In this great drama, Marius, the general who saved Rome from barbarian invasion and became consul an unprecedented six times, has fallen into decline. Sulla, his closest associate, has withdrawn himself from his commander's circle in preparation for his own bid for power. As a deadly enmity develops between the two men, Rome must fight its own battle for survival - first against her neighbouring Italian states, then against the barbaric Asian conqueror. Births, deaths, prophecies and rivalries combine to create a whirlwind of drama, and a remarkable insight into the passion and torment of ancient Rome. Views: 243
George Washington Hayduke III was last seen clinging to a rock face in the wilds of Utah as an armed posse hunted him down for his eco-radicalist crimes. Now he is back with a fiery need for vengeance.
In this sequel to the enormously popular and entertaining The Monkey Wrench Gang, Hayduke teams up with his old pals Doc Sarvis, Seldom Seen Smith, and Bonnie Abbzug in a battle against the world’s biggest earth-moving machine. Fundamentalist preacher Dudley Love, the mastermind behind "G O L I A T H," wants to turn the Grand Canyon into a uranium mine, but not if eco-warrior Hayduke and his group of committed environmentalist friends have anything to say about it.
Hayduke Lives! is full of noisy politics and seemingly improbable situations (yet all too real) that showcase Abbey’s energetic prose and his infectious comic genius as a writer. Views: 239
In the country of last things the masses are homeless, theft is so rampant it is no longer a crime, and death--by arranging either a suicide or assassination--is the only way out. Anna Blume comes to an unnamed city in search of her brother. In her struggle to survive, Anna becomes a scavenger in search of objects from the past to sell for food and shelter. But she will also find friendship--even love--in this devastated world. In the Country of Last Things is a tour-de-force that reaffirms Paul Auster as one of the most accomplished and singular talents of his generation. Views: 237
When the US and World economy finally crashed, small groups of people on the West Coast of America chose to take to the sea in Ocean kayaks instead of waiting in welfare lines. One night a shape shifting/teller of tales comes to their fire and tells them about a time in the distant future when there will be only one Wooden House remaining in the ancient city site of San Francisco.This book is a story told to the Children of The Sea, about 18 dolphins who are able to shape/shift in order to take a two hour tour of the last wooden house. For the duration of the tour they will get to see and feel what it was like to be a "human" and they will get to choose their sex and age. The story takes place a couple of thousand years in the future and humanity has become extinct. In the course of the "house tour", one of the human "looking" entities gets a surprise. He discovers a small bowl of one of the rarest things in the Universe: a bowl of human dreams.He quickly drinks the exotic cocktail and immediately forgets who he is or what he was thinking. The remainder of the book details "Harry's" search for his true identity. This book is sort of a mythic, but modern, fairy tale for anyone between 13 and 90. Views: 237
The third novel in the internationally bestselling White City Trilogy sees Kraken on the hunt for a murderer whose macabre crimes are lifted straight from history. A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL.Kraken is enjoying life as a family man, content to spend his days with Alba and their young daughter Deba. But there's no rest for the weary, especially when you're the most famous investigator in Vitoria. Kraken and Esti are charged with investigating the mysterious disappearance of two sisters and finding it hard to make any headway when a wealthy businessman's murder appears to shine a light on the case. The man was poisoned with a medieval aphrodisiac—a crime that has eerie similarities to one detailed in the novel everyone in Vitoria is buzzing about. When the two sisters are discovered trapped behind a wall—bricked up alive—the parallels to the novel are undeniable. With the author's identity a closely held secret, will Kraken be able to track down the... Views: 237
From the British novelist, this Tony Award–winning drama of family secrets delivers "brilliantly effective . . . enormously provocative . . . theatrical suspense" (New York Post). The Callifer family has assembled in the English country home of Wild Grove where its patriarch—a once-renowned rationalist and man of letters—nears death. Arriving unexpectedly to pay his respects is his son, James, a pariah among the Callifers, who finds a dark veil still drawn over his mysterious childhood. It was decades ago, when James was fourteen, that something happened to him in the garden shed, a black hole in his memories. For everyone else, it's an unforgettable source of unease—and for some, unforgiveable. To discover the truth, James seeks out his ostracized uncle, an alcoholic priest with nothing left to lose. What unfolds makes for "some of the most moving, forceful and compelling theatre since Eugene O'Neill" (The Harvard Crimson). Views: 236
Death stalks the dreams of the residents of Harbor City, and bodies are piling up.
