My Last Empress

A sweeping story of passion and obsession, set against the upheavals of 19th-century imperial China, by the New York Times bestselling author Da ChenWhen Samuel Pickens' great love tragically loses her life, Samuel travels the globe, Annabelle always on his mind. Eventually, he comes face to face with the mirror image of his obsession in the last place he would expect, and must discover her secrets and decide how far he will go for a woman he loves.    Da Chen immerses the reader in the world of the Chinese imperial palace, filled with ghosts and grief, where bewitching concubines, treacherous eunuchs, and fierce warlords battle for supremacy. Da takes us deeply into an epic saga of 19th century China, where one man searches for his destiny and a forbidden love.
Views: 82

Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea

In the fourth volume of the acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill brings his characteristic wit and style to a fascinating tour of ancient Greece. The Greeks invented everything from Western warfare to mystical prayer, from logic to statecraft. Many of their achievements, particularly in art and philosophy, are widely celebrated; other important innovations and accomplishments, however, are unknown or underappreciated. In Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill explores the legacy, good and bad, of the ancient Greeks. From the origins of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European tribes into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, to the formation of the city-states, to the birth of Western literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, art, and architecture, Cahill makes the distant past relevant to the present. Greek society is one of the two primeval influences on the Western world: While Jews gave us our value system, the Greeks set...
Views: 81

For the Love of Money

"Those who create for the love of art areconsistently getting better. But those whocreate for the love of money, those guysare forever getting worse." Tracy Ellison, the sizzling heroine of the bestselling Flyy Girl, returns in this razor-sharp sequel from acclaimed author Omar Tyree. From hard-knocks Philly all the way to glamorous Hollywood, Tracy Ellison has truly walked the walk. Now twenty-eight years old and a major movie star, Omar Tyree's uncompromising Flyy Girl is returning to her East Coast roots. As Tracy drops in to reconnect with friends, she seems on the brink of a happily-ever-after existence, armed as she is with over-the-top beauty, unstoppable attitude, and new mountains of cash. But is attaining success and happiness really as simple as Tracy makes it look? As she begins to address the uncertainties of her youth, Tracy's homecoming stirs up a string of difficult questions about past loves, ambivalent family...
Views: 80

Capital City

Life is supposed to be easy and carefree when you are young, but if you live in Washington D.C., that's not always the case. Flashing back to the 1990s, readers enter the lives of four black men looking to gain money, power, and respect. These four brothas come from different walks of life, but they have one thing in common: they are trying to make fast money in the harsh inner city. However, when the money comes too easily there's usually a price attached...the ultimate price.
Views: 78

A Scots Quair

Edited and introduced by Tom Crawford.'It would be impossible to overestimate Lewis Grassic Gibbon's importance . . . A Scots Quair is a landmark work; it permeates the Scottish literary consciousness and colours all subsequent writing of its kind.' David Kerr CameronChris Guthrie, torn between her love of the land and her desire to escape the narrow horizons of a peasant culture, is the thread that links these three works. In them, Gibbon interweaves the personal joys and sorrows of Chris' life with the greater historical and political events of the time.Sunset Song, the first and most celebrated book of the trilogy, covers the early years of the twentieth century, including the First World War. Chris survives, with her son Ewan, but the tragedy has struck and her wild spirit subdued. In Cloud Howe, as the minister's wife, Chris learns to love again, and we witness the cruel gossip and high comedy of small village life until, once again, Chris suffers a terrible loss....
Views: 78

Platinum Persuasion

From the day Layani Cherise Bell fell from between her mother's legs, the world was betting against her. Born four months premature, the doctors didn't expect her to make it, but she did. At the age of six, Layani was diagnosed with leukemia. Again, the doctors gave her a death sentence, but she survived. As if that weren't enough, at the ripe age of thirteen, she lost mother and father in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. With no family willing to step up and care for her, she was put into foster care. Alone and afraid, Layani befriends and later falls in love with Micah Jones, another kid forced into the system after tragedy strikes his family. Not one to cry over spilled milk, Micah passes his time away in foster care by making beats for local artists and daydreaming about becoming a super producer. After hearing Layani sing better than some of the greats, he devotes all his time and energy into making her a star. With hard work, dedication, and his...
Views: 78

All Our Shimmering Skies

The new novel from the bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger's daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. Run, Molly, run, says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia's wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber's coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run. All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and...
Views: 73

Life on Sandpaper

A whirlwind of art, music, and lust, Life on Sandpaper is Yoram Kaniuk's overwhelming autobiographical novel detailing his years as a young painter in the New York of the '50s. Wounded and alienated, a war veteran at the age of nineteen, Kaniuk arrives in Greenwich Village at its peak period of artistic creativity, and finds his way among such giants as Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Willem de Kooning, and Frank Sinatra. In terse prose, inspired by the associative and breathless drive of bebop, Kaniuk's memories race between the ecstatic devotion of his beloved Harlem jazz clubs, through the ideological spats of the dying Yiddish world of the Lower East Side, to the volcanic gush of passion, pain, art, dance, alcohol, and drugs that was Greenwich Village. Kaniuk's stories roll and tumble here with hypnotic urgency, as if this were his last opportunity to remember, and tell, before all is obliterated.
Views: 73

Pushing Pause

Fifteen-year-old Kenisha Lewis has it all: good friends who also live to dance, a hot boyfriend headed for the NBA, loving parents and a bling-filled home in the burbs.But all that changes when her dad drops a bomb: he wants a divorce--and his pregnant girlfriend is moving in. Suddenly, Kenisha and her mom are squeezed into her grandmother's small house in the city, and Kenisha's sharing a bedroom with a cousin she barely knows. Could she hate her life any more? Yeah. Because her boyfriend dumps her, her friends are acting weird and her mother is getting more and more depressed. Time for Kenisha to push the pause button on her life and take a long, deep breath...
Views: 73

Sold to the Biker: A Dark MC Romance

A young woman gets sold to a biker in exchange for her father's life... Weakness. Hot, dominant Rocko can't stand it. But how can he resist the piece of sweet cherry pie who offers herself as an alternative to pummeling her gambling father’s ass? When Lena meets Rocko, a fire ignites between her legs. The rugged, tattooed, muscled biker is too damn delicious...and the sex? Explosive. All it took was one stolen kiss…and Lena was addicted. But when she discovers that Rocko’s life is on the line, will he trust her or push her away? Lena and Rocko face the most important question of their lives—will they embrace danger for love? Note: Sold to the Biker is 31k of sexy, passionate romance between a hot biker and an innocent young woman. It features 1 exclusive 50k bonus biker romance novella, Biker Outlaw's Virgin Princess!
Views: 72

No God in Sight

Fast -- paced and innovative, No God in Sight captures the seething multiplicity of Bombay through the first -- person accounts of an abortionist, a convert, a pregnant refugee, a gangster in hiding, a butcher, and an apathetic CEO, among others.As the reader is hurtled from monologue to short story to anecdote, disparate lives collide in tantalizing ways. A family flees religious persecution in their village to take refuge in an urban slum; women walk the tightrope of free will and dormant violence; a father and son grant each other the relief of estrangement; and young men and women struggle to comprehend the consequences of sexual attraction. Insightful, ironic, and scathingly honest, No God in Sight is a brilliant debut by a talented young writer.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Views: 72