Masud Alam has lived in Australia for the past 30 of his 53 years. Now his father, Abba, is dying, drifting in a haze of Alzheimer′s, and Masud has returned to Bangladesh to say goodbye and to reconnect with his family.Unmarried, he instantly becomes the focus of his mother′s match-making, which involves a local woman, Alya, who runs a factory providing jobs for rural women in a nearby village. He also begins to realise how far his family′s fortunes have fallen, and how hard his brother Zia has had to work to keep them all afloat. As Masud reacquaints himself with his family and with Bangladesh, he realises how little he really knows them. Haunted by his own experiences as a soldier in Bangladesh′s war of independence, he is surprised by the shifting, complex attitudes of his old friends and neighbours. He also discovers some family secrets, when a chance remark by his father prompts him to examine some old family papers.But most disturbing of all are the secrets of his young nephew, Omar, recently returned from America with a quiet steeliness in his gaze ... Views: 55
After being transported to a strange alternate Earth, Matt Reddy and the crew of the USS Walker have learned desperate times call for desperate measures, in the return to the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series.Time is running out for the Grand Human and Lemurian Alliance. The longer they take to prepare for their confrontations with the reptilian Grik, the Holy Dominion, and the League of Tripoli, the stronger their enemies become. Ready or not, they have to move—or the price in blood will break them. Matt Reddy and his battered old destroyer USS Walker lead the greatest army the humans and their Lemurian allies have ever assembled up the Zambezi toward the ancient Grik capital city. Standing against them is the largest, most dangerous force of Grik yet gathered. On the far side of the world, General Shinya and his Army of the Sisters are finally prepared for their long-expected assault on the mysterious El Paso... Views: 55
The Getting of Wisdom, a wicked and satirical novel on the pain and confusing of growing up, first appeared in 1910. A century later it has lost none of its bite.One of the most memorable characters in Australian fiction, Laura Rambotham, aged twelve, enters the portals of an exclusive girls' school eager to be accepted. But this precocious country girl is snubbed and ridiculed by her fellow students, who are richer, more attractive and more adept at dealing with life's hypocrisies.In her splendid introduction Germaine Greer describes this classic as 'Richardson's only great book precisely because the subject is, like the rest of us, ordinary, and therefore deeply important'.'The Getting of Wisdom races ahead of the reader, succeeding by force of narrative and sheer charm...spontaneity and skill; the values of a whole society are seen here in microcosm through the lives of pupils and teachers.' New Statesman Views: 55
After a traumatic past, life finally seems to be looking up for Hanna Foster. But war is on its way . . . London, 1938. Hanna and Jack Foster had been sent to an orphanage when their parents were killed in a train crash, but were separated when a couple adopted Jack. Bullied and treated like a slave, it soon became clear it was a dreadful mistake. In desperation, Jack takes his future into his own hands and runs away to join the merchant navy, while Hanna takes a job looking after two children. For a time, life seems good, but war is looming and threatens to take away everything Hanna holds dear . . .Review"Matthews’ latest historical romance is sure to appeal to fans of the genre, who will be delighted with the old-fashioned innocence of the story, the heavily nostalgic tone, and the brave, winning, and plucky Fosters."Booklist on A New Day Views: 55
It's hardly a new experience to emerge from a Don DeLillo novel feeling faintly disturbed and disoriented. This is both a charm and a curse of much of his fiction, a reason he is so exciting to some readers and so irritating to others (notably George Will). And in the 117-page Point Omega, DeLillo's lean prose is so spare and concentrated that the aftereffects are more powerful than usual.Reading it is akin to a brisk hike up a desert mountain-a trifle arid, perhaps, but with occasional views of breathtaking grandeur. There is no room for false steps, and even the sure-footed will want to double back now and then to check for signs they might have missed along the way.Holding down the book's center is a pair of inward-looking men: Jim Finley, a middle-aged filmmaker who, in the words of his estranged wife, is too serious about art but not serious enough about life; and the much older Richard Elster, a sort of Bush-era Dr. Strangelove without the accent or the comic props.We join them at Elster's rustic desert hideaway in California, where Elster has retreated into the emptiness of time and space following his departure from the Bush-Cheney team of planners for the Iraq War. Elster had been recruited to serve as a sort of conceptual guru, but he left in disillusionment after plans for the haiku war he preferred bogged down in numbers and nitty gritty.Finley hopes to coax Elster into sharing that experience while the camera rolls. He envisions a minimalist work in which Elster will speak in one continuous take while standing against a blank wall in Brooklyn.Anyone recalling the Bush aide who anonymously boasted in 2004 that the Administration would create our own reality to reshape the post 9-11 world will easily detect echoes of that dreamy hubris in Elster's big declarations. As the two men float ever further from the moorings of the cities they left behind, the going gets a little tedious. One suspects DeLillo is setting them up for a fall, especially when Elster maintains they're closing in on the omega point, a concept postulating an eventual leap out of our biology, as Elster puts it, an ultimate evolution in which brute matter becomes analytical human thought.DeLillo delivers on this threat with a visit by Elster's twenty-something daughter, Jessie. From there, the dynamics of human tensions and tragedy take over, laying bare the vanity of intellectual abstraction, and making the omega point loom like empty words on a horizon of deadly happenstance.Along the way, DeLillo is at his best rendering micro-moments of the inner life. That's all the more impressive seeing as how Elster himself seemingly warns off the author from attempting any such thing, by saying in the first chapter, The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.From time to time, at least, DeLillo proves him wrong. Views: 55
Medical personnel were dropping like flies and Dr. Sasha Pulaski wasn't going to just stand by and do nothing. She believed in her work and would do anything for her patients. But how could she help when she was next on a murderer's hit list? The only bright spot was her new protector-- Detective Anthony Santini, a man determined to catch the hospital killer and watch over Sasha. And when the building was in lockdown mode, she turned to the handsome lawman--and found more than just a strong guardian angel. Could he help her see the unspoken possibilities sizzling between them before it was too late? Views: 55
