Ali’s latest creative pursuit, a self-portrait, takes her on an erotic, liberating journey, as she poses naked in front of her condo’s window to please a voyeur looking on from a building across the way.Hailed as “remarkable and uplifting” by The Globe and Mail and published to equally glowing acclaim around the world, Barbara Gowdy’s groundbreaking collection of stories, We So Seldom Look on Love, pushes past the limits of convention into lives that are fantastic and heartbreakingly real.HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library. Views: 33
SAMMY is a football crazy rescue puppy.MOUSER is a fearless black and white tomcat.Together they make an unlikely pair that won't be parted, not even by the First World War.As the war rages in Europe, Londoners are sending brave animals to help the soldiers - and Mouser and Sammy are soon on their way to the trenches. Boldly criss-crossing no-man's land they make new friends of every nationality - and reunite with old ones. But on the muddy front line, under fire and constantly in danger, will their friendship be enough to save them so they can return home together? 'If you love Michael Morpurgo, you will enjoy this' Express 'A moving tale told with warmth, kindliness and lashings of good sense that lovers of Dick King-Smith will especially appreciate' The Times'Every now and then a writer comes along with a... Views: 32
Trouble in Triplicate (Loveswept, #142)Caine Saxon had to wonder: if good things came in threes, could the delightful Post triplets be too much of a good thing? His brother had been engaged to one until a furious argument broke it off now his own head was spinning over Juliet Post, who'd denounced him with loyal anger as one of those Saxon men. Denying an attraction that couldn't have burned more brightly, Caine and Juliet decided to call a truce, conspiring to bring their loved ones back together But swiftly the plot thickened, and the pair of schemers found themselves trapped in their own romantic plan. On a stormy night at a cozy country inn, they faced the breathless truth-they'd found the kind of loving trouble no one could escape... Views: 32
Zoe is SO excited when Great Uncle Horace brings THREE gorgeous sea otter pups to live at the Rescue Zoo! The orphaned pups are very fluffy and cheeky - and the youngest pup, Sasha, is the cheekiest and fluffiest of all. Zoe uses her special skills to talk to the otters and gets to know them all very well. But Sasha feels sad when her older, more confident, siblings are chosen to take part in a special otter display. Can Zoe and Meep persuade Sasha the scruffy sea otter not to give up and to bring her own special skills to the show? Views: 32
A thrilling journey into the minds of African elephants as they struggle to survive. If, as many recent nonfiction bestsellers have revealed, animals possess emotions and awareness, they must also have stories. In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that yet illuminates our own. For years, young Mud and her family have roamed the high grasses, swamps, and deserts of the sub-Sahara. Now the earth is scorched by drought, and the mutilated bodies of family and friends lie scattered on the ground, shot down by ivory hunters. Nothing-not the once familiar terrain, or the age-old rhythms of life, or even memory itself-seems reliable anymore. Yet a slim prophecy of hope is passed on from water hole to water hole: the sacred white bone of legend will point the elephants toward the Safe Place. And so begins a quest through Africa's vast and perilous plains-until at last the survivors face a decisive trial of loyalty and courage. In The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy performs a feat of imagination virtually unparalleled in modern fiction. Plunged into an alien landscape, we orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness and begin to feel, as Gowdy puts it, "what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory."Amazon.com ReviewBarbara Gowdy has an utter affinity for the unconventional. In the title story of We So Seldom Look on Love, necrophilia is exquisite rather than execrable, and her wildly funny--and wildly affecting--novel Mister Sandman invites us into the hearts and minds of Toronto's least normal and most loving family. With The White Bone Gowdy continues her exploration of extraordinary lives, but this time human beings ("hindleggers") are on the periphery. And we're grateful when they're not around, since this gives her four-legged characters--elephants--a chance to survive.The White Bone opens with five family trees. Gowdy's pachyderms include an orphaned visionary, She-Spurns (more familiarly known as Mud), and the "fine-scenter" She-Deflates, not to mention nurse cow She-Soothes and the bull Tall Time. (Though Gowdy's nomenclature may displease some readers, Dumbo wasn't exactly an inspiring name either.) Then, before her tragic narrative even begins, Gowdy offers a second feat of empathy and imagination, a glossary of elephant language. Afflicted by premonitions and obsessed with memory and safety, these animals have terms that range from the formal to the low, the metaphorical to the deeply physical: the "Eternal Shoreless Water" is oblivion, a "sting" is a bullet, and a "flow-stick" a snake. Of course, if you have "trunk," you possess "soulfulness; depth of spirit"--something every participant in Gowdy's fourth novel desperately needs. Initially, her characters' impressions of familiar objects are amusing, but bright comedy precedes dark tragedy. Witness Mud's take on jeeps: "On their own, vehicles prefer to sleep, but whenever a human burrows inside them they race and roar and discharge a foul odour." Needless to say, such speeding tends to precede a killing fest. Alas, this is a book heavy with omens and slaughter, and Gowdy makes each elephant so individual, so conscious, that their separate fates are impossible to bear. When Tall Time, for instance, hears a helicopter, nothing, not even Gowdy's poetry, can save him: "The shots that pelt his hide feel as light as rain. It is bewildering to be brought down under their little weight." As the devastation