Based on true events, this beautifully rendered novel from the author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars brilliantly explores a World War II prison camp, where Japanese prisoners resolve to take drastic action to wipe away their shame.
Alice is a young woman living on her father-in-law's farm on the edge of an Australian country town, while her husband is held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian anarchist at the prisoner-of-war camp down the road, is assigned to work on the farm, she hopes that being kind to him will somehow influence her husband's treatment. What she doesn't anticipate is how dramatically Giancarlo will expand her outlook and self-knowledge.
But what most challenges Alice and her fellow townspeople is the utter foreignness of the thousand-plus Japanese inmates and their culture, which the camp commanders fatally misread. Mortified by being taken alive in battle and preferring a violent death to the shame of living, they plan an outbreak, to shattering and far-reaching effects on all the citizens around them.
In a career spanning half a century, Thomas Keneally has proved a master at exploring ordinary lives caught up in extraordinary events. With this profoundly gripping and thought-provoking novel, inspired by a notorious incident in New South Wales in 1944, he once again shows why he is celebrated as a writer who looks into the heart of the human condition with a piercing intelligence that few can match. - Sunday Telegraph Views: 610
Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about their beloved "Bear," who is no longer lighting up their work lives.
Yet all is not as it appears. Os Soldados Ousados de Barba—"The Daring Soldiers of Barba"—have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal, backward, and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up?
A droll, playful novel, The New Republic addresses weighty issues like terrorism with the deft, tongue-in-cheek touch that is vintage Shriver. It also presses the more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug? What's their secret? And in the end, who has the better life—the admired, or the admirer? Views: 606
When you dance with Death, you have to be willing to roll the bones...Raven Bonetalker, the Daughter of Bones, has her plate full. Not only is her neighbor still driving her nuts, but she's in a new relationship with Kipa, the Lord of the Wolves, and neither one is ready for everything that entails. But life takes a sinister turn when a spirit begins siphoning off the life force of one of Kipa's wolf shifters.Gunnar, a member of the SuVahta—the pack of divine wolf shifters bound to the Lord of Wolves—is dying, and nobody can figure out why. Gunnar blames himself for the death of his beloved wife, and he believes she is haunting him.When Kipa asks Raven to examine the shifter, she finds a far deadlier spirit latched on. And the only way Raven can help is to first agree to a deadly alliance with one of the ancient Ante-Fae—Arachna, the Web Weaver. But Arachna's price is far steeper than Raven can afford to pay, and the fallout threatens... Views: 606
Since his first published story, "Apartness," appeared in 1965, Vernor Vinge has forged a unique and awe-inspiring career in science fiction as his work has grown and matured. He is now one of the most celebrated science fiction writers in the field , having won the field's top award, the Hugo, for each of his last two novels.
Now, for the first time, this illustrious author gathers all his short fiction into a single volume. This collection is truly the definitive Vinge, capturing his visionary ideas at their very best. It also contains a never-before-published novella, one that represents precisely what this collection encapsulates--bold, unique, challenging science fictional ideas brought to vivid life with compelling storytelling.
Including such major pieces as "The Ungoverned" and "The Blabber," this sumptuous volume will satisfy any reader who loves the sense of wonder, and the excitement of great SF.
The volume collects Vinge's short fiction through 2001 (except "True Names", including Vinge's comments from the earlier two volumes.)
Contents:
"Bookworm, Run!"
"The Accomplice"
"The Peddler's Apprentice" (with Joan D. Vinge)
"The Ungoverned"
"Long Shot"
"Apartness"
"Conquest by Default"
"The Whirligig of Time"
"Bomb Scare"
"The Science Fair"
"Gemstone"
"Just Peace" (with William Rupp)
"Original Sin"
"The Blabber"
"Win A Nobel Prize!" (originally published in Nature, Vol 407 No 6805 "Futures")
"The Barbarian Princess" (this is also the first section of "Tatja Grimm's World")
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" (occurs in the same milieu as Rainbows End) (winner 2002 Hugo Award for Best Novella) Views: 605
Three month old alien Clem faces his first day of Kaxian duty with anxiety. What will be his assignment? If only his tail didn't have a mind of its own, he might be less anxious. This is a free 10-page short story. Hope you like it and want to read the Dog Aliens books! They are written to amuse people of all ages who love dogs. No dogs are harmed in any of these stories.Mia is an aging, often grumpy house cat. Her new sister Eve is a spunky, young excitable tabby cat. Together with their Aunts, the family sets out to the village of Helmston for Christmas shopping. When Mia and Eve arrive they meet some new friends who have lost the spirit of Christmas and need some help to find it again, including two little sisters desperate to help their father and a mean old banker with a deeper story. When the entire village of Helmston races to help a ship in the harbour, Mia and Eve will come to the rescue once again and help everyone have a Merry Christmas. Views: 605
A murderous vigilante gang on the prowl, a ruthless psychiatrist with a thirst for mind control, a poison-obsessed colonel backed by his own private army...it was a case straight out of Riley's Red Line Files and for cops with careers and lives worth preserving it couldn't get much worse - but for Furn and Breeze of the Rogue Intercept Police, it was time to play.In a post-apocalyptic world known as the Territory of Malm, infants are born soulless. With a hideous appearance and unquenchable hunger, they are kept out of sight until they are Chosen.Long ago, the residents of Malm placed their faith in the Office of Souls to lead them and keep them safe after the human race was almost destroyed in the time known only as "Before". But someone long forgotten has other plans, and that means unleashing unspeakable evil into their world.Soul Implantation Day 3675 starts out like any other, and follows the paths of six people who are destined to meet in the courtyard of the Fountain of Souls. They bear witness to a soul implantation ceremony gone terribly awry. Not all of them will survive, and some will suffer a fate far worse than death.Length: 25,000 words*This novella was previously released under the title "The Soul Garden".*The complete Twisted Souls series:The Soul Ripper (Twisted Souls #1)Twisted Souls (Twisted Souls #2)Soul Cycle (Twisted Souls #3)A Soul to Settle (Twisted Souls #4) Views: 605
In illuminating detail, Winchester, bestselling author of The Professor & the Madman ("Elegant & scrupulous"—NY Times Book Review) & Krakatoa ("A mesmerizing page-turner"—Time) tells the story of Joseph Needham, the Cambridge scientist who unlocked the most closely held secrets of China, long the world's most technologically advanced country.
