Two theater-mad, self-inventedfabulositon Ohio teenagers.One boy, one girl.One gay, one straight.One black, one white.And SUMMER DRAMA CAMP.It's a season of hormones, gold lame, hissy fits, jazz hands, song and dance, true love, and unitardsthat will determine their future--and test their friendship. Views: 995
Radley just wants to get home to her parents in Vermont. While she was volunteering abroad, the American People's Party took power; the new president was assassinated; and the government cracked down on citizens. Travel restrictions are worse than ever, and when her plane finally lands in New Hampshire, Radley’s parents aren’t there.
Exhausted; her phone dead; her credit cards worthless: Radley starts walking. Views: 994
For the first time all 112 of Stephen Crane’s short stories and sketches—including several that have not been included in any previous collection and two that are now in print for the first time—have been brought together in one volume.
Critics call Stephen Crane, who is best known for his Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, the first “modern” American writer. Crane was only twenty-eight when he died, but his work had a profound influence on American letters. He helped to kill sentimentality in American writing, giving this country’s fiction renewed strength and dignity as an art form. Crane is considered the American counterpart of such European Nationalists as Zola, Tolstoy, and Flaubert. He refused to bow to the conventions of the day or to popular taste, but wrote about life as he saw it in the closing years of the nineteenth century. And “honest vision of life” was the foundation stone of his artistic aims, and so he sought first-hand experiences and personal involvement in his themes. He lived the life of “The Open Boat” before he wrote the story. His stories of war and conflict, such as “A Mystery of Heroism” and “Virtue in War,” reflect his experiences as a war correspondent.
Crane strove for originality in his writing; “his style—tense, darting, abrupt, ironic—blends perfectly with an impressionistic technique to give emotional, psychological, and symbolic significance to a series of astutely observed and richly colored episodes.” The stories and sketches that were a product of his one-man literary revolution are as “modern” today as ever.
This collection includes an authoritative introduction by the editor, in which he evaluates the artistic significance of Crane’s work. The stories ad sketches are presented in chronological order and have been carefully edited to ensure that they are in their original form. Views: 994
In seething 1786 Paris, penniless writer Aristide Ravel, already suspected of subversion, must clear his name of murder. But his search for answers—with the aid of friends who may not be all that they seem—leads him into a tangle of conspiracy, secret societies, royal scandal, and imminent revolution, which grows only more complex when the corpse disappears. "Superb." (Publishers Weekly)Historical mystery. In the icy winter of 1786, in the final years before the French Revolution, hunger, cold, and seething frustration with the iron grip of France’s absolute monarchy drive poor and rich alike to outright defiance. Slums, fashionable cafés, and even aristocratic mansions echo with discontent and the first warning signals of the approaching turmoil of 1789.Paris’s cemeteries are foul and disease-ridden, but no one, including penniless writer Aristide Ravel, expects to find a man with his throat cut lying dead in a churchyard, surrounded by strange Masonic symbols. Already suspected of subversive activities, Ravel must now clear his name of murder. His search for answers amid the city’s literary and intellectual demimonde—with the aid of friends who may not be all that they seem—leads him into a tangle of conspiracy, secret societies, royal scandal, and imminent revolution, which grows only more complex when the corpse disappears . . . "Reading The Cavalier of the Apocalypse is like being in France just before the Revolution. Ms. Alleyn has managed to capture the spirit of the time in the angry squalor of the poor against the backdrop of titled privilege. But the story is not a social commentary—it never stops being a splendid mystery, packed with historical detail, red herrings, surprising twists, and even a little romance. If this is your first Aristide Ravel mystery you will want to dive into the sequels as soon as you can—promise." [The Historical Novels Review]"After two mysteries set in the aftermath of the French Revolution, Alleyn recounts how her series sleuth, Aristide Ravel, became a detective in this superb prequel set in 1786. ... Alleyn expertly captures the politics and atmosphere of the period, seamlessly integrating them into a traditional whodunit plot." [Publishers Weekly (starred review)] Views: 994
A shocking true crime tale of money, power, and sex from the world's most popular thriller writer.
Jeffrey Epstein rose from humble origins to the rarefied heights of New York City's financial elite. A college dropout with an instinct for numbers--and for people--Epstein amassed his wealth through a combination of access and skill. But even after he had it all, Epstein wanted more. And that unceasing desire--especially a taste for young girls--resulted in his stunning fall from grace. From Epstein himself, to the girls he employed as masseuses at his home, to the cops investigating the appalling charges against him, FILTHY RICH examines all sides of a case that scandalized one of America's richest communities. An explosive true story, FILTHY RICH is a riveting account of wealth, power and the influence they bring to bear on the American justice system. Views: 994
After nearly twenty years of living in California, March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, returns to the sleepy Massachusetts town where she grew up to attend the funeral of Judith Dale, the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Yet returning to her hometown also brings her back to Hollis, March’s former soul mate and lover. March’s father had taken the teenaged Hollis, an abandoned child, and the product of a series of detention homes, into his house as a boarder, and treated him like a son. Yet March and Hollis’s passionate love was hardly a normal sibling relationship. When Hollis left her after a petty fight, March waited for him three long years, wondering what she had done wrong.
