Herman Melville was a well-known American novelist in his day, with best-sellers like Typee, but by the time he died in 1891, he had fallen into obscurity. Although his first few books were popular, they too began to collect dust and be forgotten in the country.Then came the Melville Revival in the early 20th century, which breathed life into his legacy and brought his work back to the forefront. Of course, the book that benefited the most from that revival is now considered one of the greatest American novels ever written: Moby Dick. Views: 658
Anne Garland is pursued by three suitors: John Loveday, the eponymous trumpet major in a British regiment, honest and loyal; his brother Bob, a flighty sailor; and Festus Derriman, the cowardly nephew of the local squire. The novel is set in Weymouth during the Napoleonic wars; the town was then anxious about the possibility of invasion by Napoleon. Of John Loveday fights with Wellington in the Peninsular War and and his brother Bob serves with Nelson at Trafalgar. Views: 658
Bestselling and award-winning author Trista Mateer takes an imaginative approach to self-care in this new poetry and prose collection, Aphrodite Made Me Do It. In this empowering retelling, she uses the mythology of the goddess to weave a common thread through the past and present.
By the end of this book, Aphrodite make you believe in the possibility of your own healing. Views: 658
15 contemporary poems about loss and heartbreak in one raw, evocative collection. Words I'll Never Say is Australian writer Lee-Ann Khoh's first poetry chapbook.When women in the City Center are found dead in abandoned houses, consumed by ghouls, the council of vampire hunter clans reports the occurrences as the work of a necromancer. And Margaret is to be the bait used in an attempt to destroy her fiendish power. Will Margaret survive? Will the clans make it to her in time? Or is she to be the next victim of the necromancer? Suspenseful, dark, and full of danger, The Dead of Sanguine Night takes you into the life of a vampire hunter pitted against the horror that lurks in the night. Views: 657
Written and published in French in 1951, and in Samuel Beckett’s English translation in 1956, Malone Dies is the second of his immediate post-war novels, written during what Beckett later referred to as ‘the siege in the room’.
‘Malone’, writes Malone, ‘is what I am called now.’ On his deathbed, whittling away the time with stories and revisions of stories, the octogenarian Malone's account of his condition is contradictory and intermittent, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of darker rages than his precursor Molloy. Malone promises silence, but as a storyteller he delivers irresistibly more. Views: 657
Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them the old green roads are being tarred, cars are being purchased, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their hill in Kelsha, cherishing everything. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their grand-aunt.
It is a strange chance of happiness for Annie. Against that happiness moves the figure of Billy Kerr, with his ambiguous attentions to Sarah, threatening to drive Annie from her last niche of safety in the world. The world of childish innocence also proves sometimes darkened and puzzling to her, and she struggles to find clear ground, clear light - to preserve her sense of love and place against these subtle forces of disquiet. A summer of adventure, pain, delight and ultimately epiphany unfolds for both the children and their elderly caretakers in this poignant and exquisitely told story of innocence, loss and reconciliation. Views: 655
Thirteen of the darkest of Christopher Courtley's Gothic Romantic poems, selected by the author.A chance encounter in a supermarket coffee shop opens old wounds for the ex-Marine and the war widow. Soon they are reliving horrors of death and murder in the Afghan desert, duty and deceit blowing in the wind. Can an icon of crime fiction save them from themselves, or will it be just another case for the Sheriff of Tesco?He walked over to where she was sitting alone in the corner of the supermarket coffee shop sipping a cappuccino. Noticed, close up, that her brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was dashed with blonde highlights, her face young looking, probably mid thirties.“Mind if I join you?” he asked, pulling out a plastic chair.“Be my guest,” She looked up, saw this raw boned man, the angular planes of his face weather tanned, his eyes the palest blue.Although the store was busy with the usual throng of mid-week shoppers there were plenty of empty tables in the cafe. She raised a quizzical eyebrow and met his steady gaze.“Nice morning,” he began his gambit, his eyes not leaving hers. Hazel with flecks of white, like a snow-shower. He made a mental note.“That depends,” she said, “On how you define nice.” She read the ID tag clipped to the breast pocket of his dark blue shirt. John Russell. “I like this spot,” she said, nodding towards the trolley park, ”easy to keep an eye on my shopping from here,” the merest shrug, “you never know, do you.”