'History...is seldom able to convey the essence of being human'Frank McAllister has become wealthy in England, where he has lived for thirty years. He has a house in Notting Hill, a house in the New Forest, and a house near Cape Town. But more and more he feels alienated in England. As the book opens, he is preparing to go to South Africa with his lover, Nellie. He is also waiting anxiously for his daughter, Lucinda, to arrive from California, where she has been in rehab.Frank is a descendant of the Boer leader, Piet Retief, who was murdered by the Zulu king Dingane, along with all his followers, in 1838. He has been an icon of Afrikaners ever since.Frank's Afrikaner cousin, Jaco, has become moderately famous on YouTube for having faced down a huge white shark. He is now in America, where he has joined the Scientologists. His chaotic and violent life spills over on to Frank. He is drawn into a world of violence and delusion that is to threaten the family. Views: 29
Bestselling author Melody Carlson begins an inspiring new series of adventure and romance on the Oregon Trail.Kentucky, 1854—Elizabeth Martin has mourned her husband's death for three years, but now she feels ready to fulfill the dream they had shared—to take their two children west. The dream becomes reality when her middle-aged parents and bachelor brother surprise her with the news that they want to go as well.After converting three of their best wagons to prairie schooners and thoroughly outfitting them, the little party travels from Kentucky to Kansas City, where they join a substantial wagon train. Elizabeth soon finds herself being drawn to the group's handsome guide, Eli Kincade.The long journey and deepening relationships challenge the travelers to their core, and Eli's mysterious past leaves Elizabeth with more questions than answers. She knows there's no turning back, but she wonders, What have I gotten myself into?About This... Views: 29
A New York Times Notable Book A San Francisco Chroncile Book of the Year Twice selected for Granta’s list of Best Young British Novelists and winner of the Costa Book Award, A. L. Kennedy returns with a not-to-be-missed addition to the canon of one of this generation’s most unique and inventive writers. A man abandons his indifferent wife and wanders into a small-town movie theater, only to find himself just as invisible as he was at home. A woman trying to relax in a flotation tank is hijacked by memories of her past, while another is inadvertently drawn into a stranger’s marital dysfunction. Whether documenting unexpected one-night stands or quotidian absurdities, the powerful stories in What Becomes capture the spirit of our times with unmatched brio and dazzling wit.From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. A bold new collection by relentlessly surprising Scottish author Kennedy (Day) finds her characters pinned somewhere between love and pain. In the title story, about a lone man's evening attending a smalltown cinema, the denouement comes very gradually, as it does frequently throughout, reflecting a kind of reluctant dawning of consciousness: the protagonist, a forensics expert traumatized by having seen so much carnage, has left his wife after the death of their young daughter, an event that has rendered them unable to stand the guilt and anger evoked by the other's presence. Wasps captures a young wife and mother as she is making a Sunday breakfast. This seemingly typical scene is frozen by the menace of the philandering husband's leaving for good and his icy treatment of his angry wife. Saturday Teatime depicts the panicked delayed memory shock experienced by a child listening to her father's abuse of her mother, while Marriage portrays the excruciating emotional and physical aftermath of a violent sexual encounter between a husband and wife. These stories are polished to perfection, full of very dark turns and exemplary of Kennedy's inventiveness. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistThe Motown classic asked “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?” Kennedy gives the bleak answers to that question in 12 devastating stories. Bankruptcy, the loss of a child, and spousal abuse are just some of the traumas with which these characters try, and frequently fail, to cope. In the daring “Sympathy,” a couple indulges in a sexually raw one-night stand, which only succeeds in crystallizing their loneliness. In “Whole Family with Young Children Devastated,” the sight of a missing-dog poster sends the female narrator into a state of rank desperation in which she longs to know the outcome and to see it posted: “Found. Exactly what we hoped for. Thanks to everyone for your concern. No problems anywhere.” Kennedy is unsparing in her depiction of the difficulties of communication, which are only superseded by the claustrophobia of being trapped in one’s own neurotic thoughts. Loneliness and depression are described in agonizing detail as the characters struggle to lift themselves out of despair through vitriolic rants and moments of fleeting intimacy. These are stories that are hard to read and even harder to forget. --Joanne Wilkinson Views: 29
