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Earth has become a library planet for thousands of years, a bastion of both useful and useless knowledge-esoterica of all types, history, science, politics-gathered by teams of "pack rats" who scour the galaxy for any scrap of information. Knowledge is power, knowledge is wealth, and knowledge can be a weapon. As powerful dictators come and go over the course of history, the cadre of dedicated librarians is sworn to obey the lawful government . . . and use their wits to protect the treasure trove of knowledge they have collected over the millennia. Views: 1 027
Patrick Taylor first charmed readers with *An Irish Country Doctor, * a warm and enchanting novel in the tradition of James Herriot and Jan Karon. Now Taylor returns to the colorful Northern Ireland community of Ballybucklebo, where there's always something brewing beneath the village's deceptively sleepy surface.
Young Doctor Barry Laverty has only just begun his assistantship under his eccentric mentor, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, but he already feels right at home in Ballybucklebo. When the sudden death of a patient casts a cloud over Barry's reputation, his chances of establishing himself in the village are endangered, especially since the grieving widow is threatening a lawsuit.
While he anxiously waits for the postmortem results that he prays will exonerate him, Barry must regain the trust of the gossipy Ulster village, one patient at a time. From a put-upon shop girl with a mysterious rash to the troubled pregnancy of a winsome young lass who's not quite married yet, Ballybucklebo provides plenty of cases to keep the two country G.P.s busy.
Not all their challenges are medical in nature. When a greedy developer sets his sights on the very heart of the community, the village pub, it's up to the doctors to save the Black Swan (affectionately known to the locals as the "Mucky Duck") from being turned into an overpriced tourist trap. After all, the good citizens of Ballybucklebo need some place to drink to each other's health. . . .
Whether you've visited in the past, or are discovering Ballybucklebo for the first time, An Irish Country Village is an ideal location for anyone looking for wit, warmth, and just a touch of blarney. Views: 1 026
This fast-paced adventure fantasy trilogy starts with murder and leads teenagers Nathan and Kelly out of their once-familiar world as they struggle to find answers to the tragedy. A mysterious mirror with phantom images, a camera that takes pictures of things they can t see, and a violin that unlocks unrecognizable voices each enigma takes the teens further into an alternate universe where nothing is as it seems. Find out what happens when good battles evil in an alternate universe Interfinity is imminent. In this second book in the Echoes from the Edge series, the merging of Earth and its parallel dimensions means one thing to Nathan Shepherd he must rescue his parents while attempting to save his world and others. But signs foretell the impending collapse of the cosmos. Nathan and his friend Kelly watch the night sky transform into a giant mirror, as stars are replaced by scattered reflections of Earth. The teens are not the only ones on a mission. Mictar, a dimensional stalker who consumes the life energy of his victims, fights to control the universe a universe Nathan knows belongs to God. Journeying through dimensional realities, Nathan and Kelly must draw on their God-given gifts of wisdom and courage and the help of faithful friends, as they battle Mictar for lives and worlds sliding toward the edge of destruction." Views: 1 026
A comedic brand of Reverse Harem like you’ve never read before.
Meet Catherine of the Southern Kingdom—a foul-mouthed, unladylike Princess who never anticipated three dhampir Princes aiding in her quest to save her sister’s life.
Catherine is next in line to become Queen of the Southern Kingdom; she’s a fighter not a leader. She’d much rather slay dragons alongside the royal guard than wear a crown.
During an outing in the forest, her sister Lucy is kidnapped by the Drakin Clan—cruel dragon shifters who’ve been terrorising surrounding kingdoms for decades.
At the request of the king, and Catherine’s only option, she must strike a deal with the three princes of the Western Kingdom.
The wickedly handsome dhampir brothers insist upon her choosing one of them as her mate and future king to rule alongside her in return for their aid in rescuing Lucy.
These men will fight for her, drive her insane and compete for her affection. Will she be able to resist their forward affections or finally open her heart to love?
A dangerous quest, a feisty, badass princess with a destiny who must keep her cool around three insanely inappropriate dhampir Princes. Views: 1 026
The Terro-Human Future History is Piper\'s detailed account of the next 6000 years of human history. 1942, the year the first fission reactor was constructed, is defined as the year 1 A.E. (Atomic Era). In 1973, a nuclear war devastates the planet, eventually laying the groundwork for the emergence of a Terran Federation, once humanity goes into space and develops antigravity technology. The story "The Edge of the Knife" (collected in Empire) occurs slightly before the war, and involves a man who sees flashes of the future. It links many key elements of Piper\'s series. Views: 1 025
"Reading is a many-layered process like writing," observes Samuel R. Delany, a Nebula and Hugo award-winning author and a major commentator on American literature and culture. In this collection of six extended essays, Delany challenges what he calls "the hard-edged boundaries of meaning" by going beyond the customary limits of the genre in which he's writing. By radically reworking the essay form, Delany can explore and express the many layers of his thinking about the nature of art, the workings of language, and the injustices and ironies of social, political, and sexual marginalization. Thus Delany connects, in sometimes unexpected ways, topics as diverse as the origins of modern theater, the context of lesbian and gay scholarship, the theories of cyborgs, how metaphors mean, and the narrative structures in the Star Wars trilogy.
