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The Overending

For untold ages, the Granite Hulks at Tilk Duraow have been the impregnable center of the High One’s slaving system. Overpowering. Impenetrable. Final. The point from which there is no return. But now, fifteen-year-old Helga’s revolution—one she hardly expected to begin—is way bigger than she ever dreamed. Tilk Duraow itself is in danger. Now even the High One himself is no longer safe.
Views: 280

Less Than Angels

It is surely appropriate that anthropologists, who spend their time studying life and behavior in various societies, should be studied in their turn," says Barbara Pym. In a wonderful twist on her subjects, she has written a book inspecting the behavior of a group of anthropologists. She pits them against each other in affairs of the heart and mind.Academia is an especially rich backdrop. There is competition between the sexes, gender, and age groups. With Pym's keen eye for male pretensions and female susceptibilities, she exploits with good humor. Love will have its way even among the learned, one of whom is in a quandary between an adult and a young student. This is the world of research, grants, libraries and primitive cultures. Here is a particularly interesting contrast between the tribes of Africa and the social matrix of London. As the title implies, civilized society fares not too well on moral grounds to the more primitive societies. Barbara Pym does a masterful job with the mores of the cloistered society of academia.
Views: 266

The Art of Candle Dipping

A short story based on an actual incident in the 1880s in North Texas, when Comanches threatened a family. The mother was dipping candles and used hot wax to protect her children.Told from a young girl's point of view, this story recounts an incident when Comanches threatened a pioneer family in North Texas. The mother was dipping candles when the Indians appeared and used the hot wax as a defense. Based on a true incident from the files of the Log Cabin Village in Fort Worth, Texas, where the actual cabin, with it's vat for hot wax, is located.
Views: 259

Heretic

While the world of political Islam continues to be dominated by acts of violence and a separatist agenda, there are signs of reform in the Arab Spring movement. Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has been at the forefront of the reform movement offers an analysis of what's happening and how it could happen faster. Around the world cracks are starting to appear in the world of political Islam. While its leaders remain strong and defiant and while it continues to be characterized by separatism and an agenda of violence, a number of people have questioned its rigid stances - from Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai to Amina Tyler, the activist who posed nude on Facebook to make a point about women's bodies belonging to themselves. Beyond that, political movements across the Middle East - the 'Arab Spring' protests - show that a number of Muslims are increasingly fed up by what they see as a system which is too inflexible, often corrupt and which prevents countries from getting ahead. Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali has long been an outspoken critic of political Islam, specifically its treatment of women. In her books she's told her own story and how she escaped the bonds of a strict Muslim upbringing. In this book she moves beyond the personal story to a more overtly political stance. While women remain her main concern she also addresses Islam's other problems - its emphasis on passivity, its hypocrisy about the modern world, its defensiveness when criticized. Analysing the embryonic protest movements from around the world, she asks what it would take to achieve a reformation - and how long it will take.
Views: 241

Helga- Out of Hedgelands

Helga has more danger in her life than most beasts her age—Wrackshee slavers after her, a vicious attack by bandits that nearly kills her, a race against dragons pursuing her, and leading a daring rebellion against the insidious WooZan. A dangerous quest to solve mysteries in her own past leads Helga and her comrades on a journey that will forever change them, and upset ancient civilizations.
Views: 226

The Vagina Monologues

A poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery. In this stunning phenomenon that has swept the nation, Eve Ensler gives us real women's stories of intimacy, vulnerability, and sexual self-discovery. Celebrated as the bible for a new generation of women, The Vagina Monologues has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses. It has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement—V-Day—to stop violence against women. Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning masterpiece gives voice to women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again. Included in this special edition are testimonials—both joyous and heartbreaking—from young women who have performed The Vagina Monologues at their colleges for V-Day, February 14, to raise money for organizations fighting to protect women.
Views: 187

Civil to Strangers and Other Writings

When Pym died in 1980, she left behind unpublished manuscripts in various stages of completion. This volume brings us the last complete novel, portions of three others, four short stories, and an autobiographical essay.
Views: 173

