When their neighborhood is marked for urban renewal, four tenacious city dwellers band together in the face of a wealthy and powerful institution
A local university plans to bulldoze and replace parts of a predominantly African American Chicago slum with student housing. But for those who live there, the affordable if run-down homes are havens for creativity and self-exploration, and a setting for developing meaningful relationships. Among the residents are Anna, a teacher; her lover, Rowley, a soul singer; and their friends, documentary filmmaker Leon and the beautiful yet mysterious Caroline. The university may have more money and political clout, but these determined young people aren’t willing to let the wrecking ball tear through their world without a fight.
Their relationships are strained and their convictions are tested as secrets are uncovered and they battle with a changing economic climate that jeopardizes their very way of life. The city has turned its back on them, and they have nothing left to lose. Bestselling author Marge Piercy combines social commentary and her talent for depicting characters’ emotions with unflinching precision in this novel that has as much to say about the consequences of gentrification as it does about the vulnerabilities of the human heart.
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Wonderful, fresh, funny, tender, outrageous." says "Booklist" of Jennifer Crusie, whose wry, witty romantic comedies have made her a "New York Times" bestseller. This bundle includes four ferociously funny, sexy romances, "Getting Rid of Bradley, Strange Bedpersons, What the Lady Wants" and "Charlie All Night, Views: 384
Horace Walpole was a distinguished 18th century historian and writer, and his novel The Castle of Otranto was a forerunner of the Gothic genre. Views: 384
In 1913 Ransome left his wife & went to Russia to study folklore. In 1915, he published The Elixir of Life, his only full length novel apart from the Swallows & Amazons series. He published Old Peter's Russian Tales, a collection of 21 folktales the following year. After the start of WWI, he became a foreign correspondent & covered the war on the Eastern Front for The Daily News. He also covered the Russian Revolutions of 1917, coming to sympathise with the Bolsheviks & becoming close to a number of its leaders, including Lenin & Trotsky. He met the woman who'd become his 2nd wife, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, who at that time was Trotsky's personal secretary. He provided some information to MI5, which gave him the code name S.76 in their files. Bruce Lockhart said in his memoirs: "Ransome was a Don Quixote with a walrus moustache, a sentimentalist who could always be relied upon to champion the underdog, & a visionary whose imagination had been fired by the revolution. He was on excellent terms with the Bolsheviks & frequently brought us information of the greatest value." In 10/19 he met Rex Leeper of the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Dep't, who threatened to reveal this unless he privately submitted his articles & public speaking engagements for approval. Ransome's response was indignant. MI5 suspected he was a threat because of his opposition to the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War. On one of his visits to the UK, authorities searched him & threatened arrest. In 10/19, as he was returning to Moscow on behalf of The Manchester Guardian, the Estonian foreign minister Ants Piip entrusted him to deliver a secret armistice proposal to the Bolsheviks. At that time the Estonians were fighting their War of Independence alongside White counterrevolutionary forces. After crossing the battlelines on foot, he passed the message, which to preserve secrecy had not been written down & depended for its authority only on the high regard in which he was held in both countries, to diplomat Maxim Litvinov in Moscow. To deliver the reply, which accepted Piip's conditions for peace, he had to return by the same means, but this time he had Evgenia with him. Estonia withdrew from the conflict & they settled in the capital. Views: 384
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868–1936), primarily known as Maxim (or Maksim) Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl, The Song of the Stormy Petrel, The Mother, Summerfolk and Children of the Sun. He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later write his memoirs on both of them.Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he... Views: 384
A first-hand journal about the Goldings' travels through Egypt, soon after winning the Nobel Prize, living on a motor cruiser on the Nile. Nothing went quite as planned, but William Golding's vivid and honest account of what actually happened, and of what he saw and felt about ancient Egypt and the exasperations of the living present, will delight his innumerable admirers and everyone who visits Egypt.
'One of the funniest anti-travel books I have ever read.' Daily Telegraph
'No previous book brings you so close to Golding the man. It bulges with abstruse knowledge . . . and is often screamingly funny . . . Hugely enjoyable.' The Times Views: 384
The harrowing and beautiful story of the first year of the author's second marriage.In a plainspoken, emotionally accessible voice that readers have not heard from him before, Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm, Hotels of North America, and other fictions, and of The Black Veil, a prize-winning previous memoir, lays bare, in an eventful month-by-month account, the first year of his second marriage.At this story's start, Moody is, by his own description, "a balding middle-aged recovering alcoholic and sexual compulsive with a history of depression who wrote a novel that people liked in the 90s." He is also the newly divorced father of a beloved little girl and a man in love, whose answer to the question "Would you like to be in a committed relationship?" is, fully and for the first time, "Yes." And so his second marriage begins as he emerges from the wreckage of his past, humbly and with dearest hopes, only to be... Views: 383
Almost a decade after its original publication, award winner and Governor General Literary Award nominee Joseph Boyden's classic book of short stories is finally being reissued. Born With A Tooth, Boyden's debut work of fiction, is a collection of thirteen beautifully written stories about aboriginal life in Ontario. They are stories of love, unexpected triumph, and a passionate belief in dreams. They are also stories of anger and longing, of struggling to adapt, of searching but remaining unfulfilled. The collection includes 'Bearwalker', a story that introduces a character who appears again in Boyden's novel Three Day Road. By taking on a new voice in each story, Joseph Boyden explores aboriginal stereotypes and traditions in a most unexpected way. Whether told by a woman trying to forget her past or by a drunken man trying to preserve his culture, each story paints an unforgettable and varied image of modern aboriginal culture in Ontario. An extraordinary first book, Born With A Tooth reveals why Joseph Boyden is a writer worth reading. Views: 383
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 383
Madeleine L'Engle's first adult novel in four years -- now in paperback! With 23,000 copies sold since May 1996, this "haunting domestic drama" (Publishers Weekly) examines the powers of faith and mercy in one family's confrontation with a legacy of evil.Best known for A Wrinkle in Time -- the children's classic that has sold more than 2 million copies since 1962 -- Madeleine L'Engle is as adept at exploring faith and human experience as she is at spinning fascinating, fantastic tales. Now this masterful storyteller blends her two passions and offers an engrossing new story to delight her devoted audience.
