Download or read book In the Watchful City written by S. Qiouyi Lu and published by Tordotcom. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This masterful work positions Lu among the vanguard of contemporary futurism and speculative fiction."—Publishers Weekly, starred review In the tradition of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, debut author S. Qiouyi Lu has written a multifaceted story of borders, power, diaspora, and transformation with In the Watchful City. The city of Ora is watching. Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from harm. When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around with the world with a story attached to each item, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist. But such knowledge leaves Anima with a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Wrong End of the Telescope written by Rabih Alameddine and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-09-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2022 PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION By National Book Award and the National Book Critics' Circle Award finalist for An Unnecessary Woman, Rabih Alameddine, comes a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman's journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island. Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor, arrives at the infamous Moria refugee camp on Lesbos, Greece, after being urgently summoned for help by her friend who runs an NGO there. Alienated from her family except for her beloved brother, Mina has avoided being so close to her homeland for decades. But with a week off work and apart from her wife of thirty years, Mina hopes to accomplish something meaningful, among the abundance of Western volunteers who pose for selfies with beached dinghies and the camp's children. Soon, a boat crosses bringing Sumaiya, a fiercely resolute Syrian matriarch with terminal liver cancer. Determined to protect her children and husband at all costs, Sumaiya refuses to alert her family to her diagnosis. Bonded together by Sumaiya's secret, a deep connection sparks between the two women, and as Mina prepares a course of treatment with the limited resources on hand, she confronts the circumstances of the migrants' displacement, as well as her own constraints in helping them. Not since the inimitable Aaliya of An Unnecessary Woman has Rabih Alameddine conjured such a winsome heroine to lead us to one of the most wrenching conflicts of our time. Cunningly weaving in stories of other refugees into Mina's singular own, The Wrong End of the Telescope is a bedazzling tapestry of both tragic and amusing portraits of indomitable spirits facing a humanitarian crisis.

Download or read book City of Angels written by Christa Wolf and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stunning final novel from East Germany's most acclaimed writer Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the writer Christa Wolf was granted access to her newly declassified Stasi files. Known for her defiance and outspokenness, Wolf was not especially surprised to discover forty-two volumes of documents produced by the East German secret police. But what was surprising was a thin green folder whose contents told an unfamiliar—and disturbing—story: in the early 1960s, Wolf herself had been an informant for the Communist government. And yet, thirty years on, she had absolutely no recollection of it. Wolf's extraordinary autobiographical final novel is an account of what it was like to reckon with such a shocking discovery. Based on the year she spent in Los Angeles after these explosive revelations, City of Angels is at once a powerful examination of memory and a surprisingly funny and touching exploration of L.A., a city strikingly different from any Wolf had ever visited. Even as she reflects on the burdens of twentieth-century history, Wolf describes the pleasures of driving a Geo Metro down Wilshire Boulevard and watching episodes of Star Trek late at night. Rich with philosophical insights, personal revelations, and vivid descriptions of a diverse city and its citizens, City of Angels is a profoundly humane and disarmingly honest novel—and a powerful conclusion to a remarkable career in letters.

Download or read book Cities I ve Never Lived In written by Sara Majka and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In subtle, sensuous prose, the stories in Sara Majka's debut collection explore distance in all its forms: the emotional spaces that open up between family members, friends, and lovers; the gaps that emerge between who we were and who we are; the gulf between our private and public selves. At the center of the collection is a series of stories narrated by a young American woman in the wake of a divorce; wry and shy but never less than open to the world, she recalls the places and people she has been close to, the dreams she has pursued and those she has left unfulfilled. Interspersed with these intimate first-person stories are stand-alone pieces where the tight focus on the narrator's life gives way to closely observed accounts of the lives of others. A book about belonging, and how much of yourself to give up in the pursuit of that, Cities I've Never Lived In offers stories that reveal, with great sadness and great humor, the ways we are most of all citizens of the places where we cannot be. Cities I've Never Lived In is the second book in Graywolf's collaboration with the literary magazine A Public Space.