“That’s for sure,” he replied, biding his time as he sized her up. “Always pays to be careful.”“Not that there’s much worth stealing,” she said, “Since my husband died I don’t do much in the way of fancy cooking anymore. Just convenience stuff, mostly, sort of lost my appetite.”He made another mental note: Widow.“So do you work here, John Russell?”He tilted the ID tag and she read the words under the stylised eye motif: Pinkerton Security.“Oh,” she smiled and the smile widened into a grin, “the dudes who tamed the West, railroad dicks, Dashiell Hammett.” He looked nonplussed“The Pinkertons...we never sleep!”“You’ve lost me,” he said“Don’t tell me you’ve never read Hammett, Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key?”He shook his head.“Great detective writer, oh, I’ve read ‘em all.” She smiled at the puzzled expression he was trying to disguise. “You don’t get it, do you?”“Get what?” This wasn’t the way he had intended to play it; she had thrown him off balance and he felt suddenly unsure of himself.“Why Dashiell Hammett. He was a Pinkerton agent, just like you. The immortal legend handed down from the railroads and the banks of the Wild West...” she glanced around the store, “...to Tesco’s Old Kent Road. Who would have thought it...the legend lives on.”No he didn’t get it. He’d become a 12-hour shift security guard when he left the Royal Marines. It was the only steady job he could get and legends didn’t come into it.She began quoting passages of Hammett from memory. The Maltese Falcon...The Thin Man, telling him they all celebrated the lone detective risking all in the quest for the truth. “And you’re carrying the torch now, John Russell, the Sheriff of Tesco,” she laughed, “ Or do your friends call you Jack?”“Jane, actually,” he smiled, harking back to Lima Company, “they called me Jane.”She laughed. “Jane Russell?”“A bootneck joke,” he said, slightly abashed, “but mostly they called me Colours...short for Colour Sergeant Russell.”"Royal Marines?”He nodded, wondering now if she was putting him on and the familiar stabbing ache started up in his leg. He was about to reply when the pager on his belt cheeped. Russell glanced down thankfully and read the message; looked up again, saw her watching him, and said: “Don’t go away...I’ll be right back.” Views: 655
A gritty, smart thriller from a literary superstar
A killer has Seattle on edge. The serial murderer has been dubbed “the Indian Killer” because he scalps his victims and adorns their bodies with owl feathers. As the city consumes itself in a nightmare frenzy of racial tension, a possible suspect emerges: John Smith. An Indian raised by whites, John is lost between cultures. He fights for a sense of belonging that may never be his—but has his alienation made him angry enough to kill? Alexie traces John Smith’s rage with scathing wit and masterly suspense.
In the electrifying Indian Killer, a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, Sherman Alexie delivers both a scintillating thriller and a searing parable of race, identity, and violence. Views: 655
Longest Poem written by Parekh contains a Herculean, 7389 words, 46257 characters. Composed in his own inimitable style and with stupendous intensity all throughout, the poem is a royal treatise to the chapters of the English language and is the first of its kind evolved in pure poetic verse till the end, unlike many of its contemporaries.The verses within are humble salutations to the boundless chapters of life and love and are a reflection of the poet’s brain, bizarrely stretched to the most unprecedented limits. Now available in the form of a book, this singular poem is one of the most outstanding example of thousands of similies encompassed under one roof and delivered to optimum effect. The poem continues to be unparalleled in its length and one of the most unflailingly distinctive of its kind in the universal english poetic fraternity. This book aims at eventually arriving at the veritable meaning of the chapter called ‘ Life ‘ – interweaving through countless elements and analogies offered by the creations of God – unfurling each instant around us . Views: 655
Play the Piano introduces Charles Bukowski's poetry from the 1970s. He leads a life full of gambling and booze but also finds love. These poems are full of lechery and romance as he struggles to mature. Views: 655
Five teens victimized by sex trafficking try to find their way to a new life in this riveting companion to the New York Times bestselling Tricks from Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank.
In her bestselling novel, Tricks, Ellen Hopkins introduced us to five memorable characters tackling these enormous questions: Eden, the preacher’s daughter who turns tricks in Vegas and is helped into a child prostitution rescue; Seth, the gay farm boy disowned by his father who finds himself without money or resources other than his own body; Whitney, the privileged kid coaxed into the life by a pimp and whose dreams are ruined in a heroin haze; Ginger, who runs away from home with her girlfriend and is arrested for soliciting an undercover cop; and Cody, whose gambling habit forces him into the life, but who is shot and left for dead.
