Some call her nice, but most call her nasty . . .Diamond, the sassy vixen that you love to hate, is back, and she has a few more tricks up her sleeve. After Kemp's death, she quickly moves on and shacks up with his best friend, Black. Unfortunately, things aren't running as smoothly as they expected. Diamond is quickly losing control of the situation—and her emotions—after multiple attempts on her life by one of the victims she believed she'd killed. To make matters worse, people from her past keep popping up and causing a ruckus, including the father that walked out on her ten years earlier.When a fast-talking corner hustler named Money swoops in and becomes Black's partner, his soldiers become jealous. Black gets locked behind bars, and Money sets his plan in motion, seducing Diamond in an attempt to take Black's place.With all of the drama surrounding her, the "I Rule the World" disposition that got her where she is slowly breaks into a million pieces.... Views: 32
Age is just a number, and whoever said that full-figured women don't know how to bring fire to a relationship was sadly mistaken.Carl Weber brings together two popular Urban Books divas to give readers what they've been asking for: passionate, empowering stories about the lives and loves of big, beautiful women.Newly divorced, 40-year-old Desa Rae finds herself alone now that her son has gone away to college. She's taken to her bed, watching life pass her by—until Roc, a 24-year-old with a jaw-dropping body comes along. Desa Rae can't keep her eyes open or legs closed to a man who excites her like no other man has. But can she really be serious about a man who is almost the same age as her son?Avery Belmont is a diva in her own right. Smart, sassy, and successful, she has always had it going on;so much so that not only did the full-figured beauty catch the eye of Duke, the sexiest dude on the block, but she encouraged him to leave the dope game and become legit.... Views: 31
Warm up with these sweet and sexy holiday tales of love and romance... SEALED WITH A KISS Celeste O. Norfleet Small town bad boy Dean Everett has made good in the tech world and now struggling Hayden, Georgia, is ready to welcome him home--along with his corporate headquarters. But Carmen Stiles is less than happy to see him. Dean had no idea he broke her heart when he left town after high school. Now he plans to make up for it--and as old friendship stirs new passion, Carmen just might let him--until she suspects he has no intention of really making things right for Hayden, or for her.... MISTLETOE LANE Regina Hart Benjamin Brooks's marriage ended when he learned his wife was having an affair--with his boss. Now he's returned to Trinity Falls to start a new job--and ignore Christmas. Too bad his new employee, June Cale, won't let him. June knows all about bitterness, and she's determined to help Ben heal--through embracing... Views: 31
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
Understanding North Korean Through the Eyes of Defectors. The weekly column Ask A North Korean, published by NK News, invites readers from around the world to pose questions to North Korean defectors. By way of these fascinating interviews, the North Koreans themselves provide authentic firsthand testimonies about what is happening inside the "Hermit Kingdom." North Korean contributors to this book include: "Seong" who came to South Korea after dropping out during his final year of his university. He is now training to be an elementary school teacher. "Kang" who left North Korea in 2005. He now lives in London, England. "Cheol" who was from South Hamgyeong in North Korea and is now a second-year university student in Seoul. "Park" worked and studied in Pyongyang before defecting to the U.S. in 2011. He is now studying at a U.S. college.Ask A North Korean sheds critical light on all aspects of North... Views: 31
A powerful and gripping novel that sweeps the reader from modern-day Britain to the Punjab in the 1960s and back again in a ceaseless cycle of tragedy and conflict.1950s Punjab - a secret affair goes terribly wrong and the bride commits suicide after her lover is attacked by her family. The two families part in violence and conflict.2004 Leicester - Rani and Sukh fall in love, unaware of the terrible legacy of the past and the conflict between their two families-Can tragedy be averted or will the two young people be able to escape the cycle of violence and draw the families together for the future? Views: 31
If there's one thing Kenisha Lewis has learned, it's that the people you think you know best often surprise you the most. And not always in a good way. It seems the revelations just keep coming. First, her grandmother and her dad are having money troubles, which means she'll probably have to stay in public school and get a part-time job. And then there's her boyfriend, Terrence, who has more secrets than she could have imagined. Kenisha can't believe Terrence is dumb enough to get mixed up in a string of robberies. Or that he'd cheat on her with his old girlfriend. Or could it be that she just doesn't want to admit the truth? Where Kenisha goes, drama follows, but she's getting stronger and smarter every day. And she doesn't plan on getting played again.... Views: 31