Download or read book Bath Haus written by P. J. Vernon and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nominated for a 34th annual Lambda Literary Award • A scintillating thriller with an emotional punch: “The tension builds to unbearably claustrophobic levels. To say more would rob readers of the 'no, he didn’t' suspense that makes Bath Haus an unexpectedly twisted, heart-pounding cat-versus-mouse thriller" (Los Angeles Times). Oliver Park, a recovering addict from Indiana, finally has everything he ever wanted: sobriety and a loving, wealthy partner in Nathan, a prominent DC trauma surgeon. Despite their difference in age and disparate backgrounds, they've made a perfect life together. With everything to lose, Oliver shouldn't be visiting Haus, a gay bathhouse. But through the entrance he goes, and it's a line crossed. Inside, he follows a man into a private room, and it's the final line. Whatever happens next, Nathan can never know. But then, everything goes wrong, terribly wrong, and Oliver barely escapes with his life. He races home in full-blown terror as the hand-shaped bruise grows dark on his neck. The truth will destroy Nathan and everything they have together, so Oliver does the thing he used to do so well: he lies. What follows is a classic runaway-train narrative, full of the exquisite escalations, edge-of-your-seat thrills, and oh-my-god twists. P. J. Vernon's Bath Haus is perfect for readers curious for their next must-read novel.

Download or read book Under a Watchful Eye written by Adam Nevill and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under a Watchful Eye by Adam Nevill is a supernatural thriller from the award-winning writer of The Ritual and Last Days. Seb Logan is being watched. He just doesn't know by whom. When the sudden appearance of a dark figure shatters his idyllic coastal life, he soon realizes that the murky past he thought he'd left behind has far from forgotten him. What's more unsettling is the strange atmosphere that engulfs him at every sighting, plunging his mind into a terrifying paranoia. To be a victim without knowing the tormentor. To be despised without knowing the offence caused. To be seen by what nobody else can see. These are the thoughts which plague his every waking moment. Imprisoned by despair, Seb fears his stalker is not working alone, but rather is involved in a wider conspiracy that threatens everything he has worked for. For there are doors in this world that open into unknown places. Places used by the worst kind of people to achieve their own ends. And once his investigation leads him to stray across the line and into mortal danger, he risks becoming another fatality in a long line of victims . . .

Download or read book We See Everything written by William Sutcliffe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOMINATED FOR THE CILIP CARNEGIE MEDAL 2019 SHORTLISTED FOR THE RED TENTACLE AT THE KITSCHIES 2017 A gripping and powerfully relevant thriller set in a reimagined London where constant surveillance is the norm, We See Everything simmers with tension and emotion. From internationally bestselling author William Sutcliffe, this is perfect for fans of Patrick Ness and Malorie Blackman. Lex lives on The Strip – the overcrowded, closed-off, bombed-out shell of London. He's used to the watchful enemy drones that buzz in the air above him. Alan's talent as a gamer has landed him the job of his dreams. At a military base in a secret location, he is about to start work as a drone pilot. These two young men will never meet, but their lives are destined to collide. Because Alan has just been assigned a high-profile target. Alan knows him only as #K622. But Lex calls him Dad.

Download or read book Gordo written by Jaime Cortez and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-08-10 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This debut story collection “masterfully navigates adverse conditions of migrant life while . . . managing to find joy and amusement, love and triumph” (San Francisco Chronicle). Gordo brings readers inside a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. At the heart of these interrelated stories is a young, probably gay, boy named Gordo, who must find a way to contend with the notions of manhood imposed on him by his father. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, watches his father’s drunken fights, and discovers even his own documented Mexican-American parents are wary of illegal migrants. We also meet Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist who runs away from home one day with her mother’s boyfriend, Manny. And then there are Los Tigres, the twins who show up every season and whose drunken brawl ends with one of them rushed to the emergency room in an upholstered chair tied to the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious questions: Who belongs to America and how are they treated? How does one learn decency when grown adults must fear for their lives and livelihoods? Gordo “announces a vibrant new voice on the literary scene, at once wise and authentic and supremely gifted” (Booklist, starred review). Finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Download or read book We Are Called to Rise written by Laura McBride and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-03 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible, beautifully crafted and heartbreakingly topical novel about PTSI and the unseen effects of global conflict on ordinary lives. Beyond the bright lights and casinos lies the real Las Vegas, a forces town. In the predawn hours, a woman's marriage crumbles with a single confession. Across the city, Bashkim, the young son of an immigrant family, observes how they are struggling to get by in the land of opportunity. Three thousand miles away on the other side of the United States, a soldier, recently returned from active service in Iraq, wakes up in hospital with the feeling he's done something awful. In Laura McBride's heartbreaking and authentic novel, these disparate lives are brought together by one split-second choice; this is a story about families, the ones we are born to and the ones we choose to make. Faced with seemingly insurmountable loss, each person must decide whether to give in to despair, or to find the courage and resilience to rise. 'A powerful story of the way in which war detonates far from battlefields, exploding lives in a single irrevocable moment. We Are Called to Risereverberated long after I'd put it down. I can't stop thinking about it' Sarah Blake, The Postmistress 'A haunting and unforgettable debut' Marie Claire 'Compelling, emotional and heart-breaking' Sun 'Packs a raw, emotional power' Sunday Mirror 'Like Donna Tartt's… The Goldfinch, it strips a layer of gloss off the Las Vegas myth by moving to the families populating suburbia' Grazia

