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The Invisible Bridge

A grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war. Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter’s recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena, their younger brother leaves school for the stage—and Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty. From the Hungarian village of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s garret to the enduring passion he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of a Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the unforgettable story of brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family’s struggle against annihilation, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war. Length: 27 hrs and 51 mins
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A Daughter of the Snows

London\'s first novel introduces the strong, independent, well-educated heroine that would run through much of his work. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Views: 777

Jerusalem

Ten years in the making, comes a literary work Like no other, from the legendary author of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell.In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrolcolored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them. Fiends last mentioned in the second-century Book of Tobit wait in urine-scented stairwells, the delinquent specters of unlucky children undermine a century with tunnels, and in upstairs parlors laborers with golden blood reduce fate to a snooker tournament.An opulent mythology for those without a pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth and...
Views: 777

A Patchwork Planet

In this, her fourteenth novel--and one of her most endearing--Anne Tyler tells the story of a lovable loser who's trying to get his life in order. Barnaby Gaitlin has been in trouble ever since adolescence. He had this habit of breaking into other people's houses. It wasn't the big loot he was after, like his teenage cohorts. It was just that he liked to read other people's mail, pore over their family photo albums, and appropriate a few of their precious mementos. But for eleven years now, he's been working steadily for Rent-a-Back, renting his back to old folks and shut-ins who can't move their own porch furniture or bring the Christmas tree down from the attic. At last, his life seems to be on an even keel. Still, the Gaitlins (of "old" Baltimore) cannot forget the price they paid for buying off Barnaby's former victims. And his ex-wife would just as soon he didn't show up ever to visit their little girl, Opal. Even the nice, steady woman (his guardian angel?) who seems to have designs on him doesn't fully trust him, it develops, when the chips are down, and it looks as though his world may fall apart again. There is no one like Anne Tyler, with her sharp, funny, tender perceptions about how human beings navigate on a puzzling planet, and she keeps us enthralled from start to finish in this delicious new novel.
Views: 777

Notorious

Jenny Humphrey arrived at elite Waverly Academy with dreams of turning herself into the sophisticated, awe-inspiring Jenny she's always wanted to be. And it's finally, finally happening She's even rooming with the two most popular girls in school, Callie Vernon and Brett Messerschmidt, and bunking in the notorious Tinsley Carmichael's old bed. Coolness is rubbing off on her, even while she sleeps Okay, so Callie almost got Jenny kicked out of Waverly on her first night there, but there's a bright side. Like Callie's shaggy-haired boyfriend, Easy Walsh, who just can't seem to focus on his girlfriend anymore. Now everyone is gossiping about boyfriend-stealing Jenny. They can't help but whisper: Jenny's it. But who's that flying in on her seaplane? After getting expelled last year, Tinsley's back and she's not about to let some big-chested, rosy-cheeked city-girl get all the attention. And she's certainly not going to let Callie and Brett forget that she took the fall for them. Now it's their turn. Is Waverly big enough for Jenny, Callie, Brett, and Tinsley? They're all beautiful, captivating, and a little bit crazy . . . but there can be only one It Girl.
Views: 777

Waiting Period: A Novel

A blood-chilling excursion into the twisted mind of a serial killer by the acclaimed author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. When the oppressiveness of his memories becomes too hard to bear, a traumatized veteran decides to die. But he grows impatient during the legal waiting period to purchase the gun that will end his sad life. Then he grows angry, resentful of those he blames for his misery and those he feels simply don’t deserve to live. Suddenly a man with no future has a new purpose and a new role as avenging angel. As he spirals deeper into the darkest regions of his twisted imagination, his grisly obsession will give him a reason to live, propelling him relentlessly forward on his great mission to cleanse the dirty city of the unworthy. A brilliant and terrifying nightmare from the author of the critically acclaimed classics Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby Jr.’s Waiting Period views a grim modern world of pain and injustice through the eyes of a maniac whose mind is rapidly deteriorating. A dark and haunting work of raw, savage power, it provides further testament to the greatness of one of America’s most original contemporary literary artists. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby Jr. including rare photos from the author’s estate.
Views: 777

Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons in the China Seas

The original cast of the famed Swallows and Amazons series is sailing under the stars and the command of Captain Flint in the South China Sea when Gibbet, their pet monkey, grabs the captain’s cigar and drops it in the fuel tank. In minutes, the ship is ablaze (and doomed), and our seven luckless protagonists are adrift in two small boats. They make their way to land, only to find themselves the captives of one of the last remaining pirates operating off the China Coast. But Missee Lee, as it turns out, is no ordinary pirate; her father had sent her off to Cambridge University to prepare her for a life as a teacher. But when her father takes ill and dies, she finds herself struggling to hold together the Three Island Confederation (Tiger, Turtle, and Dragon) he had created, and to be recognized as his legitimate heir and ruler of the Island Kingdom. Ransome is, as always, the consummate storyteller. Here he takes the reader not only on the usual sailing adventures and cliff-hanging escapades, but also into Chinese culture. (It’s no accident that, like so many of Ransome’s protagonists, Missee Lee is a woman, or that her Latin is almost as refined as her sailing skills.) It is also no wonder that The Observer called this, the tenth book in the series, “his best yet . . . a book to buy, to read, and to read again, not once but many times.” The Guardian put it “in a class by itself.” For Ransome, unlike so many writers of his and our generation, was particular in writing about things he knew and had studied first-hand, whether it was a foreign culture, a classical language, a cryptographic code, or the finer points of seamanship.
Views: 777

