'On the shield, one of seven forged in the timeless past to hold back the dark, fell a single drop of blood. So the shield weakened, and the dark, spider-patient, waited as the decades passed, and the wound spread under the grass and ground.'The brilliant conclusion to the Chronicles of the One trilogy - an epic story of love, war, family and magic.Fallon Swift has spent all her life preparing for this moment. No longer can she stand by whilst her fellow Magicks are hunted by the fanatical Purity Warriors or rounded up and experimented on by the government.Fallon must follow her destiny to restore the magical shield that once protected them all. But she can't do it alone. It is time to build her army, to take on her nemesis and take down the enemy.She has learned to fight, now she must restore the light and banish the dark forever. The final battle has begun...Series praise: 'A match for end-of-the-world classics like Stephen King's The Stand' - New York Times Review of Books 'Breathtaking' - Heat Views: 366
Forensic psychiatrist Natalie King returns in a new locked-room mystery by a beloved Australian author Views: 366
Who in his right mind wants to talk to a shrink? I don't want to talk about anything. I don't want to feel anything, taste anything ... or anything. The lyrics "just dying to die" run around in my brain day and night...
Fifteen-year-old Sam is in pain. He comes to the therapist's office unwillingly, angry, depressed, and filled with guilt over his own self-destructive behavior. He is being drawn deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair from which he sees no way out.
The Road Back
This is the Real-life story of Sam's Recovery, told from tapes of his therapy sessions. It tells what drove him to leave home, how he survived on the street, and why he was desperate to escape from the brutality of the gang that had become his "family" and from the torment of his own self-loathing. For every teen who has experienced the pain and loneliness of a no-way-out darkness, and for all those who love them, here is the light that can lead the way back. Views: 366
An unexpected turn of events for a young mischief maker, forces him to take a different view of his best friendWith a nod to Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected, Baggy is the story of a boy's playful pranks and the price he must pay for his fun. Views: 366
Teens and their giant robots search for a new home for mankind, but the planet they discover belongs to the dragons.Two hundred years after the Climate Wars left Earth uninhabitable, Johari and his giant robot companion lead a squad of scouts on a quest for a new Goldilocks planet to settle the remnants of the human race.When one of the scouts and his bot go down in a hostile wilderness, Johari's fight to save them reveals complex behavior in the dragon-like dominant species. The scout team fragments as Johari strives to rescue his friends and discover the truth about the aliens.If he's right, mankind will lose its best hope for a home — or sacrifice its own humanity. Views: 366
From one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved storytellers of our time comes a major new collection of stories and verse "We each have our little triggers . . . things that wait for us in the dark corridors of our lives." So says Neil Gaiman in his introduction to Trigger Warning, a remarkable compendium of twenty-five stories and poems that explore the transformative power of imagination.In "Adventure Story"—a thematic companion to the #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane—Gaiman ponders death and the ways in which people take their stories with them when they die. "A Calendar of Tales" is comprised of short pieces about the months of the year—stories of pirates and March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale "The Case of Death and Honey." Also included is... Views: 365
In 1898, twelve-year-old Ben rescues a near-drowned girl from a shipwreck off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Although the girl, named Teetoncey, becomes part of his family, she will not utter a single word. Views: 365
A modern day Odyssey; Odd Whitefeather returns in this chilling tale that spans generations. Huckleberry Brindle has been exiled for five years after the loss of his demolition crew. The town of Carlton is losing its men and the people turn to him for help. Huck meets the love of his life, but she exists in another time. Can they overcome impossible Odds and remain together?When Huckleberry Brindle is hired to demolish the old Soliah Home, he has no idea what he is up against. The house refuses to go silently into the night and it claims Brindle's crew in the process. As if things weren't bad enough, Huck meets the long-dead owner of the house, Barnabus Soliah, who has cloven hoofs and claims to be Huck's grandfather. Soliah made a name for himself during the Indian Wars and he explains to Huck that his war is far from over. Soliah and his brigade of ghostly soldiers are set on finishing what they originally set out to do, which is to avenge their defeat at the Battle of Sugar Point, the last battle of the Indian Wars. Soliah makes a deal with Huck, if he agrees to fight alongside him and his men, Soliah will release Huck's crew from their horrible prison in purgatory.Five years pass and on a hot summer afternoon, Huck finds himself staring into the face of an old Ojibwe Indian, named Odd Whitefeather. He too claims to be Huck's grandfather. He also explains that there is much to do and very little time to waste. Huck soon learns that this is no ordinary fellow, Odd Whitefeather is a powerful Medicine Man. Huck also suspects that he might be a little bit crazy.Odd Whitefeather summons the spirits of his own grandfather, Crooked Walker, and that of his grandfather's grandfather, the ancient one known as Dog Breath. They are both hard men with powerful magic of their own. The three of them must teach Huck the ways of the Ojibwe so that they can defeat Soliah. Huck will travel back in time and there he will meet his wife, Man Killer. The problem is that he must return to his own time, and she can't follow. Huck will be tried many times over and will be forced to endure things that cause him to pray for death. He is joined on his quest by Odd Whitefeather's friends in the forest. The beasts can speak here, and together they set off on an epic journey like no other. Views: 365
In his extraordinary body of work, James Alexander Thom does more than bring the past to life; he makes us experience history as if we were witnessing it for the first time. Thom's new novel is an enthralling adventure with fascinating real-life characters--and a heart-grabbing narrative that casts a vivid light on a momentous chapter in American history.
