Luke is twenty-five and allergic to the sun. He is stuck in his bedroom, where the world comes to him through TV, the internet and Julie's visits. Julie, meanwhile, is brilliant, kind and could be changing the world. Unfortunately she is too terrified of aeroplane crashes, road accidents and potentially life-threatening bacteria to leave her home town. When someone contacts Luke and claims that he can cure him, Luke and Julie have to deal with their fears and face the world outside. With four friends, wellies and a homemade space suit, they set off in a VW Camper van along Britain's B-roads. It is a journey that might just change their lives. Views: 574
In a small town on the verge of big change, a young woman unearths deep secrets about her family and unexpected truths about herself. Filled with insights that are the hallmark of Anna Quindlen's bestsellers, Miller's Valley is an emotionally powerful story about a family you will never forget. For generations the Millers have lived in Miller's Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be "a place where it's just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content." Miller's Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says,... Views: 573
Used to her independence, Dr. Eilea Johnson represses her sexual desires and avoids the four wolf shifters claiming she's their mate. When a virus sweeps through the Alaska reservation, threatening to wipe out the entire shifter population, Eilea is their last hope for survival. As she races against time to find a cure, a demonic spirit threatening her life may force her to give in to the temptation she's been resisting but secretly craving. Views: 573
From the bestselling author of "Einstein's Dreams "comes this harrowing tale of one man's struggle to cope in a wired world, even as his own biological wiring short-circuits. As Boston's Red Line shuttles Bill Chalmers to work one summer morning, something extraordinary happens. Suddenly, he can't remember which stop is his, where he works, or even who he is. The only thing he can remember is his corporate motto: the maximum information in the minimum time.
Bill's memory returns, but a strange numbness afflicts him. As he attempts to find a diagnosis for his deteriorating illness, he descends into a nightmarish tangle of inconclusive results, his company's manic frenzy, and his family's disbelief. Ultimately, Bill discovers that he is fighting not just for his body but also for his soul. "From the Trade Paperback edition." Views: 572
"Sometimes the greatest things are the most embarrassing." Ellen Degeneres' winning, upbeat candor has made her show one of the most popular, resilient and honored daytime shows on the air. (To date, it has won no fewer than 31 Emmys.) Seriously... I'm Kidding, Degeneres' first book in eight years, brings us up to date about the life of a kindhearted woman who bowed out of American Idol because she didn't want to be mean. Lively; hilarious; often sweetly poignant. Views: 569
The copper smell was overwhelming, then it hit me, blood smelled like copper. Behind me I heard a crazy high-pitched laugh!It was the last day of summer before school started. Hailey and her best friend Jared wanted it to be a day to be remembered but when they went on their new adventure to Old Jacob's mine it ended up being a day they would want to forget!The copper smell was overwhelming, then it hit me, blood smelled like copper. Behind me I heard a crazy high-pitched laugh!It was the last day of summer before school started. Hailey and her best friend Jared wanted it to be a day to be remembered but when they went on their new adventure to Old Jacob's mine it ended up being a day they would want to forget!Even though Hailey is a girl, you'd have to call her a tomboy as she loves adventures with her best friend Jared and has no problem getting in and out of spooky situations! She, Jared and her beloved bike Blue manage to keep their lives pretty exciting and sometimes they are not sure whether it's ghosts or just their imagination. You'll just have to decide which one it ends up being!Warning: My short stories are for children age 6 and up to the young at heart. If you're too old to remember your childhood, these aren't for you! (: Views: 568
A poetic narrative about mundane work on a rather business-minded cemetery.This life was chosen once, in the distant past. This life offers a family, a kid, and work, and now it has led narrator to a graveyard.. Perhaps cemetery job is a peaceful occupation in the shadows on an ancient, protective institution? No - the market economy has already ruined it all. The overzealous sexton guards workers, their mutual relationships are sour, and the short trips to the city cannot offer relief. Missus is not interested.It is freak out time... Views: 568
Based on an actual event that occurred during World War II, this heartbreaking narrative poem about history, immortality, and the power of song is accompanied by magnificent full-color paintings by award-winning artist Mark Podwal.It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto's leaders twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hung to "avenge" the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto's rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning. Over the course of the night the rabbi calls up the spirits of rabbis from centuries past, but no one can give him a satisfactory answer; they've never encountered anything like this. The eighteenth century mystic and founder of Hasidism, the Ba'al Shem Tov, tries to... Views: 565
The national bestseller from the renowned artist and author Patti Smith, exploring the nature of creative invention
A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic—its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections.
Patti Smith first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.
The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University. Views: 560
Paul Auster's most intimate autobiographical work to date
In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .
Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally acclaimed novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world in Report from the Interior.
From his baby's-eye view of the man in the moon, to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe, to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine, to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life, Report from the Interior charts Auster's moral, political, and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the postwar 1950s and into the turbulent 1960s.
Auster evokes the sounds, smells, and tactile sensations that marked his early life—and the many images that came at him, including moving images (he adored cartoons, he was in love with films), until, at its unique climax, the book breaks away from prose into pure imagery: The final section of Report from the Interior recapitulates the first three parts, told in an album of pictures. At once a story of the times—which makes it everyone's story—and the story of the emerging consciousness of a renowned literary artist, this four-part work answers the challenge of autobiography in ways rarely, if ever, seen before.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013 Views: 559
The high-spirited correspondence between New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee
Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.”
Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, death, family, marriage, friendship, and love.
Their correspondence offers an intimate and often amusing portrait of these two men as they explore the complexities of the here and now and is a reflection of two sharp intellects whose pleasure in each other’s friendship is apparent on every page. Views: 557
Using energy therapy and emotional healing techniques, How to Heal Yourself When No One Else Can shows you how to love, accept, and be yourself no matter what. Energy therapist Amy B. Scher presents a down-to-earth three-part approach to removing blockages, changing your relationship with stress, and coming into alignment with who you truly are.
After overcoming late-stage chronic Lyme disease, Amy came to an important epiphany that healing is much more than just physical. Her dramatic story of healing serves as a powerful example of how beneficial it is to address our emotional energies, particularly when nothing else works. Discover the four main areas of imbalance and the easy ways to address them on your journey to complete and permanent healing. With Amy's guidance, you can get rid of blocks you never knew you had and finally move forward. Whether you are experiencing physical symptoms or are just feeling lost, sad, anxious, or emotionally unbalanced—this book can improve your wellbeing and your life. Views: 557
The Fool's Progress, the "fat masterpiece" as Edward Abbey labeled it, is his most important piece of writing: it reveals the complete Ed Abbey, from the green grass of his memory as a child in Appalachia to his approaching death in Tuscon at age sixty two. When his third wife abandons him in Tucson, boozing, misanthropic anarchist Henry Holyoak Lightcap shoots his refrigerator and sets off in a battered pick-up truck for his ancestral home in West Virginia. Accompanied only by his dying dog and his memories, the irascible warhorse (a stand-in for the "real" Abbey) begins a bizarre cross-country odyssey—determined to make peace with his past—and to wage one last war against the ravages of "progress.""A profane, wildly funny, brash, overbearing, exquisite tour de force." — The Chicago Tribune Views: 555