increases, and her characters fail, and fail again, to find the magical white bone that should lead them to safety, the novel becomes a litany of pain and death. The only success is Barbara Gowdy's, in getting so thoroughly under the skin of her elephantine protagonists. --Kerry FriedFrom Publishers WeeklyGowdy, the prodigiously talented Canadian author who caused a stir with Mister Sandman and We So Seldom Look on Love, writes with such immediacy and vigor that she can take a reader almost anywhere. In this novel, however, she has chosen to inhabit the minds of a series of elephants in African desert country, and despite her great skill and the colossal effort of imaginative empathy it must have entailed, her book is hard going. For a start, as in one of those vast generational sagas, there are endless family trees to sort out, and since the elephant families are whimsically named, always after the matriarchal leaders (the She-S's, the She-B's-And-B's, etc.), the relationships are difficult to come to grips with. The book is a series of quests, carried out against the fierce odds of a frightful drought and the occasional murderous intervention of ivory-seeking "hind-leggers." Little Mud, who has visions, is crippled and seeking her family; Date Bed, a "mind talker" shot in an ambush and given up for dead, is being sought by her family; all are seeking the Safe Place, a sort of elephant heaven that is located by throwing the iconic White Bone so that it points in the right direction. There is a great deal of interesting elephant lore, about the nature of their fabulous memory, their scenting and tracking skills, their eating, drinking and fornicating habits. Without being overly anthropomorphic, Gowdy manages to individualize a number of them as having human-scale emotions, even humor; and they have religious songs (lauding the She) that sound wonderfully like Victorian hymns. But despite her skillsAperhaps even because of themAthe reader is disappointed that so talented a writer could have exerted so much effort on so unpromising a subject. 50,000 first printing; BOMC selection; author tour. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 31
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.About the AuthorJames Oliver Curwood lived most of his life in Owosso, Michigan, where he was born on June 12, 1878. His first novel was "The Courage of Captain Plum" (1908) and he published one or two novels each year thereafter, until his death on August 13, 1927. Owosso residents honor his name to this day, and Curwood Castle (built in 1922) is the town's main tourist attraction. During the 1920s Curwood became one of America's best selling and most highly paid authors. This was the decade of his lasting classics "The Valley of Silent Men" (1920) and "The Flaming Forest" (1921). He and his wife Ethel were outdoors fanatics and active conservationists. Views: 31
When Great-Uncle Horace brings back lost and homeless animals from his travels around the globe, it falls to Zoe, and her mum the zoo vet, to settle them into their new home. She's good at this, because she can understand what they say and talk to them, too. But that's a secret! In the sixth book in the series, zoe's very excited about some festive new arrivals. But the little snow leopard doesn't want to be a big brother. Can Zoe show him how lucky he is? Views: 31
Zoe loves living at her uncle's rescue zoo because there's always something exciting going on. And Zoe also has an amazing secret... She can actually TALK to the animals! Zoe is super-excited to welcome a new animal to the zoo - a sleepy sloth called Sabina. But the little sloth is behaving very strangely ... and it's up to Zoe to find out what's going on! Views: 30
From the internationally acclaimed author of The White Bone and The Romantic, a haunting and suspenseful novel of abduction and obsessive love Nine-year-old Rachel Fox has the face of an angel, a heart-stopping luminosity that strikes all who meet her. Her single mother, Celia, working at a video store by day and a piano bar by night, is not always around to shield her daughter from the attention—both benign and sinister—that her beauty draws. Attention from model agencies, for example, or from Ron, a small-appliance repairman who, having seen Rachel once, is driven to see her again and again.When a summer blackout plunges the city into darkness and confusion, Rachel is taken from her home. A full-scale search begins, but days pass with no solid clues, only a phone call Celia receives from a woman whose voice she has heard before but cannot place. And as Celia fights her terror and Rachel starts to trust in her abductor's kindness, the only other person who knows where she is wavers between loyalty to the captor and saving the child. Will Rachel be found before her abductor's urge to protect and cherish turns to something altogether less innocent?Tapping into the fear that lies just below the surface of contemporary city life, Barbara Gowdy draws on her trademark empathy and precision to create a portrait of love at its most consuming and ambiguous and to uncover the volatile point at which desire gives way to the unthinkable. Views: 29
Alfred Ollivant's Bob, Son of Battle is a classic tale from the borderlands between Scotland and England that has delighted generations of boys and girls. This rousing and moving tale of dogs and fathers and sons focuses on the rivalry between two sheepdogs and their masters and a boy who is caught in the middle. We see the legendary local competitions to determine the next champion sheepdog; we investigate the mystery of the dog who has gone rogue and is killing local sheep by night; we experience the life of the villages and enter a vividly evoked, sparsely populated landscape of moors, lakes, and streams. Above all, however, this is a moving human story about a difficult, embittered man, his troubled relationship with his son, and the love of his dog. As a girl, Lydia Davis, one of America's finest contemporary writers and translators, loved Bob, Son of Battle. In this new version, she has rendered the now obscure dialects in which the characters... Views: 29