"Over the course of his career," Kenneth James writes in his extensive introduction, "Delany has again and again thrown into question the world-models that all too many of us unknowingly live by." Indeed, Delany challenges an impressive list of world-models here, including High and Low Art, sanity and madness, mathematical logic and the mechanics of mythmaking, the distribution of wealth in our society, and the limitations of our sexual vocabulary. Also included are two essays that illustrate Delany's unique chrestomathic technique, the grouping of textual fragments whose associative interrelationships a reader must actively trace to read them as a resonant argument. Whether writing about Wagner or Hart Crane, Foucault or Robert Mapplethorpe, Delany combines a fierce and often piercing vision with a powerful honesty that beckons us to share in the perspective of these Longer Views. Views: 1 025
Tyranny comes in many guises, and tyrants will thrive in palaces and one room hovels, in back alleys and playgrounds. Tyrants abound on the verges of civilization, where disorder frays the rule of civil conduct, and all propriety surrenders to brutal imposition. Millions are made to kneel and yet more millions die horrible deaths in a welter of suffering and misery.
But we’ll leave all that behind as we plunge into escapist fantasy of the most irrelevant kind, and in the ragged wake of the tale told in Lees of Laughter’s End, our most civil adventurers, Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, along with their suitably phlegmatic manservant, Emancipor Reese, make gentle landing upon a peaceful beach, beneath a quaint village above the strand and lying at the foot of a majestic castle, and therein make acquaintance with the soft-hearted and generous folk of Spendrugle, which lies at the mouth of the Blear River and falls under the benign rule of the Lord of Wurms in his lovely keep.
Make welcome, then, to Spendrugle’s memorable residents, including the man who should have stayed dead, the woman whose prayers should never have been answered, the tax collector everyone ignores, the ex-husband town militiaman who never married, the beachcomber who lives in his own beard, and the now singular lizard cat who used to be plural, and the girl who likes to pee in your lap. And of course, hovering over all, the denizen of the castle keep, Lord –
Ah, but there lies this tale, and so endeth this blurb, with one last observation: when tyrants collide, they have dinner.
And a good time is had by all. Views: 1 025
Copyright Beth Revis 2014 Views: 1 024
This is the second novel in "Remembrance of Earth’s Past", the near-future trilogy written by the China's multiple-award-winning science fiction author, Cixin Liu.
In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion — four centuries in the future. The aliens' human collaborators have been defeated but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret.
This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead. Views: 1 024
What happens when your fantasy world turns real...?
Each vacation for the past nine years, cousins Patrick, Ruth, Ellen, Ted, and Laura have played a game they call the “Secret”—and invented, scripted world full of witches, unicorns, a magic ring, court intrigue, and the Dragon King. In the Secret, they can imagine anything into reality, and shape destiny. Then the unbelievable happens: by trick or by chance, they actually find themselves in the Secret Country, their made-up identities now real. The five have arrived at the start of their games, with the Country on the edge of war. What was once exciting and wonderful now looms threateningly before them, and no one is sure how to stop it… or if they will ever get back home.
"An intricate sparkling web of intrigue and magic. One of me very favorites.”—Patricia C. Wrede, author of Dealing with Dragons Views: 1 024
The Extraordinary New York Times Bestseller
In California's central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.
Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy. Views: 1 024
Prince Roger MacClintock is a spoiled young princeling hardly worth the space he takes up. Now he must become a man, or the entire galaxy will suffer arrested adolescence. Views: 1 024
After a devastating nuclear accident, all men on Earth are rendered sterile, even the unborn in the womb. Ten months later, a doctor delivers a perfectly healthy baby girl, and it's soon discovered that the child's father, who has the surname Adam, was miles under the surface of Earth inside an iron mine during the explosion. It would appear that this Mr. Adam just became a lot more popular.
Second Pocket Books printing, with cover and interior line drawings by Barye Phillips. Views: 1 024
Deep below the University, there is a dark place. Few people know of it: a broken web of ancient passageways and abandoned rooms. A young woman lives there, tucked among the sprawling tunnels of the Underthing, snug in the heart of this forgotten place.
Her name is Auri, and she is full of mysteries.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a brief, bittersweet glimpse of Auri’s life, a small adventure all her own. At once joyous and haunting, this story offers a chance to see the world through Auri’s eyes. And it gives the reader a chance to learn things that only Auri knows...
In this book, Patrick Rothfuss brings us into the world of one of The Kingkiller Chronicle’s most enigmatic characters. Full of secrets and mysteries, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is the story of a broken girl trying to live in a broken world.
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
You might not want to buy this book.
I know, that’s not the sort of thing an author is supposed to say. The marketing people aren’t going to like this. My editor is going to have a fit. But I’d rather be honest with you right out of the gate.
First, if you haven’t read my other books, you don’t want to start here.
My first two books are The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear. If you’re curious to try my writing, start there. They’re the best introduction to my world. This book deals with Auri, one of the characters from that series. Without the context of those books, you’re probably going to feel pretty lost.
Second, even if you have read my other books, I think it’s only fair to warn you that this is a bit of a strange story. I don’t go in for spoilers, but suffice to say that this one is ... different. It doesn’t do a lot of the things a classic story is supposed to do. And if you’re looking for a continuation of Kvothe’s storyline, you’re not going to find it here.
On the other hand, if you’d like to learn more about Auri, this story has a lot to offer. If you love words and mysteries and secrets. If you’re curious about the Underthing and alchemy. If you want to know more about the hidden turnings of my world...
Well, then this book might be for you. Views: 1 024
It's a short novella written from Nathaniel's point of view, can be read as stand alone or a prequel to £6.19 per Witching Hour (Paranormal Personnel Saga # 1)
I am a Dhampir — half vampire and half human. When my father died he was brought back to life by a vampire. He returned to my human mother as a vampire, and nine months later I was born.
Thoughts about Julia had corrupted my mind to the point that I couldn’t function. Since Isabelle, I’d avoided getting involved in a real relationship, keeping things to sex only. I had my routine and women who wanted to sleep with me. But now I didn’t want other women; I only wanted Julia. Views: 1 024