No cloistered don, this tall, married Englishman was a freethinking intellectual. A nudist, he was devoted to quirky folk dancing. In 1937, while working as a biochemist at Cambridge, he fell in love with a visiting Chinese student, with whom he began a lifelong affair. His mistress persuaded him to travel to her home country, where he embarked on a series of expeditions to the frontiers of the ancient empire. He searched for evidence to bolster a conviction that the Chinese were responsible for hundreds of humankind's most familiar innovations—including printing, the compass, explosives, suspension bridges, even toilet paper—often centuries before others. His journeys took him across war-torn China, consolidating his admiration for the Chinese. After the war, he determined to announce what he'd discovered & began writing Science & Civilisation in China, describing the country's long history of invention & technology. By the time he died, he'd produced, almost single-handedly, 17 volumes, making him the greatest one-man encyclopedist ever.
Epic & intimate, The Man Who Loved China tells the sweeping story of China thru Needham's life. Here's a tale of what makes men, nations & humankind great—related by one of the world's best storytellers.
Prologue
The barbarian & the celestial
Bringing fuel in snowy weather
The discovering of China
The rewards of restlessness
The making of his masterpiece
Persona non grata: the certain fall from grace
The passage to the gate Views: 604
Becky loves Sam, but there's a pretty young teacher who's moved into town, and Sam is charmed. So are all the other boys. Now what? This is a rather evil short story set in the context of a young adult romance. NOTE: This is a revised and complete version!Becky loves Sam, but there's a pretty young teacher who's moved into town, and Sam is charmed. So are all the other boys. Now what? This is a rather evil short story set in the context of a young adult romance. NOTE: This is a revised and complete version of the original story. Views: 604
A guard, driving through the woods finds a long lost campground. What he finds will give him nightmares for the rest of his life.Compelling, entertaining accounts of loosing weight, in a format never told before.This completely free e-book, will serve and double as a guide conselor and a true understanding of what loosing weight means. Particularly, the different type of heavy weight most people carry on their shoulders. The constant navigation of the subject, tended to bore the author incredibly, to the point of seeing the necessity to convey a different approach on such sensitive subject of tremendous modern relevant.Take a step and navigate the e-book, like Romina R. What do you have to loose, is free!Don't forget to read my other e-book,entitled " Be Safe", an extreme view of something so notorious, yet hidden. Views: 604
The Gonzo memoir from one of the most influential voices in American literature, Kingdom of Fear traces the course of Hunter S. Thompson’s life as a rebel—from a smart-mouthed Kentucky kid flaunting all authority to a convention-defying journalist who came to personify a wild fusion of fact, fiction, and mind-altering substances.
Brilliant, provocative, outrageous, and brazen, Hunter S. Thompson's infamous rule breaking—in his journalism, in his life, and under the law—changed the shape of American letters, and the face of American icons.
Call it the evolution of an outlaw. Here are the formative experiences that comprise Thompson’s legendary trajectory alongside the weird and the ugly. Whether detailing his exploits as a foreign correspondent in Rio, his job as night manager of the notorious O’Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, his epic run for sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, or the sensational legal maneuvering that led to his full acquittal in the famous 99 Days trial, Thompson is at the peak of his narrative powers in Kingdom of Fear. And this boisterous, blistering ride illuminates as never before the professional and ideological risk taking of a literary genius and transgressive icon. Views: 603
The conquistador Hernán Cortés is hell-bent on conquering Mexico for the Aztecs’ gold. Having destroyed the Maya at Potonchan, Cortés now marches on Tenochtitlan, the Golden City of the Aztecs, wrapped in the aura of a returning, vengeful god.
His small force of just five hundred men will have to defeat the psychotic emperor Moctezuma and the armies of hundreds of thousands he commands. Cortés expects that the warlike Tlascalans, hereditary enemies of the Aztecs, will join him, but instead finds himself locked in a deadly struggle and a fight for his life. Even as Cortés risks all in the bloody campaign against the Tlascalans, he plays mind games with Moctezuma, aiming to dismantle the Aztec emperor’s confidence and defeat him psychologically before ever having to face him on the battlefield.
The supernatural and compelling rich history combine in this tale of love, brutal courage and triumphs. War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent is a story of staggering magnificence.
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www.grahamhancock.com Views: 603
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"[A]n extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall."--Newsday
From Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century.
"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 602
