her hard. Her husband has been brain damaged, she's lost her job, and she might lose her home. Instead of giving up, Emma starts hitting back. Drawing on experiences from a misspent youth, she opens a dominationdungeon in an outbuilding in her garden and sets herself up as a dominatrix. Whipping, torturing and abusing the wealthy slaves who soon start lining up for her services is surprisingly easy for Emma, especially since she has no sexual contact with her clients. In fact, she believes them all to be sick perverts.The unthinkable happens when she falls in love with one of them—the disturbingly likeable Simon Nel. Fighting her emotions every step of the way, Emma finds herself drawn into a twisted and potentially doomed relationship that will force her to reconsider everything she thought she knew about love, sexuality and power. Views: 16
Follow the ongoing battles of Joint Special Operations Command (Zombie) Irregular Scout Team One as they continue to cover down on the ruins of New York City and then head out west. Contains additional stories contributed by fans and set in the Zombie Killers World. Views: 16
Billie and her friends have started a Secret Mystery Club! There's just one problem - they don't have any mysteries to solve. But then Billie thinks of the spooky house at the end of her street. She has always wondered who lives there. Is it a witch or a ghost? It's up to the SMC to find out! Views: 16
