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Storyteller

Now back in print--a classic work of Native American literature by the bestselling author of "Ceremony" Leslie Marmon Silko's groundbreaking book "Storyteller," first published in 1981, blends original short stories and poetry influenced by the traditional oral tales that she heard growing up on the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico with autobiographical passages, folktales, family memories, and photographs. As she mixes traditional and Western literary genres, Silko examines themes of memory, alienation, power, and identity; communicates Native American notions regarding time, nature, and spirituality; and explores how stories and storytelling shape people and communities. "Storyteller" illustrates how one can frame collective cultural identity in contemporary literary forms, as well as illuminates the importance of myth, oral tradition, and ritual in Silko's own work. This edition includes a new introduction by Silko and previously unpublished photographs.
Views: 267

The Christmas Promise

This holiday season, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Noel Collection returns with another heartwarming story of secrets, heartbreak, forgiveness, and the true meaning of Christmas.On the night of her high school graduation, Richelle Bach's father gives her and her identical twin sister, Michelle, matching opal necklaces. "These opals look identical," he tells them, "but the fire inside each is completely unique—just like the two of you." Indeed, the two sisters couldn't be more different, and their paths diverge as they embark on adulthood. Years pass, until—at their father's behest—they both come home for Christmas. What happens then forever damages their relationship, and Richelle vows never to see or speak to her sister again. In their father's last days, he asks Richelle to forgive Michelle, a deathbed promise she never fulfills as her twin is killed in an accident. Now, painfully alone and broken, caring for...
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May I Go Play?

A young woman inherits a southern mansion from her grandmother only to find the original owners want company. "May I Go Play?" is an eleven-thousand word short story originally featured in The Eclective's "Haunted Collection."While most mothers are worried about their adult children getting enough to eat, Allie’s succubus mom is worried about her having enough sex—and even Allie has to admit that six months without a man is too long. When she meets Dylan, a warlock with a history of avoiding commitment, he is a temptation she can’t resist. While Allie doesn’t trust warlocks, she knows this is one night only—no attachments and no emotions. Unfortunately, Dylan doesn’t agree with her plan to walk away, and Allie’s not sure how long she can resist the sexy warlock who could easily break her heart.Determined to avoid his mother’s attempts to get him to settle down with a nice witch, Dylan has kept his romantic involvements limited to casual affairs with humans. That is until a crazy bet leads to a night of unforgettable sex with a succubus, and Dylan knows one night isn’t enough. There is just one problem with his plan to pursue Allie—she doesn’t trust warlocks. With a killer targeting the local succubus community, Dylan has his hands full trying to keep Allie safe and convince her she can trust him with her heart.While this book is part of a series, it can be read as a standalone novel.
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The Thief of Time

John Boyne has become internationally known for his acclaimed novels Crippen and the bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Now, for the first time in the United States, comes the book that started the career of the author that the Irish Examiner calls "one of the best and original of the new generation of Irish writers." It is 1758 and Matthieu Zela is fleeing Paris after witnessing the murder of his mother and his stepfather's execution. Matthieu's life is characterized by one extraordinary fact: before the eighteenth century ends, he discovers that his body has stopped ageing. At the end of the twentieth century and the ripe old age of 256 he is suddenly forced to answer an uncomfortable question: what is the worth of immortality without love? In this carefully crafted novel, John Boyne juxtaposes history and the buzz of the modern world, weaving together portraits of 1920s Hollywood, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the French Revolution, the Wall Street Crash, and other landmark events into one man's story of murder, love, and redemption.
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The Old Die Rich

It\'s the kind of news item you read at least a dozen times a year, wonder about briefly, and then promptly forget about. The real story is the one that an actor turned sleuth is able to uncover - to his peril! The story is a unique combination of mystery and time travel by one of the giants in the field of sci-fi. An actor and a policeman investigate when a number of elderly people are found dead of starvation. The strange things is they all had large bank accounts and a great deal of money in their pockets. The investigation is complicated by the appearance of a beautiful but evil woman who tries to thwart their efforts to find the truth. A clever and creative tale.
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To Be a Man

