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Connor broke the seal and opened the psychic doorway in his mind. Now he needs to lock it again before something wanders through it looking for him.Connor True broke the seal on the psychic doorway in his mind. With this doorway Connor can see anywhere and any time he wishes. He can also see into the Afterlife, only it's not just the dead that walk the astral plane. There are other terrifying creatures lurking in the shadows, waiting for us and the last time Connor opened his doorway he found something looking back at him. Views: 789
For his first book, The Know-It-All, A. J. Jacobs read the entire Encyclopædia Britannica from cover to cover in a quest to learn everything in the world. In The Year of Living Biblically, he followed every single rule of the Bible -- from the Ten Commandments right on down to stoning adulterers.
Now comes a collection of his most hilarious and thought-provoking experiments yet. In his role as human guinea pig, Jacobs fearlessly takes on a series of life-altering challenges that provides readers with equal parts insight and humor. (And which drives A.J.'s patient wife, Julie, to the brink of insanity.)
Among the many adventures:
• He outsources his life. A.J. hires a team of people in Bangalore, India, to take care of everything in his life from answering his e-mails to arguing with his spouse.
• He spends a month practicing Radical Honesty -- a movement that encourages us to remove the filters between our brains and mouths. (To give you an idea of what happened, the name of the chapter is "I Think You're Fat.")
• He goes to the Academy Awards disguised as a movie star to understand the strange and warping effects of fame.
• He commits himself to ultimate rationality, using cutting-edge science to make the best decisions possible. It changes the way he makes choices big and small, from what to buy at the grocery store to how to talk to his kids. And his revelations will change how you make decisions, too.
• He attempts to follow George Washington's rules of life, uncovering surprising truths about leadership and politics in the twenty-first century. He also spends a lot of time bowing and doffing his hat.
• And then there's the month when he followed his wife's every whim -- foot massages, Kate Hudson movies, and all. Depending on your point of view, it's either the best or worst idea in the history of American marriage.
A mix of Bill Bryson, George Plimpton, and Malcolm Gladwell, A.J. explores the big issues of our time -- happiness, dating, morality, marriage -- by immersing himself in eye-opening situations. You'll be entertained by these stories -- some of which are new, some of which had their start in Esquire magazine. But you'll also learn to look at life in new ways.
The Guinea Pig Diaries is a book packed with both laughs and enlightenment -- and that's a promise we can make with Radical Honesty. Views: 788
Fifteen-year-old Camilla Dickinson has led a sheltered life on the Upper East Side with her architect father and stunningly beautiful mother. But this winter the security she has always known has vanished, because her parents’ marriage is coming apart – and Camilla is caught in the middle. She finds a way to escape her troubles when she meets Frank, her best friend’s brother, who is someone she can really talk to about life, death, God, and her dream of becoming an astronomer. When Frank introduces her to the important people in his life, who are so different from anyone she has met before, he opens her eyes to worlds beyond her own, almost as if he were a telescope helping her to see the stars.
This novel, one of the author’s earliest, is the story of a girl who, with the help of her first love, leaves childhood behind and enters adulthood with a newfound sense of self and inner strength. Views: 787
On a New England campus, Viennese housewife Utchka and her aspiring writer husband live a rather placid life with their two children.Until, that is, they meet Severin Winter, Professor of German and wrestling coach, and his delicate wife Edith at a faculty party. Utchka and Severin are rather taken with one another, and, conveniently, their spouses appear to be similarly smitten.A bizarre ménage à quatre is the result of these convoluted desires, and what starts out as a bit of fun is soon subject to the darker machinations of obsession,.. Views: 785
Enjoy this free sampler of 8 short-short romance stories by J. Timothy King.Character author J. Timothy King's short-short romance sampler contains the following 8 stories:* "Pine," a coming of age romance;* "A Penchant for Cotton," a psychological romance;* "Only the Lonely," alone in a crowded room;* "Dead, Long Dead," a zombi-character romance;* "Of Death and Smiles," about marriage and happiness;* "The Woman Who Loved Men," a twisted concept;* "The Confidant of Jericho," based on the story of Rahab;* "The Nitpicker's Guide to Magnum, P.I.," an interesting date. Views: 783
Lhind has been on the run all her life.
Stealing what she needs, using magic for disguise, she never stays anywhere long. Lhind even has secrets from herself, for she has few memories, and those are troubling.
But life is good until she gets caught by Rajanas the warrior-prince, Thianra the bard, and Hlanan the scribe. And that's when adventure begins, because someone very powerful wants them all dead.
As they evade pursuit and work to uncover their enemies, Lhind struggles with the invisible bonds of friendship and trust, while Hlanan begins uncovering her secrets one by one.
Then she finds that he has secrets, too.
This fantasy with a dash of romance takes place in the same world as A Posse of Princesses and the Wren series. Views: 783
July 20, 1894. The German military attaché in Paris receives a visit from a seedy-looking man who claims to be a French army officer in desperate need of money, offering to sell them military secrets.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a rising star in the French artillery command. Reserved yet intelligent and ambitious, Dreyfus had everything: a family, money, and a clear path to a prestigious post on the General Staff. However, Dreyfus had enemies as a result of his ambition. Many of them came from the impoverished Catholic aristocracy and disliked Dreyfus because he was rich, bourgeois, and, above all, a Jew.
