The way to a cheating man's heart is through . . . an elephant?Professional horse trainer Neelie Sterling somehow missed the fact that her veterinarian husband, Matt, was having an affair with his blonde, pretty business partner. Neelie often misses things. (When Matt originally told her he was getting a colleague to help with the practice, she thought he said collie—and Neelie likes dogs.) Now the blonde is saying she's pregnant, and Neelie's life is in a tailspin. But she sees an opportunity to patch up the holes in her disintegrating marriage when she learns that Matt is leaving for Zimbabwe to rescue a badly injured elephant. Foolishly optimistic, she joins the expedition.On a dangerous, revealing, exhilarating trip through Africa, Neelie comes to learn a lot about herself as a woman and a wife. But it isn't until they return home with their pachyderm patient that her eyes are truly opened to what is going on around her. And with the help of a very large and very... Views: 43
Science fiction and fantasy enjoy a long literary tradition, stretching from Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne to Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and William Gibson. In The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy award-winning editor John Joseph Adams delivers a diverse and vibrant collection of stories published in the previous year. Featuring writers with deep science fiction and fantasy backgrounds, along with those who are infusing traditional fiction with speculative elements, these stories uphold a longstanding tradition in both genres—looking at the world and asking, What if . . . ? The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 includes Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, Karen Russell T. C. Boyle, Sofia Samatar, Jo Walton, Cat Rambo Daniel H. Wilson, Seanan McGuire, Jess Row, and others Views: 43
Sonia, Pedro and their classmates are baffled. Mysterious messages keep popping up on their computers, on their mobile phones, on websites they visit, even on a radio programme they listen to. It is a voice from the past—but who is trying to contact them from out of history, and why? Follow the clues from their school in modern-day Brazil through the ages to ancient Egypt, to a medieval wizard's castle laboratory and to the ships that sailed from Europe to discover the New World. Can you solve the History Mystery? Views: 43
Ikey Solomon's favourite saying is also his way of doing business. And in the business of thieving, he's very successful indeed. Ikey's partner in crime is his mistress, the forthright Mary Abacus, until misfortune befalls them. They are parted and each must make the harsh journey from thriving nineteenth-century London to the convict settlement of Van Diemen's Land. In the backstreets and dives of Hobart Town, Mary learns the art of brewing and builds the Potato Factory, where she plans a new future. But her ambitions are threatened by Ikey's wife, Hannah, her old enemy. The two women raise their separate families, one legitimate and the other bastard. As each woman sets out to destroy the other, the families are brought to the edge of disaster. 'Courtenay offers an ersatz Dickens novel, a sort of Australian Oliver! but without the music.' Sunday Age brycecourtenay.com facebook.com/BryceCourtenay Views: 43
First ever standalone edition of one of J.R.R. Tolkien's most important poetic dramas, that explores timely themes such as the nature of heroism and chivalry during war, and which features unpublished and never-before-seen texts and drafts. In 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England, due to it being immortalised in the poem, The Battle of Maldon. Written shortly after the battle, the poem now survives only as a 325-line fragment, but its value to today is incalculable, not just as an heroic tale but in vividly expressing the lost language of our ancestors and celebrating ideals of loyalty and friendship. J.R.R. Tolkien considered The Battle of Maldon 'the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy'. It would inspire him to compose, during the... Views: 43
“BITTERLY FUNNY . . . [A] SLEEK FIRST NOVEL . . . NOIR CRIME . . . HAS FOUND A STERLING NEW CHAMPION IN PHILLIPS.”–The New York Times Book Review“A FUTURE HARD-BOILED CLASSIC–TIGHT, COLD, AND CACKLING WITH IRONY. On Christmas Eve [in Wichita], a mob lawyer is skipping town with the cash. But in this boozy, neo-noir world–James M. Cain meets George V. Higgins–the best-laid plans of bagmen turn brutal.”–The Dallas Morning News“OMINOUS, ACTION-PACKED. . . This is a confident, wry debut . . . [that] may remind readers of Fargo or Pulp Fiction.” –Detroit Free Press“I SIMPLY CAN’T WAIT TO SEE WHAT SCOTT PHILLIPS WILL DO NEXT. [This] funny, tough first novel felt like it was written by an old pro, an Elmore Leonard we’ve never heard about who’s discovered a place where the criminals are really dumb, the low-lifes are oh-so-fun to watch and, if somebody just happens to get what he deserves, there’s no one to blame.”–RICHARD RUSSO Author of Straight Man“A DARKLY COMIC, SOMETIMES BRUTAL PIECE OF NOIR FICTION.”–The Denver PostFinalist for the Hammett Prize Views: 43
