In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system. Young Fift is an only child of the Staid gender, struggling to maintain zir position in the system while developing a friendship with the acclaimed bioengineer Shria—a controversial and intriguing friendship, since Shria is Vail-gendered. Soon Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into a multilayered Unraveling of society. Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . when zir personal crises suddenly take on global significance. What’s a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching? Views: 686
Every wish has a price.This short story is also available in "Infinite Dimensions," a new anthology by Derek Powell.Tom Swanson, new owner of a genuine magic lamp, learns the hard way that every wish has a price.This short story is also available in "Infinite Dimensions," a new anthology by Derek Powell. Views: 686
Named a most anticipated book of 2021 by O, The Oprah MagazineFrom the author of the wildly acclaimed Night Boat to Tangier, one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2019, stories of rural Ireland in the classic mode: full of love (and sex), melancholy and magic, bedecked in some of the most gorgeous prose being written today.With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character, and setting in these eleven exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in That Old Country Music represent some of the finest fiction being written today. Views: 686
Short story collection containing:
The Metal Man
Dead Star Station
Nonstop to Mars
The Crucible of Power
Breakdown
"With Folded Hands"
The Equalizer
The Peddler’s Nose
The Happiest Creature
The Cold Green Eye
Operation Gravity
Guinevere For Everybody
Jamboree
The Highest Drive Views: 686
“Feels like a major collection” – The Washington PostAn incredible short fiction collection to stand with Ted Chiang's Exhalation and Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, from award-winning, Clarke Award, John W. Campbell, BFS, BSFA, Shirley Jackson, James Tiptree Jr and Saboteur Award nominated author, Aliya Whiteley. The new collection of beautiful, strange and disarming short stories from the award-winning author of The Beauty, Clarke Award nominee The Loosening Skin and The Arrival of Missives, Aliya Whiteley. In 16 stories Whiteley deftly unpeels the strangeness of everyday life through beguiling gardens, rebellious bodies and journeys across familiar worlds, with her trademark wit and compassion. Witness the future of farming in a new Ice Age, or the artist bringing life to glass; the many-eyed monsters we carry and the secret cities inside our bodies; the alien invasion... Views: 685
This satirical novel tells the adventures of beautiful Kate, a fictional daughter of a planter turned pirate 'Major Stede Bonnet' who was known as The 'Gentleman Pirate.' Kate falls in love with her friend Dickory as they share adventures while trying to change the ways of her pirate father. Views: 685
A classic story of moral struggle in an age of turbulent social change and the final book in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy
When Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. No Longer at Ease, the third and concluding novel in Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy, depicts the uncertainties that beset the nation of Nigeria, as independence from colonial rule loomed near. In Obi Okonkwo’s experiences, the ambiguities, pitfalls, and temptations of a rapidly evolving society are revealed. He is part of a ruling Nigerian elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. His fate, however, overtakes him as he finds himself trapped between the expectation of his family, his village—both representations of the traditional world of his ancestors—and the colonial world. A story of a man lost in cultural limbo, and a nation entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease is a powerful metaphor for his generation of young Nigerians.
**Review
"Chinua Achebe is a magical writer — one of the greatest of the twentieth century."
— Margaret Atwood
"It is a measure of Achebe's creative gift that he has no need whatsoever for prose fireworks to light the flame of his intense drama. Wothry of particular attention are the characters. Achebe doesn't create his people with fastidiously detailed line drawings: instead, he relies on a few short strokes that highlight whatever prominent features will bring the total personlaity into three-dimensional life."
— Time
"The power of majesty of Chinua Achebe's work has, literally, opened the world to generations of readers. He is an ambassador of art, and a profound recorder of the human condition."
— Michael Dorris
"He is one of the few writers of our time who has touched us with a code of values that will never be ironic. This great voice."
