"I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages."Thus wrote Leo Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys rich in adventure and observation. He was captured by a Sicilian pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual dictionary... Views: 57
Siblings Sam and Ilsa Kehlmann have spent most of their high school years throwing parties for their friends - and now they've prepared their final blowout, just before graduation.The rules are simple: each twin gets to invite three guests, and the other twin doesn't know who's coming until the partiers show up at the door. With Sam and Ilsa, the sibling revelry is always tempered with a large dose of sibling rivalry, and tonight is no exception.One night. One apartment. Eight people. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, we all know the answer is plenty. But plenty also goes right, as well...in rather surprising ways. Views: 57
In the future, computers rule the world. Net Force was formed to protect us from any and all criminal activity on-line. But there is a group of teenage whiz kids who sometimes know more about computers than their adult superiors. They are the Net Force Explorers. They go where no one else can go. And they fight crime like no one else in the world. After her equestrian teammate, Burt, disappears, Net Force Explorer Megan O'Malley finds him at a combined online-offline refuge for runaways. But Burt's next disappearance may be his last. Short of cash, he takes a job at a mysterious courier business — a service, Megan discovers all too late, from which many runaways are sent out, but few ever return. Views: 57
From Publishers WeeklyAgain mining the territory of bleak lives on the fringes of society, L.A. Times Book Prize-winner Blake (In the Rogue Blood and Red Grass River) has crafted seven short stories and a novella about people surviving in the merciless borderlands dividing Mexico and the U.S. Characters from South Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and Texas are fully sculpted in Blake's visionary dystopia, their struggles neither heroic nor dishonorable. The complexity of border culture is graphically drawn, with its omnipresent threats of la migra, unemployment, bigotry and despair. Blake begins the collection with an engaging and informative introductory memoir, a chronology of his childhood in the borderlands and of his mixed Mexican/Texan heritage. The stories that follow are brutal, stark and horrifying; in "Runaway Horses," a just-widowed man is driven mad when he attempts to deliver just punishment to his wife's rapist and murderer. In another narrative, an illegal immigrant falls in love with an ex-prostitute with three children, but succumbs to his fear of commitment. Female characters suffer violently in these stories, often victims of rape, incest or murder. "Texas Woman Blues" is a searing portrait of hopelessness and horror. Dolores (dolar, pain in Spanish) experiences a lifetime of pain before her 17th birthday. Abandoned by her father, who ends up in prison, on her mother's death she is sent to live with relatives and is raped by her uncle. When she finally bolts free, the cycle of victimization expands into a bleak and unforgettable chronicle of dead-end options. Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic. This is gritty, raw, bare-knuckled fiction, blazing with an extraordinary kind of violence, and certainly not for the faint of heart. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalBlake's (In the Rogue Blood, LJ 9/1/97) first collection of short fiction begins with an autobiographical account and then turns to a series of linked fictions about poor, young, hard-working, dignified Mexican or Mexican American men, some of whom have immigrated to the United States looking for a better life. One loses his savings to a gun-toting hitchhiker, another falls for an ex-prostitute. A third becomes a boxer, only to lose a championship fight to his arrogant schoolmate. He then becomes a referee and takes his revenge. In the final story, "Texas Woman Blues," a young woman named Dolores leads a peripatetic life in hardscrabble southern Texas, the territory staked out by novelist Lionel Garc!a. Time and again men use her, until she falls in love with Buddy. Then Buddy is killed, and soon Dolores, saddled with two unloved children, commits suicide. Blake's talent is obvious, especially in the first stories, but "Texas Woman Blues" could have been longer and more developed. Recommended for literary collections and those with a Latino audience.AHarold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 57
*In the late summer of 1831, in a remote section of southeastern Virginia, there took place the only effective, sustained revolt in the annals of American Negro slavery...*The revolt was led by a remarkable Negro preacher named Nat Turner, an educated slave who felt himself divinely ordained to annihilate all the white people in the region.The Confessions of Nat Turner is narrated by Nat himself as he lingers in jail through the cold autumnal days before his execution. The compelling story ranges over the whole of Nat's Life, reaching its inevitable and shattering climax that bloody day in August. The Confessions of Nat Turner is not only a masterpiece of storytelling; is also reveals in unforgettable human terms the agonizing essence of Negro slavery. Through the mind of a slave, Willie Styron has re-created a catastrophic event, and dramatized the intermingled miseries, frustrations—and hopes—which caused this extraordinary black man to rise up out of the early mists of our history and strike down those who held his people in bondage. Views: 57
Big Apple. Bigger Problems. The success of the Forrester sisters' On the Runway TV show lands them a hot ticket to Fashion Week in New York City. Paige is determined to garner the attention of New York's top designers, but her newfound fame threatens to go to her head. Erin wants to help promote the work of some eco-minded designers, but struggles to be taken seriously. Can Paige keep her prima donna behavior in check? Will Erin's involvement hurt the people she's really trying to help? Success in the big city comes with even bigger challenges, and as the pressure grows, so does the drama. Views: 57
#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout continues the life of her beloved Olive Kitteridge, a character who has captured the imaginations of millions."Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I'd never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is."—Zadie Smith, The GuardianNAMED ONE OF FALL'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS BY PeopleTimeEntertainment WeeklyVanity FairBuzzFeedVogueUSA Today • The Seattle TimesHuffPostNewsdayVultureBustleVoxPopSugarGood HousekeepingLitHubBook Riot Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is "a compelling life force" (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth... Views: 57
