The water and the air in the Fisher Valley were pristine before the coal seam gas companies arrived with government-endorsed gas exploration and development licences. Then they marched roughshod over the owners of privately owned, highly productive farming and grazing land, paying them little in the way of compensation. After drilling, they pumped water, sand and toxic chemicals at high pressure hundreds of metres into the ground in a process known as 'fracking', which exploded the coal seams and released the methane, while giving scant attention to the ground, air and water pollution they were creating. When little Charlie Paxton, aged only six, dies from a mysterious form of cancer, his father, Charles Paxton, swears to have his revenge. Charles is determined to stop the gas companies even if it means blowing up their wells and blocking their access to agricultural properties. But big gas is powerful and backed by rapacious governments who won't hesitate to use their police and army to smash through blockades. Can a small group of farmers, greens and conservatives stand against the might of big gas and the governments complicit in helping it? -- "I moved to the country for peace and quiet and little did I know that I would become embroiled in the battle of my life. Peter Ralph brings to light the everyday struggle of people who find their lives suddenly caught up with one of the most insidious industries in the world - Coal Seam Gas." (-Dayne Pratzky, a.k.a. 'The Frackman') -- The author, Peter Ralph, was a CEO of a large private company that he took public in the early nineties before becoming a successful share and derivatives trader. He now spends much of his time writing, and the breadth of his business career has provided him with a background and insights well suited to writing suspenseful business and topical novels. He is the author of "Collins Street Whores" and "The CEO," and co-authored "Pass the Sugar" with Joe Hachem. Views: 1 168
"An artist abandons city life to wander into the mountains to meditate, but when he decides to stay at a near-deserted inn he soon finds himself drawn to the daughter of the innkeeper. This strange and beautiful woman is rumoured to have abandoned her husband and fallen in love with a priest at a nearby temple. The artist becomes entranced by her tragic aura. She reminds him of Millais's portrait of Ophelia drowning and he wants to paint her. Yet, troubled by a certain quality in her expression, he struggles to complete the portrait until he is finally able to penetrate the enigma of her life."
Interspersed with philosophies of both East and West, Soseki's writing skillfully blends two very different cultures in this unique representation of an artist struggling with his craft and his environment. Views: 1 166
When an heiress moves to a villa on Italy’s Lake Nemi, a houseguest plots to take it—and more—in this novel by a prizewinning master of dark comedy.
When American heiress Maggie Radcliffe relocates to enchanting Lake Nemi, just south of Rome, she is determined to live in tune with ancient pagan rhythms of art and nature. At her new home—one of three that she owns—she is constantly surrounded by a cast of quirky characters, and her latest guest is old friend Hubert Mallindaine, an unrepentant grifter who claims to be a direct descendant of the goddess Diana, whose spirit is said to rest at Nemi.
As soon as Mallindaine arrives, Radcliffe’s vast material wealth begins to slip quietly out the door. Desperate to regain it, Radcliffe attempts to evict Mallindaine from her home, but a host of new problems threaten to destroy all that she has.
From the PEN Award–winning author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Driver’s Seat, and other modern classics, The Takeover is a suspenseful, acidic comedy about the clash between the conventions of old wealth and the inevitable tide of modernity. It is a testament to the mind and work of “the most sharply original fictional imagination of our time” (Sunday Times).
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland. Views: 1 164
These mad immortal stories, now surfaced from the literary underground, have addicted legions of American readers, even though the high literary establishment continues to ignore them. In Europe, however (particularly in Germany, Italy, and France where he is published by the great publishing houses), he is critically recognized as one of America's greatest living realist writers.
Charles Bukowski was born in Andernach, Germany in 1920 and brought to America at the age of two. Eighteen or twenty books of prose and poetry, Bukowski, after publishing prose in Story and Portfolio, stopped writing for ten years. He arrived in the charity ward of the Los Angeles County General Hospital, hemorrhaging as a climax to a ten year drinking bout. Some say he didn't die. After leaving the hospital he got a typewriter and began writing again—this time, poetry. He later returned to prose and gained some fame with his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man. After 14 years in the Post Office he resigned at age 50, he says, to keep from going insane. He now claims to be unemployable and eats typewriter ribbons. Views: 1 164
Leonard English, a sad and intense young man recovering from a suicide attempt, comes to Provincetown on Cape Cod to take a job as a disc jockey-cum-private detective. Provincetown is a last outpost of civilization, an end of the earth, a resort town emptied by autumn, where many of those who wear skirts are not women and many of the women do not love men. On his first day there, English encounters a beautiful young woman at Mass and falls desperately in love with her, but Leanna turns out to be gay; and English's first assignment as a detective, a search for the elusive artist Gerald Twinbrook, is equally frustrating. As autumn turns to winter and Leonard's anguish mounts, his desperate quests - for Twinbrook, for love, for redemption - take on an increasingly apocalyptic coloring. Views: 1 162
What would you sell your soul for?
Sixteen-year-old Sarah Trevelyan would give anything to regain the power and wealth her family has lost, so she makes a bargain with Azrael, Lord of Darkwater Hall. He gives her one hundred years and the means to accomplish her objective--in exchange for her soul. Fast-forward a hundred years to Tom, a fifteen-year-old boy who dreams of attending Darkwater Hall School but doesn't believe he has the talent. Until he meets a professor named Azrael, who offers him a bargain. Will Sarah be able to stop Tom from making the same mistake she did a century ago?