And now, in Traffick, these five are faced with the toughest question of all: Is there a way out? How these five teenagers face the aftermath of their decisions and experiences is the soul of this story that exposes the dark, ferocious underbelly of the child trafficking trade. Heartwrenching and hopeful, Traffick takes us on five separate but intertwined journeys through the painful challenges of recovery, rehabilitation, and renewal to forgiveness and love. All the way home. Views: 654
There comes a time when the last Great War is almost forgotten: a time when people grow and make what they need for the simple lives they live. It is also a time of oppression; when overlords are suspicious of the people, for now is the time foretold. "In the end devastation will be faced. Men will weep. Women will perish. Families will be orphaned. Ruin will reign.There comes a time when the last Great War is almost forgotten: a time when people grow and make what they need for the simple lives they live. It is also a time of oppression; when overlords are suspicious of the people, for now is the time foretold. "In the end devastation will be faced. Men will weep. Women will perish. Families will be orphaned. Ruin will reign. Hope will be gone. Death will give forth life. Out of the sun good will face evil in the unwinnable, final battle. Evil will be ripped apart. Good will be cast into pieces. The prophecy will come to pass…"The Legends of Quone-Loc-Sie are a serialised rework of the Prophecy novel, which as the serial progresses will continue on after the Prophecy ended. Views: 654
Silence is a book that opens up our definitions of self-realization. In many ways, we are treated to an almost cinematic rendering of this search. With the beautiful and, often, desolate landscape of Florida’s orange grove country, Munnis reconceives a past that often blurs memory, truth, perception, and awareness.Silence is a book that opens up our definitions of self-realization. In many ways, we are treated to an almost cinematic rendering of this search. With the beautiful and, often, desolate landscape of Florida’s orange grove country, Munnis reconceives a past that often blurs memory, truth, perception, and awareness. As the narrator, Brian, pushes through his past, his discoveries illuminate the roles each of us play in a family. And when Brian journeys through his past, we are face to face with the surreal and sensory imagery of this family’s life. The cattails, dead birds, and diesel fuel smells surrounding a boy’s life in Titusville make an impressionistic effect while the clear and unadorned realizations of Munnis’ narrator take us to a place of understanding: hatred wrapped in love, misunderstanding and shame masked in silence, love and tenderness in small kindnesses. Complicating this cinematic cycle of poems is the pressure of a family negotiating a life of power, money, and violent tendencies. As dramatic tensions rise in many sections of these poems, the awareness of what these tensions mean rises alongside the pivotal events where race, memory, sex, love, and loss merge. We cannot look away. If we need a word for this inevitability and its power to draw us in, it would be destiny. And in these poems as we travel with narrator, we meet his destiny and the inevitable pursuit and renegotiation of the past.—Wynn Yarbrough, Ph.D, teaches Creative Writing at the University of the District of Columbia. He is also the author of A Boy’s Life (Pessoa Press, 2011) and a critical work, Masculinity in Children’s Animal Stories, 1888-1928: A Critical Study of Anthropomorphic Tales by Wilde, Kipling, Potter, Grahame, and Milne (McFraland Press, 2011). Views: 653
From "a writer of remarkable gifts," "Borges with emotional weight, comes a tale that is at once a fantastical historical mystery, a haunting love story, and a glimpse into theuncanny-the quest for a long-lost book detailing the animals left off Noah's Ark.
Xeno Atlas grows up in the Bronx, his Sicilian grandmother's strange stories of animalspirits his only escape from the legacy of his mother's early death and his stern father's long absences as a common seaman. Shunted off to an isolated boarding school, with his father'sactivities abroad and the source of his newfound wealth grown increasingly mysterious, Xeno turns his early fascination with animals into a personal obsession: his search for the Caravan Bestiary. This medieval text, lostfor eight hundred years, supposedly details the animals not granted passage on the Ark-griffins, hippogriffs, manticores, and basilisks--the vanished remnants of a lost world sometimes glimpsed in theshadowy recesses of our own.
Xeno's quest takes him from the tenements of New York to the jungles of Vietnam to the ancient libraries of Europe-but it is only by riddling out his ownfamily secrets that he can hope to find what he is looking for. A story of panoramic scope and intellectual suspense, The Bestiary is ultimately a tale of heartbreak andredemption. "From the Hardcover edition." Views: 652
