What if you came back from the dead,came back to life.What would you do?What really makes one human, is it a fact of birth, the right of passage that is growing up, is it societies' influence on young impressionable minds, or is it something else? Is Humanity and all that goes with it in fact programmed into our DNA?These are questions that have plagued Shiva all her life. For most people, for Normal people, these are questions with easy answers, after all they were born human, raised human, and have always been 'Human'. But Shiva is not 'Normal', she might not in fact be 'Human'. She is or perhaps was a Weapon, she was created as a weapon, trained to be a weapon, and she sees the world as a weapon. But all that changes one day when she meets a girl and for the very first time, she feels something that defies all logic and all reason. Can a weapon fall in love, or this something reserved only for those who are humans?But there are those in her world who have never doubted these answers, to them she is a powerful tool created for a war not yet fought, and they cannot allow that tool to slip from their grasp. So from the shadows they strike at the very thing that threatens to take that weapon from their grasp, that person who might be the key to unlocking the heart within the weapon. Views: 403
On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in the blink of an eye. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men — college boys, day workers, immigrants from mining camps — to fight the fire. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.
Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force. Equally dramatic is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by and preserved for every citizen. The robber barons fought Roosevelt and Pinchot’s rangers, but the Big Burn saved the forests even as it destroyed them: the heroism shown by the rangers turned public opinion permanently in their favor and became the creation myth that drove the Forest Service, with consequences still felt in the way our national lands are protected — or not — today. Views: 400
Vertigo, W. G. Sebald's first novel, never before translated into English, is perhaps his most amazing and certainly his most alarming. Sebald—the acknowledged master of memory's uncanniness—takes the painful pleasures of unknowability to new intensities in Vertigo.
Here in their first flowering are the signature elements of Sebald's hugely acclaimed novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is again our guide on a hair-raising journey through the past and across Europe, amid restless literary ghosts—Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova. In four dizzying sections, the narrator plunges the reader into vertigo, into that "swimming of the head," as Webster's defines it: in other words, into that state so unsettling, so fascinating, and so "stunning and strange," as The New York Times Book Review declared about The Emigrants, that it is "like a dream you want to last forever." Views: 397
A brand new young fiction series by TV broadcaster and intrepid explorer Ben Fogle, inspired by his real-life animal experiences... Co-written with best-selling children's author Steve Cole. When Mr Dog meets a reckless young wildcat called Angus in the woods he soon makes an important discovery – a whole group of exotic animals are being held in captivity. Mr Dog wants to help them – but will Angus charge in and turn a rescue into a kitten catastrophe? Views: 395
How a lone man's epic obsession led to one of America's greatest cultural treasures: Prize-winning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history -- and the driven, brilliant man who made them.
Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared.
An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. It took tremendous perseverance - ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Eventually Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs, preserved 10,000 audio recordings, and is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian.
His most powerful backer was Theodore Roosevelt, and his patron was J. P. Morgan. Despite the friends in high places, he was always broke and often disparaged as an upstart in pursuit of an impossible dream. He completed his masterwork in 1930, when he published the last of the twenty volumes. A nation in the grips of the Depression ignored it. But today rare Curtis photogravures bring high prices at auction, and he is hailed as a visionary. In the end he fulfilled his promise: He made the Indians live forever. Views: 393
In the village of Child Okeford a ‘Bull’ or 'Ooser' used to show up uninvited at Christmas festivities, causing mayhem. One guest at his manor's annual ball sees an opportunity to make a good match for his daughter. He pays the Ooser to carry her off. Rescued by her otherwise timid suitor, the girl's future is assured. *The Plain Text version cannot display the photo of the Ooser in this tale.Nineteen-year old CeCe Mackenzie leaves Virginia for Nashville with not much more to her name than a guitar, a Walker Hound named Hank Junior and an old car she'd inherited from her grandma called Gertrude.But Gertrude ends up on the side of I-40 in flames, and Nashville has never seemed farther away.Help arrives in the form of two Georgia football players headed for the Nashville dream as well. When Holden Ashford and Thomas Franklin stop to offer CeCe and Hank Junior a ride, fate may just give a nod to serendipity and meant to be. Views: 391