Milan Kundera has established himself as one of the great novelists of our time with such books as The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality and The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In Testaments Betrayed, he proves himself a brilliant defender of the moral rights of the artist and the respect due to a work of art and its creator’s wishes. The betrayal of both – often by their most passionate proponents – is the principal theme of this extraordinary work. Readers will be particularly intrigued by Kundera’s impassioned attack on society’s shifting moral judgments and persecutions of art and artists, from Mayakovsky to Rushdie. Views: 29
The much-anticipated second novel in the trilogy, Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe opens as Josephine awakens to the reality of her recent marriage to Napoleon Bonaparte. A remarkable portrait of a canny and compassionate woman emerges, set against one of the most tumultuous periods in European history. Views: 29
Some people work to pay the bills or send the kids to school or afford playtime. Ex-Army medic physician-assistant Glenn Archer works, as much as she possibly can, to atone for all the lost lives on her conscience. No matter how many patients she helps save at the Rivers Community Hospital, it will never be enough, but it helps her look at herself in the mirror in the morning. Mariana Mateo needs to make a new life, one without the daily reminders of all she’s lost and far away from the suffocating sympathies of her well-meaning family, and moving to a place as different as possible from the bustling LA she grew up in seems like a good idea. A cousin she hasn’t seen in twenty years is the only person who knows her in the tiny upstate New York farming community, and that’s just the way she wants it. When working side by side with Glenn Archer in the ER makes Mari remember what desire feels like, Mari determines to ignore the feelings, which isn’t all that difficult since Glenn is as unapproachable as the beautiful but remote mountains.
A Rivers Community Novel Views: 29
Damon Mee was last seen in a blurred security video on the dance floor of a Kirkaldy nightclub. It was a routine missing persons case and it wasn't even on his patch, but inspector John rebus said he'd look into it as a favour to the boy's father, a friend from his school days. In the deft hands of Ian Rankin, the ripples of the investigation widen rapidly. They lead to the club's greasy owner, to a slightly bent casion croupier, to a drop dead blonde whose name nobody seems to know, to a Hibs striker with a talent for goals and a weakness for gambling and finally to the shadowed men who call the shots in Edinburgh's underworld. When it's over, Rebus has repaid a debt and his boss has received an unexpected birthday present. Views: 29
A collection of short stories by one of America's great twentieth-century writersIn his introduction to this collection of sharply crafted short stories, James Jones compares novel writing to a long-term, chronic illness. Writing short stories, he says, is like a brief, intense fever: the kind that can kill or disappear in a matter of days. Although best known for epic war novels such as From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line, Jones also wrote short stories, and the ones in this volume burn with deadly intensity.Besides the expected stories of the soldier's life, Jones gives us something surprising: five stories of childhood, tender and horrifying at the same time, inspired by his early life in the Depression-stricken Midwest. They and the other shorts in this volume are accompanied by author's notes, which supplement Jones's introduction, and a preface by his daughter, Kaylie Jones.This ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos... Views: 29
Set in the future as two rival gangs, the Volsons and the Connors, struggle to control London. The city is almost cut off from the rest of the country and surrounded by the Halfman Lands - a desolate area populated by creatures, Halfmen, the resultsof genetic experiments to create living killing machines. Val Volson dreams of uniting the two factions by giving his 14-year-old daughter, Signy, as a bride to the rival ganglord, Connor. A shocking betrayal almost wipes out the Volsons - only Signy and her twin brother, Siggy, survive. The fate of both gangs, and of London, is in their hands, but both must pay a terrible price for power. Views: 29
They were the best of friends, they were the worst of friends ...Lizbet and Cassie are close, yet far apart. After a clueless upbringing (their parents' basic childrearing beliefs: 'play a trombone, see a monkey, get some fresh air'), the two sisters strike out in opposite directions, both desperate to escape... Cassie is skinny, clever, charismatic, successful - every right-thinking girl's worst nightmare. The one flaw in her quality-controlled life may be her marriage - and if there are any other flaws lurking, Cassie has them covered. Lizbet is plumper, plainer, dreamier - more concerned about the design on her coffee cup than whether she can afford her new house. She works reluctantly for Ladzmag, desperate to make her name as a writer, but stuck writing embarrassing articles on sex. Her one achievement is her relationship with Tim, who thinks... Views: 29