On the basis of flimsy evidence, Dreyfus was placed under arrest for the crime of high treason. Not long afterward, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on the legendary, lethal Devil's Island. The saga of Dreyfus's many trials-he was not exonerated until 1906, twelve years after first being arrested-the fight to free him, and the intrigues on both sides, is a fast-moving mystery story rife with heroes and villains, loose women, loyal wives, bisexual men, tricksters, and charlatans. But this was no mere sideshow. The anti-Semitism and deceit on display in the Dreyfus case was an ominous prelude to the Holocaust and the long, bloody twentieth century to come.
In an era when religious conflict, fierce patriotism, and charged debates over national identity pervade the public sphere, the scandal of Captain Dreyfus still has much to teach us. In the hands of prizewinning novelist, biographer, and narrative historian Piers Paul Read, this real-life morality tale comes alive for a new generation. Using his storytelling skills and a nuanced, deep knowledge of French history, Read rediscovers l'affaire Dreyfus as a rich, riveting tale. Views: 782
Warrior of the Light: A Manual is an inspirational companion to The Alchemist, an international bestseller that has beguiled millions of readers around the world. Every short passage invites us to live out our dreams, to embrace the uncertainty of life, and to rise to our own unique destiny. In his inimitable style, Paulo Coelho helps bring out the Warrior of the Light within each of us. He also shows readers how to embark upon the way of the Warrior: the one who appreciates the miracle of being alive, the one who accepts failure, and the one whose quest leads him to become the person he wants to be.
Paulo Coelho is one of the most beloved storytellers of our time. Now, in the long-awaited companion to his first novel, Coelho presents a collection of philosophical stories that will delight and guide seekers everywhere. Views: 778
An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in Penguin Modern Classics.
In 1929 Robert Graves went to live abroad permanently, vowing 'never to make England my home again'. This is his superb account of his life up until that 'bitter leave-taking': from his childhood and desperately unhappy school days at Charterhouse, to his time serving as a young officer in the First World War that was to haunt him throughout his life. It also contains memorable encounters with fellow writers and poets, including Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy, and covers his increasingly unhappy marriage to Nancy Nicholson. Goodbye to All That, with its vivid, harrowing descriptions of the Western Front, is a classic war document, and also has immense value as one of the most candid self-portraits of an artist ever written.
Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985) was a British poet, novelist, and critic. He is best known for the historical novel I, Claudius and the critical study of myth and poetry The White Goddess. His autobiography, Goodbye to All That, was published in 1929, quickly establishing itself as a modern classic. Graves also translated Apuleius, Lucan and Suetonius for the Penguin Classics, and compiled the first modern dictionary of Greek Mythology, The Greek Myths. His translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (with Omar Ali-Shah) is also published in Penguin Classics. Views: 777
In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Pablo Neruda's birth, New Directions is pleased to announce the reissue of a classic work in a timeless translation by Donald D. Walsh and fully bilingual. Residence on Earth is perhaps Neruda's greatest work. Upon its publication in 1973, this bilingual publication instantly became "a revolution... a classic by which masterpieces are judged" (Review). "In Residence on Earth," wrote Amado Alonso, "the tornado of fury will no longer pass without lingering, because it will be identified with [Neruda's] heart." Views: 776
For the first time in paperback--a volume of thirty-seven diabolically inventive stories, fables, and "impossible interviews" from one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, displaying the full breadth of his vision and wit. Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition. Views: 776
A Tramp Abroad is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris (a character created for the book, and based on his closest friend, Joseph Twichell), through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms of transport as they traverse the continent. The book is the third of Mark Twain\'s five travel books and is often thought to be an unofficial sequel to the first one, The Innocents Abroad. As the two men make their way through Germany, the Alps, and Italy, they encounter situations made all the more humorous by their reactions to them. The narrator (Twain) plays the part of the American tourist of the time, believing that he understands all that he sees, but in reality understanding none of it. Views: 775
First published in 1963, James A. Michener’s gripping chronicle of the social and political landscape of Afghanistan is more relevant now than ever. Combining fact with riveting adventure and intrigue, Michener follows a military man tasked, in the years after World War II, with a dangerous assignment: finding and returning a young American woman living in Afghanistan to her distraught family after she suddenly and mysteriously disappears. A timeless tale of love and emotional drama set against the backdrop of one of the most important countries in the world today, Caravans captures the tension of the postwar period, the sweep of Afghanistan’s remarkable history, and the inescapable allure of the past.
Praise for Caravans
“Brilliant . . . an extraordinary novel . . . The old nomadic trails across the mountains spring into existence.”—The New York Times
“Romantic and adventurous . . . [Michener] has a wonderful empathy for the wild and free and an understanding of the reasons behind the kind of cruelty that goes with it.”—Newsday
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“Michener has done for Afghanistan what . . . his first [book] did for the South Pacific.”—*The New York Herald Tribune Views: 773
BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from John Irving's *In One Person.*
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Until I Find You** is the story of the actor Jack Burns – his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.
When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.”
Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.
Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of.
Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force.
A melancholy tale of deception, **Until I Find You*** *is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life’s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving’s great novels, and restates the author’ s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today. Views: 772