Encountering Hollis again makes March acutely aware of the choices that she has made, and the choices everyone around her has made—including Mrs. Dale, who knew more of love than March could ever have suspected, and her brother Alan, whose tragic history has left him grief-struck, with alcohol as his only solace. Her attraction to Hollis is overwhelming—and March jeopardizes her marriage, her relationship with her daughter and her own happiness in an attempt to reclaim the past. Views: 994
Elizabeth Berg, bestselling author of The Art of Mending and The Year of Pleasures, has a rare talent for revealing her characters’ hearts and minds in a manner that makes us empathize completely. Her new novel, We Are All Welcome Here, features three women, each struggling against overwhelming odds for her own kind of freedom.
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana, in the way she sees fit–with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Diana is trying in her own fashion to live a normal life. As a fourteen-year-old, she wants to make money for clothes and magazines, to slough off the authority of her mother and Peacie, to figure out the puzzle that is boys, and to escape the oppressiveness she sees everywhere in her small town. What she can never escape, however, is the way her life is markedly different from others’. Nor can she escape her ongoing responsibility to assist in caring for her mother. Paige Dunn is attractive, charming, intelligent, and lively, but her needs are great–and relentless.
As the summer unfolds, hate and adversity will visit this modest home. Despite the difficulties thrust upon them, each of the women will find her own path to independence, understanding, and peace. And Diana’s mother, so mightily compromised, will end up giving her daughter an extraordinary gift few parents could match.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 994
Keita Ali is on the run.
Desperate to flee Zantoroland, a mountainous island that produces the fastest marathoners in the world, Keita Ali signs on with notorious marathon agent Anton Hamm, who provides him with a chance to run the Boston marathon in return for a huge cut of the winning purse.
But when Keita fails to place among the top finishers, rather than being sent back to his own country, he goes into hiding in Freedom State—a wealthy nation that has elected a government bent on deporting the refugees living within its borders in the community of AfricTown. Keita can only be safe if he keeps moving and eludes Hamm and the officials who would deport him to his own country, where he will face almost certain death.
This is the new underground. A place where tens of thousands of people deemed to be “illegal” live below the radar of the police and government officials.
As Keita surfaces from time to time to earn cash prizes by running local road races, he has to assess whether the people he meets are friends or enemies: John Falconer, a gifted student intent on making a documentary about AfricTown; Ivernia Beech, an elderly woman who is at risk of being forced into an assisted living facility; Rocco Stanton, a recreational marathoner who is the Immigration Minister; Lula DiStefano, self-declared Queen of AfricTown and Madame of the community’s infamous brothel; and Viola Hill, one of the only black reporters in the country, who is investigating the possibility of corruption linking the highest officials in Freedom State and Zantoroland.
Keita’s very existence in Freedom State is illegal. As he trains in secret, eluding capture, the stakes keep getting higher. Soon, he is running not only for his life, but his sister’s life, too.
Fast-moving and compelling, The Illegal addresses the fate of an undocumented refugee who struggles to survive in a nation that does not want him. Views: 994
Isabel Dalhousie is back, in the latest installment of this enchanting, already beloved, best-selling series.
In addition to being the nosiest and most sympathetic philosopher you are likely to meet, Isabel is now a mother. Charlies, her newborn son, presents her with a myriad wonders of a new life, and doting father Jamie presents her with an intriguing proposal: marriage. In the midst of all this, she receives a disturbing letter announcing that she has been ousted as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics by the ambitious Professor Dove.
None of these things, however, in any way diminshes Isabel's curiosity. And when she attends an art auction, she finds an irresistible puzzle: two paintings attributed to a now-deceased artist appear on the market at the same time, and both of them exhibit some unusual characteristics. Are these paintings forgeries? This proves to be sufficient fodder for Isabel's inquisitiveness. So she begins an investigation... and soon finds herself diverging from her philosophical musings about fatherhood onto a path that leads her into the mysteries of the art world and the soul of an artist. Views: 994
Nobel prize winner Samuel Beckett is one of the most profoundly original writers of our century. He gives expression to the anguish and isolation of the individual consciousness with a purity and minimalism that have altered the shape of world literature. A tremendously influential poet and dramatist, Beckett spoke of his prose fiction as the "important writing, " the medium in which his ideas are most powerfully distilled.