Laci Valentine is done. Done with magic. Done with the Cauldron Coven. Done with the people around her dying. She is through being a witch. Then, Nazareth Ezekiel appears with a message from Hekate, Goddess of the Underworld.
The Cauldron Coven is shattered. Two members are dead, two have walked away, and three are heartbroken over everything that happened over the last month. Tansy Paxton fears it's the end of her small coven when a young witch, Sherri Rockford, enters The Murky Cauldron. Hope fills Tansy until things begin to feel a little too familiar. Has another demon entered the Land Above? Or is Sherri just a witch on the wrong path? Views: 236
The Magic Soap Bubble is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by David Cory is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of David Cory then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. Views: 236
In the classic "Babette's Feast," a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares a sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In "The Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and a rakish artist.
Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories read and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams" (The New York Times). Views: 235
Death Be Not Proud chronicles Johnny Gunther's gallant struggle against the malignant brain tumor that killed him at the age of seventeen. The book opens with his father's fond, vivid portrait of his son - a young man of extraordinary intellectual promise, who excelled at physics, math, and chess, but was also an active, good-hearted, and fun-loving kid. But the heart of the book is a description of the agonized months during which Gunther and his former wife Frances try everything in their power to halt the spread of Johnny's cancer and to make him as happy and comfortable as possible. In the last months of his life, Johnny strove hard to complete his high school studies. The scene of his graduation ceremony from Deerfield Academy is one of the most powerful - and heartbreaking - in the entire book. Johnny maintained his courage, wit and quiet friendliness up to the end of his life. He died on June 30, 1947, less than a month after graduating from Deerfield. Views: 234
In her singular voice—humble, elegiac, practical—Maxine Hong Kingston sets out to reflect on aging as she turns sixty-five.
Kingston’s swift, effortlessly flowing verse lines feel instantly natural in this fresh approach to the art of memoir, as she circles from present to past and back, from lunch with a writer friend to the funeral of a Vietnam veteran, from her long marriage (“can’t divorce until we get it right. / Love, that is. Get love right”) to her arrest at a peace march in Washington, where she and her "sisters" protested the Iraq war in the George W. Bush years. Kingston embraces Thoreau’s notion of a “broad margin,” hoping to expand her vista: “I’m standing on top of a hill; / I can see everywhichway— / the long way that I came, and the few / places I have yet to go. Treat / my whole life as if it were a day.”
On her journeys as writer, peace activist, teacher, and mother, Kingston revisits her most beloved characters: she learns the final fate of her Woman Warrior, and she takes her Tripmaster Monkey, a hip Chinese American, on a journey through China, where he has never been—a trip that becomes a beautiful meditation on the country then and now, on a culture where rice farmers still work in the age-old way, even as a new era is dawning. “All over China,” she writes, “and places where Chinese are, populations / are on the move, going home. That home / where Mother and Father are buried. Doors / between heaven and earth open wide.”
Such is the spirit of this wonderful book—a sense of doors opening wide onto an American life of great purpose and joy, and the tonic wisdom of a writer we have come to cherish.
From the Hardcover edition. Views: 234
Helena is the intelligent, horse-mad daughter of a British chieftain who is thrown into marriage with the man who will one day become the Roman emperor Constantius. Leaving home for lands unknown, she spends her adulthood seeking truth in the religions, mythologies, and philosophies of the declining ancient world, and becomes initiated into Christianity just as it is recognized as the religion of the Roman Empire. Helena-a novel that Evelyn Waugh considered to be his favorite, and most ambitious, work-deftly traverses the forces of corruption, treachery, enlightenment, and political intrigue of Imperial Rome as it brings to life an inspiring heroine. Views: 233
The terrified citizens of Constantinople are plagued by mysterious sorcery. A boy had traded the lives of his family for power. A Christian scholar must track down the magic threatening his world. All paths lead to the squalid prison deep below the city, where a man who believes he is a wolf lies chained. Views: 232
