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
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: 651
A moving story of a brother, a sister and a swallow, and how all are in some way victims of the horrors of landmines.Olly’s brother Matt wants to go and work with children who have been made orphans, through war, in Africa. He wants to be a clown and make them laugh. His mother and sister want him to stay in England and go to university.Hero, a swallow, has a journey to make too. He must fly to Africa for the winter to join all the other swallows. His journey is difficult and fraught with danger.Three separate stories are woven into one powerful and moving novel whose central theme not only exposes the horrors of war and of landmines, but also the endurance of the human spirit.
Michael divides his time between his writing and running Farms for City Children, a charity which each year takes up to 3,000 children to a working farm for a week. Michael and his wife Clare were awarded MBEs this year for their work with the charity. Before the first farm opened 22 years ago, Morpurgo was a teacher and his knowledge of children’s experiences, plus his experience of Farms enrich his writing enormously.Michael Morpurgo has won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and the Smarties Book Prize. Views: 651
Poems deal with writing, death and immortality, literature, city life, illness, war, and the past. Views: 651
A new edition published on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Baldwin’s death, including a new introduction by an important contemporary writer
Since its original publication in 1955, this first nonfiction collection of essays by James Baldwin remains an American classic. His impassioned essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written.
“A straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity.” —Langston Hughes, The New York Times Book Review
“Written with bitter clarity and uncommon grace.” —Time
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 651
Philip Pullman, author of 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, has remarked that "after nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world." This new collection of Rumi stories fills that need.This fresh prose translation of 105 short teaching stories by Rumi, which form the core of the six-volume Masnavi, explores the hidden spiritual aspects of everyday experience. Rumi transforms the seemingly mundane events of daily life into profound Sufi teaching moments. These prose gems open the mystical portal to the world of the ancient mystic.These stories include well-known and popular tales such as "Angel of Death," "The Sufi and His Cheating Wife," "Moses and the Shepherd," "Chickpeas," and "The Greek and Chinese Painters" as well as the less commonly quoted parables: "The Basket Weaver," "The Mud Eater," and "A Sackful of Pebbles."Rumi's voice alternates between playful and authoritative, whether he is telling stories of ordinary lives or... Views: 651
Longer novels from Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo are always a particular treat, and Private Peaceful is no exception. Tragic, surprising and engaging in equal measures, Morpurgo's novel charts both the childhood of young Thomas Peaceful in the early years of the 20th century, and his eventual underage enlistment in the British army to help fight the First World War.
It is, above all, a poignant story of war and about all of its many life-changing effects on those involved--also the brutality of the commanding regimes and the relentless squalor of trench warfare. It's not for the squeamish--Morpurgo tells it like it was and his honest insight is on every page for all to appreciate.
"Tommo" Peaceful is recalling his childhood from those terrible battlefields. He remembers his big brother Charlie taking him to his first day of school, the death of his father, his mum working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table. He remembers his brother Joe, who some called simple, but who to Tommo was very special. He also recalls the only girl in his life, Molly, and how Charlie somehow took her away from him. But as the World turned to War, he had to grow up fast. Together Charlie and Tommo enlist and are sent to France, almost immediately, to what could only be described as pure hell on Earth. Bullets, bombs, death. Shells, noise, dirt. Disease, rats, stench. Charlie and Tommo fight for their lives and to stay together--facing certain death in the face every time they try to advance the British lines.
Morpurgo rattles through his narrative at some speed, gracefully capturing both the horror of war and the ecstasy of life. The ending is shocking and memorable. This is difficult, emotionally draining but highly recommended reading. (Recommended for ages 10 and over.) --John McLay Views: 650
This is a collection of easy to read story poems that weave tales of fantasy, war and humor.The Heilmann Drive allowed humanity to spread across the stars and prosper for nearly two thousand years. But when the use of the device begins to eat into the fabric of the universe, the People's Interstellar Republic bans all faster-than-light travel. A new age begins, one of isolation and stagnation. This era becomes known as the Fall.One rebel, Captain Seth Garland, steals the last starship in existence. He is now mankind's only hope of re-uniting the stars.The Fallen Goddess: When Captain Garland's crew questions their safety aboard their ship, he goes in search of of an engineer who can repair the Heilmann Drive. His quest leads him to a discovery that will redefine the future of his rebellion and change the destiny of mankind. Views: 649
In this horse adventure perfect for fans of Black Beauty, a Connemara pony is pampered and beloved, then abused and neglected, until twelve-year-old Rae brings love to her again.Princess lives a charmed life of brown sugar cubes, crunchy apples, sweet grass, and adoration. But it is a lonely life; her elderly owner keeps Princess separate from other ponies so his show-ring champion will remain pristine. When Princess's owner has a stroke, she is thrust into the care of an unscrupulous trainer and his wife, who steal from the farm and leave. Abandoned to starve with other, tougher ponies, Princess is bereft of all hope. Meanwhile, a girl named Rae wants a pony more than anything and is striving to make her unrealistic dream a reality. Rae and Princess need each other, though neither realizes this when they eventually meet. Rae must learn to see beyond Princess's scars and Princess must learn to trust again in order for them both to find their own hidden strengths... Views: 649
This late work from Samuel Beckett is the haunting picture of an old woman alone in a cabin, who watches the evening and the morning star and ventures out chiefly to visit a grave. In prose of great poetic beauty, which the author translated from his original French text Mal vu mal dit in 1982, Beckett returns to the imagery of the Old and New Testaments to speculate on the great questions of human existence. One of the great writers of the 20th century, Beckett won the Nobel Prize in 1969. He is remembered primarily as a novelist and playwright, producing Waiting for Godot and the trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable, though he was also a poet and, when he chose to be, a discerning critic of great originality. Beckett continues to exert a powerful influence on other writers and interest in his work has grown since his death in 1989. Views: 649
In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich, the bestselling author of the National Book Award-winning The Round House and the Pulitzer Prize nominee The Plague of Doves wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture.North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence—but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played... Views: 649
Orson Scott Card offers a Christmas gift to his millions of fans with *A War of Gifts*, a short novel set during Ender Wiggin's first years at the Battle School where it is forbidden to celebrate religious holidays.
The children come from many nations, many religions; while they are being trained for war, religious conflict between them is not on the curriculum. But Dink Meeker, one of the older students, doesn't see it that way. He thinks that giving gifts isn't exactly a religious observation, and on Sinterklaas Day he tucks a present into another student's shoe.
This small act of rebellion sets off a battle royal between the students and the staff, but some surprising alliances form when Ender comes up against a new student, Zeck Morgan. The War over Santa Claus will force everyone to make a choice. Views: 648
Letters Home represents Sylvia Plath's correspondence from her time at Smith College in the early fifties, through her meeting with, and subsequent marriage to, the poet Ted Hughes, up to her death in February 1963. The letters are addressed mainly to her mother, with whom she had an extremely close and confiding relationship, but there are also some to her brother Warren and her benefactress Mrs Prouty. Plath's energy, enthusiasm and her passionate tackling of life burst onto these pages, providing us with a vivid and intimate portrait of a woman who has come to be regarded as one of the greatest of twentieth-century poets. In addition to her capacity for domestic and writerly happiness, however, these letters also hint at Plath's potential for deep despair, which reached its crisis when she holed up in a London flat for the terrible winter of 1963. Views: 648
A gentle and deeply moving story of a young girl and her bear, told with great charm by a master storyteller.High in the mountains, in a tiny village, an abandoned bear cub is adopted by a lonely orphan child. Soon they are inseparable, beloved by the whole village – safe, until the arrival of a glamorous film crew who need a dancing bear… Views: 647