In this dazzling collection of short fiction, the National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestselling author of The History of Love—"one of America's most important novelists and an international literary sensation" (New York Times)—explores what it means to be in a couple, and to be a man or a woman in that perplexing relationship and beyond.In one of her strongest works of fiction yet, Nicole Krauss plunges fearlessly into the struggle to understand what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, and the arising tensions that have existed from the very beginning of time. Set in our contemporary moment, and moving across the globe from Switzerland, Japan, and New York City to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and South America, the stories in To Be a Man feature male characters as fathers, lovers, friends, children, seducers, and even a lost husband who may never have been a husband at all. The way these stories mirror one other and...
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The Date

Stacy Donovan just got dumped and to make matters worse, her best friend, Keith, needs her help to woo a new girlfriend."A practice date," he says, so he can learn how to treat a lady on their first date. With reluctance, she agrees; he is her best friend after all.THIS IS A [[CLEAN]] YA ROMANCE SHORT STORY ABOUT TEENAGERS!! THIS IS NOT TO BE MISTAKEN FOR SOMETHING SIMILAR TO 50 SHADES OF GREY!Discover #1 bestselling novel, Evan Burl and the FallingA monster lives in all of us.My father abandoned me when I was an infant.My friends have turned against me.My uncle hates me.The most powerful sapients in the world want me dead.They all have one thing in common.They think I'm turning into a monster.I'm starting to worry they're right.Over a thousand years, one man unlocks sapience—the ability to transform the imagined into reality. But not everyone believes sapience is a gift because this power blurs the lines between dreaming and waking, making it impossible to divide real life from nightmare and friend from enemy.The most powerful of these sapients rule the world, sharing little in common save their venom for each other and lurid horror for Evan Burl—a sixteen-year-old imprisoned with twelve immortal orphans in a haunted castle surrounded by the bones of a forgotten city. Evan finds a letter that orders his execution—signed by his own father—that reveals Evan's latent supernatural talents. As Evan makes use of his new abilities, he loses his grasp on the physical world and fears he might be responsible for the string of gruesome deaths that have begun to plague the orphans. With each passing day, Evan's waking world is fading into a mist of dreams, replaced by starless nightmares that just might be real. The fates of those who remain alive rest on whether Evan can regain his ability to tell dream from reality and save his friends from the sapients who would rather the world forget that these twelve orphans ever lived. PRAISE FOR EVAN BURL AND THE FALLING“Justin Blaney’s descriptive, yet punchy writing style is just one way Evan Burl and the Falling separates itself from the vast majority of young adult and fantasy writing being published today. With its intelligent and gripping storyline, relatable heroes, and highly-imagined villains this book captured my attention from the start. I can’t wait to read what happens next.”—Freya Hind"The best fantasy book I've ever read" —Mitsy Princell“Brilliant. I am recommending this book to all my friends”—Julia (from Amazon.com) “Evan Burl is one of the most imaginative and creative (novels) I’ve read in a long time. Fans of fast-paced, action-packed fantasy will find a lot to love...”—Alyce Reese“Well-crafted. Mysterious. Intriguing.”—H.J. van der Klis “I usually don’t enjoy books of this genre... I’m really glad I took a chance. The characters were rich as was the story line. I couldn’t put it down!!!” —Julie Weber“Reading Evan Burl reminded me of how I felt when I read great books like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games for the first time.”—Katie Zinda
Views: 266

Eggs

Nine-year-old David has recently lost his mother to a freak accident, his salesman father is constantly on the road, and he is letting his anger out on his grandmother. Sarcastic and bossy 13-year-old Primrose lives with her childlike, fortuneteller mother, and a framed picture is the only evidence of the father she never knew. Despite their differences, David and Primrose forge a tight yet tumultuous friendship, eventually helping each other deal with what is missing in their lives. This powerful, quirky novel about two very complicated, damaged children has much to say about friendship, loss, and recovery.
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Middle School: Get Me Out of Here!

