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These Setting Suns

This short story is a telling of a few important days in the ordinary life of Ann Marie Jensen, a woman who lived during both World Wars and the Great Depression. Her few days include falling in love, starting a family, and losing loved ones. Her life is ordinary, yes, but that just means anyone can relate.This short story follows certain days in the ordinary life Ann Marie Jensen’s, the daughter of a Marine Officer who heads out to fight in World War one. We watch as Ann Marie and her family move from their hometown, and start a new life without her father and her lover. A lot happens in these few important days of her ordinary life, including the death of loved ones and living in the times of both World Wars and the Great Depression. Anyone can relate to her life, especially those who lived through the times.
Views: 379

The Eternal Champion

Young and old, familiar fans and newcomers, will be captivated by Michael Moorcock's legendary Eternal Champion collection. Timeless, classic and beyond a doubt one of the foundations of modern Fantasy, the Eternal Champion is a series of stories that no Fantasy aficionado should pass up.Includes The Eternal Champion, Phoenix in Obsidian, To Rescue Tanelorn and The Sundered Worlds.
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Children of the Sun

I didn't read your books. I licked them, I rubbed them all over my naked body and licked them. Protasov, detached and idealistic, wants only to immerse himself in chemical experiments to perfect mankind. He's more or less oblivious to the voracious advances of the half-crazed widow Melaniya and his best friend's unrelenting pursuit of his wife, let alone the cholera epidemic and the starving mob at his gates. While Nanny fusses round, Protasov's admiring circle, variously skeptical, romantic and lovesick, spar over culture and the cosmos. Only Liza, neurotic and patronized, feels the suffering of the peasantry and senses that their own privileged world is in jeopardy.** Gone? They're everywhere. Have you heard about the riots? The starvation and the flagrant disregard of authority. This disregard is building walls and barriers between us all. And they are massing. The crowds of angry people. And the hate... the hate between us all... kills everything. Written during the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, Maxim Gorky's darkly comic Children of the Sun depicts the new middle-class, foolish perhaps but likeable, as they flounder around, philosophizing, yearning, or scuttling between test tubes, blind to their impending annihilation. This is Andrew Upton's fourth English version of a play for the National by one of the great Russian masters, including his acclaimed adaptation of Gorky's Philistines.
Views: 378

Buck Fever

Blanco County, Texas: It's the week before deer-hunting season and the locals are getting restless. Game Warden John Marlin has his hands full with poaching complaints coming in faster than he can write tickets. Then a call of a different sort comes in. A man in some sort of deer costume has been shot, and witnesses are reporting a wild-eyed buck prancing about the pasture in a lovesick frenzy. Marlin's seen a lot in his years, but this is wilder than he could have imagined: the man in the deer suit is a good friend, and the whacked-out whitetail isn't a stranger either. It's the beginning of a frantic weekend in Blanco County, one that will see a few more men shot, an invasion by Colombians with more than hunting on their minds, and damn near the end of Marlin's life.
Views: 378

Desperate Acts

Fans of Lisa Jackson, Lucinda Berry, and Kendra Elliot won't want to miss the New York Times bestselling author's suspenseful story of a small town with more secrets than residents, and a woman searching for the truth about a long-ago night...as killer prepares to silence her forever. Teenager Lia Porter shouldn't have been anywhere near the railroad bridge that night. Sneaking home after a party in the fields outside Pike, Wisconsin, she glimpsed a woman in a leather jacket, running in terror. Lia puts the incident from her mind—until a body is found near the same spot fifteen years later, wearing the same jacket. The police rule it a suicide. Lia knows different. The woman she saw was trying to save her own life, not end it. But whatever she was fleeing from found her first . . . The stranger who arrives at Lia's store shares her suspicions. Hollywood stunt driver Kaden Vaughn has come home to Wisconsin to learn the truth about what happened to...
Views: 378

The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount

Two novellas: the first, a parody of medieval knighthood told by a nun; the second, a fantasy about a nobleman bisected into his good and evil halves. “Bravura pieces... executed with brilliance and brio”(Chicago Tribune). Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book Originally published as two distinct volumes: 'Il visconte dimezzato' (1952) and 'Il cavaliere inesistente' (1959). Also published in a single volume with 'The baron in the trees' (Il barone rampante, 1957) as 'Our Ancestors' (I nostri antenati, 1960).
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The Last Time I Saw You