Sign-Talker begins just after the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson has sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to penetrate the newly acquired territory, journey up the Missouri River, cross the Rocky Mountains, and reach the glimmering sea in the far West. To survive, the two captains need an extraordinary hunter who will be able to provide the expedition with fresh game, and a sign-talker to communicate with the native tribes. They choose George Drouillard. It is Drouillard, an actual historical figure, who becomes our eyes and ears on this unforgettable odyssey.
Drouillard, a metis raised among the Shawnee, cannot fathom what drives the two men. Nor can he help but admire their ingenuity and courage as they tackle the journey into the unknown. Along the way, he watches as they shrewdly shape and discipline their force, adding French-Canadian rivermen--to guide the expedition up the Missouri--and an Indian woman, Sacagawea, who will play a crucial role in negotiations with the Western tribes.
After plunging into an unforgiving land and near madness, the two captains celebrate a triumphant achievement. But the glory will soon be eclipsed by an overwhelming tragedy that will touch not only Meriwether Lewis and the frontier tribes but George Drouillard himself. A magnificent tale told with intelligence and insight, Sign-Talker is full of song and suffering, humor and pathos. James Alexander Thom has created the rarest reading experience: one that entertains us even as it shows us a new vision of our nation, our past, and ourselves.
From the Paperback edition. Views: 365
Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad. Highly inventive formally, the novel is mainly narrated by Kincaid Chance, the youngest son in a family of four boys and identical twin girls, the children of Hugh Chance, a discouraged minor-league ballplayer whose once-promising career was curtained by an industrial accident, and his wife Laura, an increasingly fanatical Seventh-Day Adventist. The plot traces the working-out of the family's fate from the beginning of the Eisenhower years through the traumas of Vietnam. Views: 365
I had put on my slippers and my dressing-gown. I wiped away a tear with which the north wind blowing over the quay had obscured my vision. A bright fire was leaping in the chimney of my study. Ice-crystals, shaped like fern-leaves, were sprouting over the windowpanes and concealed from me the Seine with its bridges and the Louvre of the Valois. I drew up my easy-chair to the hearth, and my table-volante, and took up so much of my place by the fire as Hamilcar deigned to allow me. Hamilcar was lying in front of the andirons, curled up on a cushion, with his nose between his paws. His think find fur rose and fell with his regular breathing. At my coming, he slowly slipped a glance of his agate eyes at me from between his half-opened lids, which he closed again almost at once, thinking to himself, “It is nothing; it is only my friend.” “Hamilcar,” I said to him, as I stretched my legs—“Hamilcar, somnolent Prince of the City of Books—thou guardian nocturnal! Like that Divine Cat who combated the impious in Heliopolis—in the night of the great combat—thou dost defend from vile nibblers those books which the old savant acquired at the cost of his slender savings and indefatigable zeal. Sleep, Hamilcar, softly as a sultana, in this library, that shelters thy military virtues; for verily in thy person are united the formidable aspect of a Tatar warrior and the slumbrous grace of a woman of the Orient. Sleep, thou heroic and voluptuous Hamilcar, while awaiting the moonlight hour in which the mice will come forth to dance before the Acta Sanctorum of the learned Bolandists!” The beginning of this discourse pleased Hamilcar, who accompanied it with a throat-sound like the song of a kettle on the fire. But as my voice waxed louder, Hamilcar notified me by lowering his ears and by wrinkling the striped skin of his brow that it was bad taste on my part so to declaim. “This old-book man,” evidently thought Hamilcar, “talks to no purpose at all while our housekeeper never utters a word which is not full of good sense, full of significance—containing either the announcement of a meal or the promise of a whipping. One knows what she says. But this old man puts together a lot of sounds signifying nothing.” So thought Hamilcar to himself. Leaving him to his reflections, I opened a book, which I began to read with interest; for it was a catalogue of manuscripts. I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than that of a catalogue. The one which I was reading—edited in 1824 by Mr. Thompson, librarian to Sir Thomas Raleigh—sins, it is true, by excess of brevity, and does not offer that character of exactitude which the archivists of my own generation were the first to introduce into works upon diplomatics and paleography. It leaves a good deal to be desired and to be divined. This is perhaps why I find myself aware, while reading it, of a state of mind which in nature more imaginative than mine might be called reverie. I had allowed myself to drift away this gently upon the current of my thoughts, when my housekeeper announced, in a tone of ill-humor, that Monsieur Coccoz desired to speak with me. In fact, some one had slipped into the library after her. He was a little man—a poor little man of puny appearance, wearing a thin jacket. He approached me with a number of little bows and smiles. But he was very pale, and, although still young and alert, he looked ill. I thought as I looked at him, of a wounded squirrel. He carried under his arm a green toilette, which he put upon a chair; then unfastening the four corners of the toilette, he uncovered a heap of little yellow books. “Monsieur,” he then said to me, “I have not the honour to be known to you. I am a book-agent, Monsieur. I represent the leading houses of the capital, and in the hope that you will kindly honour me with your confidence, I take the liberty to offer you a few novelties.” Views: 365
Boys are being trained at one school for geniuses, girls at another. Neither knows the other exists—until now. The New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box invites you into a world of secrets and chills in a coming-of-age story like no other. One of Elle's "Best Books to Read in Spring 2019" • "Josh Malerman is a master at unsettling you—and keeping you off-balance until the last page is turned."—Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author of Blackbirds J is a student at a school deep in a forest far away from the rest of the world. J is one of only twenty-six students, all of whom think of the school's enigmatic founder as their father. J's peers are the only family he has ever had. The students are being trained to be prodigies of art, science, and athletics, and their life at the school is all they know—and all they are allowed to know. But J suspects... Views: 365