James Patterson's winning follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestseller Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life--which the LA Times called "a perfectly pitched novel"--is another riotous and heartwarming story about living large. After sixth grade, the very worst year of his life, Rafe Khatchadorian thinks he has it made in seventh grade. He's been accepted to art school in the big city and imagines a math-and-history-free fun zone.Wrong! It's more competitive than Rafe ever expected, and to score big in class, he needs to find a way to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art. His method? Operation: Get a Life! Anything he's never done before, he's going to do it, from learning to play poker to going to a modern art museum. But when his newest mission uncovers secrets about the family Rafe's never known, he has to decide if he's ready to have his world turned upside down. (Includes over 100 illustrations.)
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A Deadly Education

From the New York Times bestselling author of Uprooted and Spinning Silver comes the story of an unwilling dark sorceress who is destined to rewrite the rules of magic."The dark school of magic I've been waiting for." Katherine Arden, author of Winternight TrilogyI decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I'm concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I'm not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don't need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I'm probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I'll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world. At least, that's what the world expects me to do. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that's...
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Less Than Angels

It is surely appropriate that anthropologists, who spend their time studying life and behavior in various societies, should be studied in their turn," says Barbara Pym. In a wonderful twist on her subjects, she has written a book inspecting the behavior of a group of anthropologists. She pits them against each other in affairs of the heart and mind.Academia is an especially rich backdrop. There is competition between the sexes, gender, and age groups. With Pym's keen eye for male pretensions and female susceptibilities, she exploits with good humor. Love will have its way even among the learned, one of whom is in a quandary between an adult and a young student. This is the world of research, grants, libraries and primitive cultures. Here is a particularly interesting contrast between the tribes of Africa and the social matrix of London. As the title implies, civilized society fares not too well on moral grounds to the more primitive societies. Barbara Pym does a masterful job with the mores of the cloistered society of academia.
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The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel

From Publishers WeeklySet in and around Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York City in the years after the Revolutionary War, this clever thriller from Liss (_The Ethical Assassin_) follows the adventures of Ethan Saunders, once a valiant spy for General Washington, who's fallen on hard times by war's end. Suspected of treason, Ethan has lost the love of his life, Cynthia, who's married the fiendish Jacob Pearson, an entrepreneur who managed to prosper during the British occupation of Philadelphia. At Cynthia's urging, Ethan agrees to go looking for the missing Jacob, prompted in large part by a desire to redeem his reputation. Meanwhile, the so-called whiskey rebels on the western frontier are trying to bring down the hated Alexander Hamilton and his Bank of the United States. The courageous Ethan is a likable rogue, and even though Ethan spends too much time delving into the complications of 18th-century finance, he can be counted on when the chips are down and the odds against him soar. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. FromDavid Liss has found his niche as a historical novelist, and The Whiskey Rebels is an entertaining, if slightly uneven, slice of Americana. Liss's strength here lies in the details, particularly in the historical figures who play minor roles—George Washington, Aaron Burr, Phillip Freneau, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge among them. Those characters add color to the plot and evoke the late 18th-century history that many of us (for shame) have forgotten. Despite some sharp dialogue, though, the story slows in places, and several critics mention a tendency for the complex plot to hinge on predictable or contrived elements. Still, Liss is a master of the genre, and The Whiskey Rebels is good fun.Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC
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The Butterfly Effect

A father watches his daughters lovingly care for a squirmy gang of caterpillars. When they morph into butterflies, the girls witness the true meaning of life... unfortunately. A short story by Scott Semegran.Jazz, Season One, Episode ThreeInjuries from the fight with the organ binder forced Jazz to use the Not Now Stone. Now the clock’s ticking. She has less than twenty-four hours to get out of Clowntown and back to her office to scrub the stone in her pickle jar of Soul-lution or she’ll suffer every injury the stone ever healed four-fold. The good news is that she only has seven more block to go to reach the hover-rail, the bad news is that a gang of clowns lays between her and that train. Hoping to avoid a pointless fight, Jazz takes refuge in the one building the Clowns haven’t vandalized, she’s going to discover that there’s a very good reason the goblin gangs left this house alone. Even if she manages to overcome the house’s horrid occupant, she still have to face the clowns, and time, for her, is quickly running out.
Views: 266