— Michael Ondaatje
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
The story of a man whose foreign education has separated him from his African roots and made him parts of a ruling elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. More than thirty years after it was first written, this novel remains a brilliant statement on the challenges still facing African society. Views: 684
After a lifetime of unsuccessful attempts, Hope Matthews may have finally found a way to escape her undead pirate guardian. That is, if she can make sense of the map her foster father left behind and locate the legendary amulet, Poseidon's Tear before her demonic pursuer finds her and drags her back to to his lair.Darrel Bird and Barbara Yoder team up to bring you this powerful allegory.Two children find the way out of the dome they were made to live under by their ancestors, A painted dome under a painted sky where the clouds do not move and the birds do not fly.They rush back under the dome one more time to tell their friends and family there is a world outside the dome, but they will not listen.The children must rush to freedom before the escape route closes. Views: 684
Jake Stratton’s grief over the loss of his son traps a Colorado frontier town in a dusty kind of hell, until the day a long-awaited stagecoach thunders down Main Street and seals the fate of Mistwillow’s forgotten souls."My name is Cucumber Gutierrez. English is my second language, but the way I write everyone thinks that is my fourteenth."When Alberto Zapata and his baker father, Tito, are ejected from Panama over a havoc-causing cake, the whole family is thrown out with them, including Alberto’s cousin Cucumber.The family settles in Melbourne, Australia, and from humble beginnings in their new country, the Zapatas rise to unexpected prominence. A series of coincidences (or conspiracies) see Alberto raised practically overnight to become Victoria’s assistant chief commissioner of police.Zapata’s first case on the job is to solve the mystery around the disappearance of jewels belonging to the British Royal Family while on exhibition in Melbourne. Things get stranger and stranger as the case unfolds, in a madcap tale of crime, bungling, and Spanglish, reminiscent of "Get Smart" and "The Pink Panther"."Broom, Broom" is the first of the Alberto Zapata stories. Keep a lookout for new episodes "Jurassic Prick" and "China, Please Give Me More." Views: 682
First published in 1955, The Violent Bear It Away is now a landmark in American literature. It is a dark and absorbing example of the Gothic sensibility and bracing satirical voice that are united in Flannery O'Conner's work. In it, the orphaned Francis Marion Tarwater and his cousins, the schoolteacher Rayber, defy the prophecy of their dead uncle--that Tarwater will become a prophet and will baptize Rayber's young son, Bishop. A series of struggles ensues: Tarwater fights an internal battle against his innate faith and the voices calling him to be a prophet while Rayber tries to draw Tarwater into a more "reasonable" modern world. Both wrestle with the legacy of their dead relatives and lay claim to Bishop's soul.
O'Connor observes all this with an astonishing combination of irony and compassion, humor and pathos. The result is a novel whose range and depth reveal a brilliant and innovative writers acutely alert to where the sacred lives and to where it does not. Views: 682
School For The Blind 2.0 is the re-release of a cut chapter vignette from The Past Forward that focuses on a dream of a character at the beginning of her journey to becoming one of the greatest heroes of the Tin Universe. And it has new cover!!!The origin of this e-book was a timeworn paper notebook which contained hundreds of my hand-written song lyrics and poems, some dating back more than 30 years…so I figured it was high-time that I get some of my favorites out there into cyberspace for the sake of prosperity. For the most part the themes in this volume follow that old tried-and-true spirit of rebelliousness; including topics such as sex, drugs, rock n roll, love and lust to name a few. But on the more serious side it also delves into some deeper existential themes such as war and peace, death and loss, loneliness and religious spiritually, so hopefully there is something in this collection for everyone. Views: 682
2012 Anderbo Self-Published Book Award Entry of Note Honorable Mention at the 2012 Paris Book FestivalYou'll be entranced by these twenty-four stories as Nath Jones finds her way into this fun and biting life. She does not shy away from mortality but conducts you from the kaleidoscopic moment when a toddler loses her innocence to the last breath an old man takes in a rowboat at sunrise.About the On Impulse eBook Series:If you read the tag on a shirt and think, "Man. That's pretty manipulative," these books are for you. The On Impulse series plays with the storytelling impulse: how we create our worlds, mold our minds, set our sights, and shape our legacies. In such a fast-paced culture each of us must be conscious of how words can operate for and against us. The series invites the reader to contemplate how we use language now: online, in full-length books, and with each other. Views: 681
NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid team is tracking an asteroid when, without explanation, it changes direction and heads for earth. When they inspect the impact sites, they discover that the meteorite fragments are not what they expect.NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid team is tracking asteroid 2027 UX25 when, without explanation, it changes direction and heads for earth. When they inspect the impact sites, they discover that the meteorite fragments are not what they expect.The press has nick-named the asteroid ‘Hachiman,’ after the Shinto god of war and patron god of the samurai, an omen of things to come.Hachiman does not behave like an asteroid should. It fragments and impacts across the globe. The global environments changes: diseased plankton in the Atlantic Ocean, silicon-based killer organisms in northern Russia, and green-house gasses spike globally. ---------This short story is an Avar-Tek Event, an event that develops the technology or characters in the Angel Series. The first Angel Series book is due to be published in 2013. Views: 681
1886. Two young boys disappear in the Sounds. Their mother grieves, all the music cut out of her heart; their father wanders the coast for a year, wanting and not wanting to find any part of them left behind. And their brother Ern, faced with a problem to which no solution can be found, returns to his laboratory – and to the smell of salt, soft voices in his ear, wet footprints welling seawater in the darkness.Octavia Cade weaves together time and memory, physics and mystery, in this story inspired by Ernest Rutherford's life and research. Views: 681
Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz reaches back millennia to his homeland’s majestic past in this enchanting collection of early tales that brings the world of ancient Egypt face to face with our own times.
From the Predynastic Period, where a cabal of entrenched rulers banish virtue in jealous defense of their status, to the Fifth Dynasty, where a Pharaoh returns from an extended leave to find that only his dog has remained loyal, to the twentieth century, where a mummy from the Eighteenth Dynasty awakens in fury to reproach a modern Egyptian nobleman for his arrogance, these five stories conduct timeless truths over the course of thousands of years. Summoning the power and mystery of a legendary civilization, they examplify the artistry that has made Mahfouz among the most revered writers in world literature.
Translated by Raymond Stock
From the Trade Paperback edition. Views: 681