Jack Taggart, an undercover Mountie, lives in a world where the good guys and the bad guys change places in a heartbeat. Taggart is very good at what he does. Too good to be playing by the rules. The brass decide to assign a new partner to spy on him.Taggart's new partner discovers a society dependent upon unwritten rules. To break these rules is to lose respect. To lose respect is to lose one's life. Loose Ends is terrifying. It is a tale of violence, corruption, and retribution, but it is also a story of honour and respect. Views: 31
Not a pretty sight. Certainly not one the authorities on Mauritius, that gem of a tourist destination in a trio of idyllic islands once known as the Mascarenes, would like to become public knowledge. Their carefully nurtured image was of sparkling blue sea, emerald green palm fringes haphazardly angled along pure white beaches, gentle winds whispering through the casuarinas under an azure sky. This was ugly. When journalist Holly Jones arrives in Mauritius to cover millionaire adventurer Connor Maguire's search for buried ancestral treasure, it promises to be two weeks in an exotic island paradise... and a chance to start piecing together a broken heart. What she hasn't planned on is an infuriating, reluctant subject with a hidden agenda. Or one who manages to break down her carefully constructed barriers and awaken long-forgotten desires. After the body of a young woman is washed up on a beach, Holly finds herself embroiled in an unsolved murder case and the idyllic... Views: 31
This tale of wild adventure reveals the dashed hopes of Africans living between worlds. When Moki returns to his village from France wearing designer clothes and affecting all the manners of a Frenchman, Massala-Massala, who lives the life of a humble peanut farmer after giving up his studies, begins to dream of following in Moki's footsteps. Together, the two take wing for Paris, where Massala-Massala finds himself a part of an underworld of out-of-work undocumented immigrants. After a botched attempt to sell metro passes purchased with a stolen checkbook, he winds up in jail and is deported. Blue White Red is a novel of postcolonial Africa where young people born into poverty dream of making it big in the cities of their former colonial masters. Alain Mabanckou's searing commentary on the lives of Africans in France is cut with the parody of African villagers who boast of a son in the country of Digol. Views: 31
When it comes to a real friendship, Kayla, Evelyn, and Trina have one last opportunity to get it right. If only for a short period, they appear to be on the same path and willing to put their chaotic past behind them. Evelyn's near-death experience has everyone embracing her, even Kayla's ex-husband, Cedric, who uses his wealth and power to get whatever his heart desires. To help him settle scores with individuals he now considers his enemies, Cedric handpicks the person he believes is the weakest link of them all--but trusting Miss Evelyn could be the wrong move. She has a bad reputation when it comes to her loyalty to friends, and there is nothing that will stop her from biting the hands that continuously feed her. Once again, Trina puts herself in a position to save them all, but when secrets unravel about the love of her life, she'll have to figure out more than one way to save herself. Views: 30
Scorpio Valentino, a sexy-diva beauty-salon owner, is used to having her way with any and every man that she meets. She's a master at playing head-games and also possesses a curvaceous body that'll have any man's tongue watering. But when one man (Jaylin) has finally been able to free himself from her grip and moves on, Scorpio just ain't having it. She'll try anything to get him back. Jaylin has moved to Florida after breaking-up with Scorpio when he learned that she's so grimey that she slept with his own cousin! Now he's got what he feels is the best life for him -- a successful financial career, a woman that's worthy of him and a good best-friend (Shane). Shane Alexander is under the pressure of meeting the demands of a big account at work. Complicating the matter is a girlfriend that's also pressuring him to marry her and a business partner (Felicia) that's pressuring and blackmailing him into staying with the firm. The opportunity arises for Scorpio to reclaim Jaylin, when Shane invites his best-friend to fly into town to help close a major business deal. Just by seeing Scorpio's face again, it quickly reminds Jaylin of the power she once had over him and leaves him in a vulnerable and confused state - just how Scorpio likes it. Felicia Davenport is a hard-nosed, low-down, majority-owner of the company where Shane works. She's the boss and that's that! Secretly, she has a thing for Shane, but gets ruthless when she's unable to attract him and learns that Scorpio seems to have his nose wide-open for her. A CD in Felicia's possession threatens to simultaneously destroy the lives of both Shane and Jaylin. Scorpio's naughty sex-life catches up with her, as she starts being anonymously terrorized with harassing phone calls and vandalism of her property. Eventually, it's Scorpio's own behavior that leads to her staring down the barrel of gun, wielded by the scorned-wife of one of the many men that she's been sexin'. Some women are greedy. Some women are sneaky. Some even think they're Slick. But there's nothing like a woman that's Naughty-By-Nature! Views: 30