This is smart fantasy mixed with elements of horror from master storyteller Catherine Fisher. She says, "Darkwater Hall is an image of the power and knowledge we all desire. But what will we pay for them, and are they worth the price?" Views: 1 162
A new translation by Scot James Hogarth for the first unabridged English edition of the novel, which tells the story of a reculsive fisherman from the Channel Islands who must free a ship that has run aground in order to win the hand of the woman he loves, a shipowner's daughter. Views: 1 161
Award-winning nature writer Diane Ackerman confronts the fact that the human race is now the single dominant force of change on the planet. Humans have "subdued 75 per cent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness." We now collect the DNA of vanishing species in a "frozen ark," equip orangutans with iPads, create wearable technologies and synthetic species that might one day outsmart us. With her distinctive gift for making scientific discovery intelligible to the layperson, Ackerman takes us on an exciting journey to understand this bewildering new reality, introducing us to many of the people and ideas now creating--perhaps saving--the future.
The Human Ageis a surprising, optimistic engagement with the dramatic transformations that have shaped, and continue to alter, our world, our relationship with nature and our prospects for the future. Views: 1 159
Praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic for its elegant and sensuous prose, "Talking to the Dead" tells the story of two sisters whose lives are bound by the hidden and surprising truth about the long-ago death of their infant brother. Views: 1 156
"When someone asks 'Where does [Kerouac] get that stuff?' say: 'From you!' He lay awake all night listening with eyes and ears. A night of a thousand years. Heard it in the womb, heard it in the cradle, heard it in school , heard it on the floor of life's stock exchange where dreams are traded for gold." —Henry MillerOne of the dozen books written by Jack Kerouac in the early and mid-1950s, Maggie Cassidy was not published until 1959, after the appearance of On the Road had made its author famous overnight, Long out of print, this touching novel of adolescent love in a New England mill town, with its straight-forward narrative structure, is one of Kerouac's most accesible works. It is a remarkable , bittersweet evocation of the awkwardness and the joy of growing up in America. Views: 1 156
From New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich comes a haunting novel that continues the rich and enthralling Ojibwe saga begun in her novel Tracks.
After taking her mother’s name, Four Souls, for strength, the strange and compelling Fleur Pillager walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her tribe’s land. But revenge is never simple, and her intentions are complicated by her dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her. Views: 1 155
“A large, lavishly inventive novel . . . an American descendant of The Arabian Nights . . . erudite and artful entertainment.”—*The New York Times Book Review
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At a Manhattan planetarium in 1965, ten-year-old Enzo is whisked away from his young adoptive aunt, Mala. His abductor turns out to be a blood relative: his great-uncle Junius Samax, a wealthy former gambler who lives in a converted Las Vegas hotel surrounded by a priceless art collection and a host of fascinating, idiosyncratic guests. In Samax’s magical world, Enzo receives a unique education and pieces together the mystery of his mother’s life and the complicated history of his adoption. Back in New York, Mala only knows that Enzo has disappeared. After a yearlong search proves fruitless, she enlists in the Navy Nursing Corps and on a hospital ship off Vietnam falls in love with a wounded B-52 navigator, who disappears on his next mission. Devastated again, Mala embarks on a restless, adventurous journey around the world, hoping to overcome the losses that have transformed her life.
Fusing imagination, scholarship, and suspense with remarkable narrative skill, Nicholas Christopher builds a story of tremendous scope, an epic tale of love and destiny, as he traces the intricate latticework of Mala’s and Enzo’s lives. Each remains separate from each other but tied in ways they cannot imagine—until the final miraculous chapter of this extraordinary novel.
“A writer of remarkable gifts.”—The Washington Post Book World
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“This labyrinthine novel . . . is animated by an encompassing lust for beauty.”—*The New Yorker
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“[Nicholas] Christopher is North America’s García Márquez; Borges with emotional weight. . . . This is one of those rare books that, by connecting the stars, catches you in its web.”—The Globe and Mail*
Includes an excerpt of Nicholas Christopher’s Tiger Rag Views: 1 154
Perfect for readers of Tolkien and Garth Nix, The Bone Queen is the highly anticipated prequel to the original Pellinor sequence, and will delight fans of critically acclaimed author Alison Croggon, as well as newcomers to the world of Pellinor.
Cadvan of Lirigon, one of the most powerful Bards of his time, has been exiled from the School of Lirigon for a grievous crime that unleashed the power of the Bone Queen. Isolated and guilt-ridden, he is burdened by memories of his dealings with the Dark. Meanwhile, across Edil-Amarandh, a number of disturbing events suggest that the Bone Queen may not have been successfully banished, as was previously believed. The Light is under threat, but does Cadvan have the strength to face the Bone Queen again? Views: 1 153
Part of the fabulous new hardback library of 22 Vladimir Nabokov books, publishing over the coming year, with an elegant new jacket and text design.
The state has been recently taken over and is being run by the tyrannical and philistine 'Average Man' party. Under the slogans of equality and happiness for all, it has done away with individualism and freedom of thought. Only John Krug, a brilliant philosopher, stands up to the regime. His antagonist, the leader of the new party, is his old school enemy, Paduk - known as the 'Toad'. Grieving over his wife's recent death, Krug is at first dismissive of Paduk's activities and sees no threat in them. But the sinister machine which Paduk has set in motion may prove stronger than the individual, stronger even than the grotesque 'Toad' himself. Views: 1 149
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. Views: 1 145