Moranthology

Possibly the only drawback about the bestselling How To Be A Woman was that its author, Caitlin Moran, was limited to pretty much one subject: being a woman. In MORANTHOLOGY Caitlin 'gets quite chatty’ about many subjects, including cultural, social and political issues which are usually left to hot-shot wonks and not a woman who sometimes keeps a falafel in her handbag. These other subjects include... Caffeine | Ghostbusters | Being Poor | Twitter | Caravans | Obama | Wales | Paul McCartney | The Welfare State | Sherlock | David Cameron Looking Like Ham | Amy Winehouse | ‘The Big Society’ | Big Hair | Nutter-letters | Michael Jackson's funeral | Failed Nicknames | Wolverhampton | Squirrels’ Testicles | Sexy Tax | Binge-drinking | Chivalry | Rihanna’s Cardigan | Party Bags | Hot People| Transsexuals | The Gay Moon Landings
Views: 169

An Unsuitable Attachment

The wonderful thing about Barbara Pym is her ability to take believable characters and have them do such queer things in such a delightful way. Her legacy of seeing slightly askew gave John Updike, Anita Brookner and a whole raft of writers the courage to carry on. An Unsuitable Attachment is set in a parish outside of London. There the novel's "unattached" characters work out a confusing web of matchmaking and forming attachments. A new eligible bachelor in the neighborhood, Rupert Stonebird, finds himself choosing between two very different women. Sophie, the wife of the Vicar of St. Basil, becomes determined to match her sister Penelope with Rubert, a plan that would seem to work well until a graceful and quite suitable Iantha Broome also becomes a member of the community. As Rupert grapples with courting either Penelope or Iantha, Iantha finds herself with two more suitors. This elegant novel will keep readers enthralled as unsuitable and suitable attachments unfold An Unsuitable Attachment is such a book.
Views: 168

A Few Green Leaves

In A FEW GREEN LEAVES the author combines the rural settings of her earliest novels with many of the themes- and even some of the characters- of her later ones. Switching points of view among many characters, she builds with accumulating effect the picture of life in a town forgotten by time yet affected dramatically by it. Historical time- represented by Druid ruins, the local eighteenth-century country manor, and the last aristocrats who occupied it in the 1920s- is juxtaposed against the banalities of life in today's world.
Views: 155

Casebook

From the acclaimed and award-winning author of Anywhere But Here and My Hollywood, a powerful new novel about a young boy's quest to uncover the mysteries of his unraveling family. What he discovers turns out to be what he least wants to know: the inner workings of his parents' lives. And even then he can't stop searching. Miles Adler-Hart starts eavesdropping to find out what his mother is planning for his life. When he learns instead that his parents are separating, his investigation deepens, and he enlists his best friend, Hector, to help. Both boys are in thrall to Miles's unsuspecting mother, Irene, who is "pretty for a mathematician." They rifle through her dresser drawers, bug her telephone lines, and strip-mine her computer, only to find that all clues lead them to her bedroom, and put them on the trail of a mysterious stranger from Washington, D.C. Their amateur detective work starts innocently but quickly takes them to the far reaches of...
Views: 134

Outlawed

"A masterpiece." - R.O. KwonThe Crucible meets True Grit in this riveting adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West.In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw. The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all...
Views: 129

The Apology

From Eve Ensler, author of one of the most influential works of the twentieth century—The Vagina Monologues—and one of Newsweek's "150 Women Who Changed the World," comes a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement. Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future. Through The Apology Eve has set out to provide a new way for herself and a...
Views: 123

Off Keck Road

In this flawless novella, Mona Simpson turns her powers of observation toward characters who, unlike Ann and Adele August in her bestselling Anywhere but Here, choose to stay rather than go. As a high school student in Green Bay, Bea Maxwell raised money for good causes; later, she became a successful real estate agent and an accomplished knitter. The one thing missing from her life is a romantic relationship. She soon settles comfortably into the role of stylish spinster and do-gooder. Woven into Bea's story are stories of other lifelong residents of Green Bay and the changes time brings to a town and its residents. This pure and simple work once again proves Mona Simpson one of the defining writers of her generation.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Views: 114

A Regular Guy

Anywhere But Here and The Lost Father have established Mona Simpson as one of our most accomplished writers. In her new novel--the portrait of a legendary, quintessentially American entrepreneur trapped by the age he helped to define--she brilliantly extends her achievement. More powerfully than ever before, Simpson uncovers the nature of longing and belonging, of blood relations and the human heart.From the Hardcover edition.
Views: 114