I held onto the bars of the truck and howled to my dogs as they fell further and further behind. Sunrise, Brutus, Zip, Nosey and Tiny all ran as hard as they could, but there was no way they could keep up...After four years alone in the wild, Gwen is overjoyed to see another person.But when she is thrown into the back of a van and stolen away to a prison camp, things don't look good.How will her pack find her? Where is her human family? Will the other kids in the camp be friends or enemies?Luckily, Eagle is fast, the dogs are brave, and bars and fences are no match for the one and only Wolf Girl! Views: 391
HardPress Classic Books SeriesHardPress Classic Books Series Views: 390
Passion, conflict and infidelity are vividly depicted in this gripping tale of two people and their marriage. Set against the glittering background of glamorous high life in South Africa, New York and Barbados, an idealistic young writer tastes the corrupting fruits of success, while his beautiful, ambitious wife begins to doubt her former values. A complete reversal of their opposing beliefs forms the bedrock of unremitting conflict. Can their passion survive the coming storm...? Views: 389
Turig, a Bronze Age farmer, tells his grandson how he had been drafted for labor service decades before. The work was long and dangerous but his supervisor’s flirtatious daughter presented the larger threat. Two years later, Turig helped lift the last sarsen stone onto a structure we know as Stonehenge. [PS: New research revises this date by a full millennium, from 3,600 to 4,600 years ago.]Sometimes a murder is just a murder, but this time it is a child. It looks like Voodoo. T.K. Fleming wants nothing to do with it. He's retired English professor living on his boat in Key West and trying to make some things go away. But he has no choice. Surrounded by interesting, and sometimes strange,friends, he launches into a investigation. The results lead him to places he doesn't want to go. But like it or not, he is the Ghostcatcher. Views: 388
Mary Ann McDonell's poetry offers humor and insight as it shares scenes of New York and shares her experience with aging and widowhood.Samantha Stone never had chance to really mature into a beautiful woman because of her looks that she was born in the eyes of a man’s world. Samantha’s beauty was not earth shattering even though her mother said she was beautiful just the way she is. Samantha stood six feet tall with matted hair and brown eyes. It’s a shame her hopes and dreams of becoming a model someday would be shattered before she fully grown up as a woman. Every man that gazed upon her was not in a respectful way. After years of disappointing relationships Samantha snapped and decided these lustful dogs would pay dearly for not treating her as any woman would want to be treated.Samantha always confided in her best friend Sarah to help her get through her rough times. One night as Samantha was crying on Sarah’s shoulder Sarah chimed in and said “I’m sick and tired of the way these dogs (men) are treating you, so being the friend that I am who loves and cares about you, I want you to call this woman who can help you. Her name is Gilda and yes she is a Witch, but if any one person in this world can help you she can. Yes, I too said the same thing about why would I call upon a Witch to solve my problems. I feel like I can conquer anything that stands in my way thanks to Gilda the Witch, so please give her a call?” “Thank you so much Sarah, you are a true friend and don’t worry you have my promise that I will call her in the morning,” said Samantha in a confident voice.Morning came and Samantha contacted Gilda by phone to seek revenge on her tormentors. Views: 383
These stories are fiction. I do have a granddaughter named Emily who inspired them and if there were a young girl with super powers, it would be Emily. Just the name exudes power.You don’t have to be eight-years-old to enjoy a book about an eight-year-old. Parents, aunts, uncles, everyone, dig in and enjoy these adventures. If you and your Emily enjoy them at the same time so much the better.The following stories are fiction. I do have a grand daughter named Emily who inspired these stories while visiting one summer. But, there is no real Emily with super powers except in the minds of Grandparents everywhere.If there were a young girl with super powers, it would be Emily. Just the name exudes power.I invite you to sit back, suspend reality for a few moments and enter the life of an eight-year-old super hero:Super Emily.You don’t have to be eight-years-old to take pleasure in a book about an eight-year-old. Parents, aunts, uncles, everyone, dig in and enjoy these adventures. If you and your Emily enjoy them at the same time—you reading to her, her reading to you—so much the better.Start reading. Views: 382
This trilogy spanning World War II, based in part on Evelyn Waugh's own experiences as an army officer, is the author's surpassing achievement as a novelist. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war overwhelming. Though often somber, Sword of Honor is also a brilliant comedy, peopled by the fantastic figures so familiar from Waugh's early satires. The deepest pleasures these novels afford come from observing a great satiric writer employ his gifts with extraordinary subtlety, delicacy, and human feeling, for purposes that are ultimately anything but satiric. Views: 380
A young man, already down on his luck, experiences a series of strange and mysterious events which escalate into a telling trauma.A short story. A "branch" off of The Roots of Evil.A short story. A "branch" off of The Roots of Evil. A young man, already down on his luck, experiences a series of strange and mysterious events which escalate into a telling trauma. Views: 380