When Dr. Camilla Dickinson's teenage granddaughter confronts her with the disquieting question of whether Camilla is, in fact, her grandmother, long-kept secrets rise to the surface to test the faith, love and loyalty of the Xanthakos family. This skillful, gripping tale shuttles between past and troubled present, providing clues to a multigenerational mystery -- clues that begin to focus on Camilla's son, the deeply troubled TV idol Artaxias, and on Camilla's mother, the irresistibly beautiful and adulterous Rose. Though riveting and psychologically complex, A Live Coal in the Sea is "infused with the warmth of love and mercy" (Booklist), showcasing the keen eye and deep compassion that have made L'Engle one of this century's premier writers on faith and its place in human experience. Views: 383
Ross Ransome is at the top of his profession; one of the most successful, and certainly one of the richest, plastic surgeons in the business. Such a man would expect his wife to be perfect - and why not? After all, he has spent enough hours in surgery to get her that way. But when his wife falls ill she turns her back on conventional medicine, and her arid marriage, and seeks help from the world of alternative medicine and a charismatic therapist who promises not just medical salvation. For Ransome, this is the ultimate betrayal. It defies logic, and Ross Ransome is a profoundly logical man. Logically, he can see no reason why any man should have his wife when he can't. It's all completely rational... Views: 383
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 383
He is a monster who discovers he had a heart; she is a woman who wants to remain unknown...Jarmen D'ju has no memories of his previous life. They were stolen in the lab that changed him into a monster. Though he was rescued, he knows he will never truly have the life he wants. As a being of half organic material and half cybernetic engineering, Jarmen will always need to hide. Finding a partner is not an option, for who could ever love a monster?Jane Doe awakes aboard an alien spaceship with haunting memories of her former life—a life filled with tragedy that almost killed her. Rescued and protected by her new circus family, she knows she has been given a second chance at life—but chances are fleeting and happiness is nothing more than an illusion where she came from. She thinks it will be the same here until she meets an alien who is more machine than he is man.In the most unlikely of places, Jarmen discovers he has a heart and Jane finds the... Views: 383
‘The Parcel’ is a collaborative novella written by the attendees of the 2016 spring-term ‘Creative Writing – Intermediate’ ten-week evening class hosted by co-contributor Morgen Bailey.The authors wrote their chapters while knowing only the size, weight and destination address of the parcel, together with the chapters’ starting and ending locations – chosen by the authors themselves.‘The Parcel’ is a collaborative novella written by the attendees of the 2016 spring-term ‘Creative Writing – Intermediate’ ten-week evening class hosted by co-contributor Morgen Bailey.The authors wrote their chapters while knowing only the size, weight and destination address of the parcel, together with the chapters’ starting and ending locations – chosen by the authors themselves. They chose their own characters – the lead of which entitle each chapter – and plot.Morgen then collated the stories and made minor edits to turn each chapter into a cohesive novella before designing the cover and upload the finished package between the final two weeks of the course so all the contributing attendees left the course as published authors!We all hope that you enjoy reading this novella and that it feels seamless to you. We would love to know what you think and would also be very grateful if you left a review as an encouragement for others to read the novella.Thank you again for downloading this eBook – your support is much appreciated. Views: 383
A stunning new collection from Poland's leading poetGive me back my childhood,republic of loquacious sparrows,measureless thickets of nettlesand the timid wood owl's nightly sobs.One of the most vibrant voices of our time, Adam Zagajewski is a modern master of the poetic form. In Asymmetry, his first collection of poems in five years, he revisits the themes that have long concerned him: the enduring imprint of history, the beauty of nature, the place of the exile. Though as sanguine as ever, Zagajewski often turns to elegy in this deeply powerful collection, remembering loved ones he's lost: a hairdresser, the philosopher Krzystzof Michalski, and, most poignantly, his parents. A moving reflection on family, the sublimity of everyday life, death, and happiness, Asymmetry is a magnificent distillation of an astounding poetic voice. Views: 383