BONUS: This edition contains a The Last Time I Saw You discussion guide and an excerpt from Elizabeth Berg's Once Upon a Time, There Was You. From the beloved bestselling author of Home Safe and The Year of Pleasures, comes a wonderful new novel about women and men reconnecting with one another—and themselves—at their fortieth high school reunion. To each of the men and women in The Last Time I Saw You, this reunion means something different—a last opportunity to say something long left unsaid, an escape from the bleaker realities of everyday life, a means to save a marriage on the rocks, or an opportunity to bond with a slightly estranged daughter, if only over what her mother should wear. As the onetime classmates meet up over the course of a weekend, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. For newly divorced Dorothy Shauman, the reunion brings with it the possibility of finally attracting the attention of the class heartthrob, Pete Decker. For the ever self-reliant, ever left-out Mary Alice Mayhew, it’s a chance to reexamine a painful past. For Lester Heseenpfeffer, a veterinarian and widower, it is the hope of talking shop with a fellow vet—or at least that’s what he tells himself. For Candy Armstrong, the class beauty, it’s the hope of finding friendship before it is too late. As Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and the other classmates converge for the reunion dinner, four decades melt away: Desires and personalities from their youth reemerge, and new discoveries are made. For so much has happened to them all. And so much can still happen. In this beautiful novel, Elizabeth Berg deftly weaves together stories of roads taken and not taken, choices made and opportunities missed, and the possibilities of second chances.
Views: 378

Renegade

One Elite Opes agent is on a special assignment involving a beautiful woman. But his involvement is about to go beyond the call of duty 0 and into the realm of dangerous desire... A HIGH-RISK MISSION As a bridal shop owner, Mikayla Martin helps make women’s wedding dreams come true. Her own life, however, has become a nightmare since she witnessed a murder — and got an up-close-and-personal look at the killer. What’s worse: She knows she knows him. But the police, after doing an alibi check, don’t believe her. It’s up to Mikayla to prove them wrong…and do whatever it takes to solve the murder by herself. A TO-DIE-FOR PASSION Elite Ops agent Nikolai Steele, code name Renegade, is asked to pay an old comrade a favor. This friend swears he’s no killer—and Nik believes him — even though he’s been mistaken as one by Mikayla. So Nik goes to set her straight…but the moment he lays eyes on the fiery and determined beauty, he knows he’s in too deep. A woman this irresistible can only mean trouble and, sure enough, after sticking her nose in one too many places, someone wants Mikayla dead. Now Nik must find a way to keep her safe, clear his friend’s name, and find the real killer, who remains on the loose…
Views: 378

The Cement Garden

Ian McEwan is known to skirt the edge with his writing; the fringes of society, to test the limits of what we can handle perhaps in our worlds as we bring his writing home with us and allow a whole new being to enter. So it is with The Cement Garden, the story of dying family who live in a dying part of the city. The father of four children decides, in an effort to make his garden easier to control, to pave it over. In the process, he has a heart attack and dies, leaving the cement garden unfinished and the children to the care of their mother. Soon after, the mother too dies and the children, fearful of being separated by social services, decide to cover up their parents’ deaths: they bury their mother in the cement garden. ll of the children are free thinking independent-minded teenagers. The story is told from the point of view of Jack, one of the sons, the narrator who is entering adolescence with all of its curiosity and appetites that he must contend with (along with the sure confusion of what the children have done). Julie, the eldest, is almost a grown woman. Sue is rather bookish and observes all that goes on around her. And Tom is the youngest and the baby of the lot. The children seem to manage in this perverse setting rather well until Julie brings home a boyfriend who threatens their secret by asking too many questions (like what is buried beneath the cement pile, etc), surely threatening the status quo (however morbid) that the children have come to accept as "normal" and as "home". We understand through McEwan that home is not to be defined by anyone else but it is, instead, what you know and have known that makes you feel safe, even if it is rather dangerous and macabre.
Views: 378

A Cadet's Honor: Mark Mallory's Heroism

The whole class came to the meeting. There hadn\'t been such an important meeting at West Point for many a day. The yearling class had been outrageously insulted. The mightiest traditions of the academy had been violated, "trampled beneath the dust," and that by two or three vile and uncivilized "beasts"—"plebes"—new cadets of scarcely a week\'s experience. And the third class, the yearlings, by inherent right the guardians of West Point\'s honor, and the hazers of the plebe, had vowed that those plebes must be punished as never had plebes been punished before.
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Secret Water

In the eighth book in Arthur Ransome's beloved Swallows and Amazons series, the five Walker children are left on a "desert island" by their parents with provisions for a long stay and a blank map to fill in. Like all of Ransome's books, this is at once a real adventure and a lesson in the practicalities of exploring - in this case, of surveying the inlets, coves, mudflats, and estuaries of "Walker Island." Naturally, there are enemies to overcome (another clan named "The Eels") and friends to meet (who else but the intrepid "Amazons?"). And, as always, the children do it all solo.
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Stones

In this collection of nine short stories Findley gives us a three-tiered look at life in the eighties as he explores the realities of contemporary relationships, offers imaginative visions of urban life, and examines the divisive and destructive acts played out on the personal battlegrounds of family life. In Stones, Findley exposes the sharp changes in the traditional institutions of love, marriage, and family through a vivid terrain of images and insightful stories. Reflecting our changing times with stunning clarity, the tales reveal the menacing and enigmatic aspects of our daily lives.
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The World of Winnie-The-Pooh

*Alternate Cover Edition can be found here. * The world of Pooh is the Thousand Acre Wood of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga, Christopher Robin, and more. He is a whimsical philosopher, staunch friend, plump, and fond of honey. He calls himself a Bear of Very Little Brain, but is wise and loving. Delicate paintings loved by centuries of children.
Views: 378