Amulet

Amulet is a monologue, like Bolano's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafes and bars of the University. She's tall, thin,brand blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolano's fictional stand-in throughout his books). As well as her young poets, Auxilio recalls three remarkable women; the melancholic young philosopher Elena, the exiled Catalan painter Remedios Varo, and Lilian Serpas, a poet who once slept with Che Guevara.brAnd in the course of her imaginary visit to the house of Remedios Varo,brAuxilio sees an uncanny landscape, a kind of chasm. This chasm reappears in a vision at the end of the book; an army of children is marching toward it, singing as they go. The children are the idealistic young Latin Americans who came to maturity in the '70s, and the last words of the novel are; "And that song is our amulet."
Views: 777

Troubled Midnight

In 1943, The United Kingdom is alive with men and women making ready for the greatest invasion in history: preparing to assault Hitler's Fortress Europe. The skies are full of training aircraft, their engines merging with the throb of the RAF and USAAF bombers heading on round-the-clock missions against Germany. With fresh bloodshed on the horizon, the coming Christmas preparations seem even more poignant. But with just ten days to go, the seasonal mood is shattered in the quiet market town of Wantage in Berkshire by the discovery of two badly battered bodies. It seems that the victims were tortured before being beaten to death. Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore and DS Suzie Mountford, Tommy's right-hand woman and secret lover, are assigned to the case. The bodies are identified as Lieutenant Colonel Tim Weaving, an officer commanding a detachment from the Glider Pilot Regiment stationed at a nearby airfield; and Emily Burrage, wife of the town's hero, an officer with the Desert Rats who was awarded the Victoria Cross at Tobruk. As they begin to investigate the double murder, Tommy and Suzie are joined by Curry Shepherd, a representative of the Intelligence Services. It is possible that an enemy agent has interrogated Tim Weaving and as he was in possession of information concerning the plans for Overlord---the Allied plan for the invasion of occupied Europe---things become urgent. Suzie finds herself seconded to War Office Intelligence Liaison and so enters the secret world. This is a surprising, dark, and imaginative novel from one of Britain's best thriller writers.
Views: 777

The Turning

Featuring the tales about ordinary people from ordinary places, this title describes turnings of different kinds: second thoughts, changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, abrupt transitions. It paints a picture of a world where people struggle against the weight of their past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves.
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The Lost Landscape: A Writer's Coming of Age

Written with the raw honesty and poignant insight that were the hallmarks of her acclaimed bestseller A Widow’s Story, an affecting and observant memoir of growing up from one of our finest and most beloved literary masters The Lost Landscape is Joyce Carol Oates’ vivid chronicle of her hardscrabble childhood in rural western New York State. From memories of her relatives, to those of a charming bond with a special red hen on her family farm; from her first friendships to her earliest experiences with death, The Lost Landscape is a powerful evocation of the romance of childhood, and its indelible influence on the woman and the writer she would become. In this exceptionally candid, moving, and richly reflective account, Oates explores the world through the eyes of her younger self, an imaginative girl eager to tell stories about the world and the people she meets. While reading Alice in Wonderland changed a young Joyce forever and inspired her to view life as a series of endless adventures, growing up on a farm taught her harsh lessons about sacrifice, hard work, and loss. With searing detail and an acutely perceptive eye, Oates renders her memories and emotions with exquisite precision, transporting us to a forgotten place and time—the lost landscape of her youth, reminding us of the forgotten landscapes of our own earliest lives.
Views: 777

The Malarkey

The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it, and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery.
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Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories

For the first time in paperback--a volume of thirty-seven diabolically inventive stories, fables, and "impossible interviews" from one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, displaying the full breadth of his vision and wit.  Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition.
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Bayne's Climb: Book I of The Sword of Bayne

Bayne kul Kanon pursues a dark wizard across a decade and eventually up a mountain path, and when the path runs out, up the side of the mountain itself.Why does Bayne seek this wizard? Because Bayne is a warrior without a past. Ten years earlier he woke amid battle with no memories, his only ally the wizard. His enemies, numberless.Bayne kul Kanon pursues a dark wizard across a decade and eventually up a mountain path, and when the path runs out, up the side of the mountain itself.Why does Bayne seek this wizard? Because Bayne is a warrior without a past. Ten years earlier he woke amid battle with no memories, his only ally the wizard. His enemies, numberless.Once the wizard fled, Bayne set out on foot after him. Now they have come to the mountain, and Bayne isdetermined to climb and to find the truth.Along the way up the mountain, the warrior finds many new enemies, dangers and oddities. All hamper his quest to find the wizard, and all must be overcome.Yet in the end, will Bayne truly want to know the truth? Is he able to handle the truth? And is there even a truth to be discovered?
Views: 776