Here, for the first time, his short prose is gathered in a definitive, complete volume by leading Beckett scholar S. E. Gontarski. In the introduction, Gontarski discusses Beckett's creative roots in the tradition of Irish storytelling and the perpetual evolution of his writing as he "pushed beyond recognizable external reality and discrete, recognizable literary characters, replacing them with something like naked consciousness or pure being." From the 1929 "Assumption, " published in transition magazine when Beckett was twenty-three, to the aptly named "Stirrings Still, " written whe he was eighty-two, and including a new translation of "The Image" as well as the newly translated and previously unpublished "The Cliff, " Gontarski has arranged Beckett's work into a smooth chronology that suggests, as he puts it, "Beckett's own view of his art, that it is all part of a continuous process, a series." Views: 994
Patterson and Ledwidge introduce a new hero in an exciting thriller set in the heart of Manhattan. NYPD detective Michael Bennett is concentrating on getting his family through a particularly difficult Christmas: he and his 10 adopted children are facing the loss to cancer of his brave wife, Maeve. But a major crisis calls him away: the funeral of a former First Lady at St. Patrick's Cathedral goes horribly awry when men storm the church and take hundreds of attendees hostage. Michael is asked to try to reason with a sinister man named Jack. Jack releases all but the most famous people, and makes his demands: he wants several million dollars from each celebrity hostage, including the mayor, a popular comedic actor, a beloved talk show host, and a pop starlet. Once Jack starts killing, Michael realizes he's up against a truly diabolical foe. Patterson has a knack for creating genuinely likable heroes, and Michael fits the bill. As readers rapidly turn the pages to learn how the tense hostage drama plays out, they will also be sympathizing with Michael as he faces the agonizing loss of his wife. Totally gripping and downright impossible to put down, this is a promising start to a potential new series. Views: 994
Originally published in 1906, The Spirit of the Border is a historical novel written by Zane Grey. The novel is based on events occurring in the Ohio River Valley in the late eighteenth century. It features the exploits of Lewis Wetzel, a historical personage who had dedicated his life to the destruction of Native Americans and to the protection of nascent white settlements in that region. The story deals with the attempt by Moravian Church missionaries to Christianize Indians and how two brothers\' lives take different paths upon their arrival on the border. A highly romanticized account, the novel is the second in a trilogy, the first of which is Betty Zane, Grey\'s first published work, and The Last Trail, which focuses on the life of Jonathan Zane, Grey\'s ancestor. Views: 993
Winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for her second novel The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai is one of the most talented writers of her generation. Now available for the first time as a Grove Press paperback, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard--Desai's dazzling debut novel--is a wryly hilarious and poignant story that simultaneously captures the vivid culture of the Indian subcontinent and the universal intricacies of human experience. Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not quite like other towns. After years of failure at school, failure at work, of spending his days dreaming in tea stalls, it does not seem as if Sampath is going to amount to much--until one day he climbs a guava tree in search of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a holy man, sending his tiny town into turmoil. A syndicate of larcenous, alcoholic monkeys terrorize the pilgrims who cluster around Sampath's tree, spies and profiteers descend on the town, and none of Desai's outrageous characters goes unaffected as events spin increasingly out of control. Views: 993
A Regency Romance. Tenth Anniversary Edition
Note: This book was originally published under the title of Anything But A Gentleman
Marianne is delighted when the empty estate next door is rented by an earl, but she soon finds that Luke, Lord Ravensford is anything but a gentleman! And yet with his dark hair and his dangerous air, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to him, despite the rumours that he has ruined her missing brother. When the secret of Kit's disappearance is exposed, she finds herself drawn into an adventure which will test her love to the limits and reveal hidden depths to Luke and his profound feelings for her . . .
Amanda Grange: Humour, adventure and romance, with a guaranteed happy ending.
Reviews for Amanda Grange:
"Believable dialogue and lively characters ... nice touches of humour, too." - Historical Novels Review
"Hits the Regency tone and language on the head." - Library Journal
"Well written, clean romance. 4 1/2 stars!" - Amazon review
"Amanda Grange writes from the heart . . . Highly recommended" - A Romance Review Views: 993
Cleopatra's Sister is the tenth novel by Booker Prize winning author Penelope Lively.
Detached and unwordly paleontologist Howard Beamish is on a journey that is to change his life. Travelling to Nairobi, his plane is forced to land in Marsopolis, the capital of Callimbia, where Cleopatra's sister entertained Antony. Also on the flight is Lucy Faulkner, a journalist with a sketchy knowledge of Callimbia's political turbulence. As chance throws them together, Howard and Lucy become embroiled in a revolution that is both political and personal.
'Every sentence is a pleasure to read' Sunday Express
'A fluent, funny, ultimately moving romance in which lovers share centre stage with Lively's persuasive meditations on history and fate. . .a book of great charm with a real intellectual resonance at its core' The New York Times Book Review
Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short-story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her other books include Going Back; Judgement Day; Next to Nature, Art; Perfect Happiness; Passing On; City of the Mind; Cleopatra's Sister; Heat Wave; Beyond the Blue Mountains, a collection of short stories; Oleander, Jacaranda, a memoir of her childhood days in Egypt; Spiderweb; her autobiographical work, A House Unlocked; The Photograph; Making It Up; Consequences; Family Album, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award, and How It All Began. She is a popular writer for children and has won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Award. She was appointed CBE in the 2001 New Year's Honours List, and DBE in 2012. Penelope Lively lives in London. Views: 993