Download or read book White Fur written by Jardine Libaire and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning star-crossed love story set against the glitz and grit of 1980s New York City When Elise Perez meets Jamey Hyde on a desolate winter afternoon, fate implodes, and neither of their lives will ever be the same. Although they are next-door neighbors in New Haven, they come from different worlds. Elise grew up in a housing project without a father and didn’t graduate from high school; Jamey is a junior at Yale, heir to a private investment bank fortune and beholden to high family expectations. Nevertheless, the attraction is instant, and what starts out as sexual obsession turns into something greater, stranger, and impossible to ignore. The couple moves to Manhattan in search of a new life, and White Fur follows them as they wander through Newport mansions and East Village dives, WASP-establishment yacht clubs and the grimy streets below Canal Street, fighting the forces determined to keep them apart. White Fur combines the electricity of Less Than Zero with the timeless intensity of Romeo and Juliet in this searing, gorgeously written novel that perfectly captures the ferocity of young love.

Download or read book How to Find a Bird written by Jennifer Ward and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A joyful and informative guide to birdwatching for budding young birders from an award-winning author-illustrator duo. How do you find a bird? There are so many ways! Begin by watching. And listening. And staying quiet, so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat. Soon you’ll see that there are birds everywhere—up in the sky, down on the ground, sometimes even right in front of you just waiting to be discovered! Young bird lovers will adore this lushly illustrated introduction to how to spot and observe our feathered friends. It features more than fifty different species, from the giant whooping crane to the tiny ruby-throated hummingbird, and so many in between, and a detailed author’s note provides even more information about birding for curious readers. This celebration of the wondrous variety, colors, and sounds of the avian world is sure to have children grabbing their binoculars and heading outside to explore.

Download or read book Veniss Underground written by Jeff VanderMeer and published by Picador. This book was released on 2023-04-11 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer’s first novel, Veniss Underground, takes readers on a journey to a labyrinthine city of tunnels, and the dangers lurking behind each turn. This paperback edition features the bonus novella “Balzac’s War.” In a dark and decadent far future, the city of Veniss persists beside a dead ocean. Earth has become a desert wasteland ravaged by climate change. Veniss endures on the strength of its innovative tech of almost Boschian intensity, but at what cost? Where does the line between “made creature” and “person” lie? Against this backdrop, Veniss Underground spins the tale of Nicholas, an aspiring, struggling Artist; his twin sister, Nicola; and Shadrach, Nicola’s former lover. A fateful trip by Nicholas to the maverick biotech Quin will have far-reaching consequences for all three—and for the fate of Veniss itself, as insurrection stirs and the oppressed begin to revolt. Veniss Underground is Jeff VanderMeer’s first novel, a spectacular surreal foray into a world as influenced by Alejandro Jodorowsky as by Ursula K. Le Guin. Readers of VanderMeer’s later work will be enchanted and horrified by the marvels within, including the author’s signature fascination with the nonhuman and the environment. By turns beautiful and powerful, Veniss Underground explores the limits of love, memory, and obsession against a backdrop of betrayal and biological mutation. This reissue includes a new introduction by the National Book Award–winning author Charles Yu and a bonus story from Jeff VanderMeer.

Download or read book Illuminate written by Aimee Agresti and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brainy, shy high school outcast interning at a Chicago hotel discovers that the hotel staff has an evil agenda planned for her classmates on prom night.

Download or read book The Warding of Witch World written by Andre Norton and published by Aspect. This book was released on 2001-02-15 with total page 930 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a desperate time in Witch World. The Magestone, the key to the pandimensional gates, has been lost and now all the gates are open. In the classic series' grand finale, an infinite flood of evil is about to wash across the world as Simon Tregarth returns to lead the planet's heroes in the final war against the forces of darkness.

Download or read book Carfree Cities written by J. H. Crawford and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume filled with historical and contemporary references to guiding historic precedents and ideological errors of 20th-century planning, the author sets up the carfree city as the cornerstone of sustainable development. This book outlines a structure carefully designed to maximize the quality of life for people and communities worldwide. Also available in cloth, 9057270374.

Download or read book XYZT written by Kristen Alvanson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-07-02 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Genre-defying fiction that accelerates "cross-cultural dialogue" into a kaleidoscopic rush of sensory estrangements, fairy tales, and alien encounters. "There's really no difference between us and them, so we're told…." Based on the author's experiences of living as an American in Iran, Kristen Alvanson's XYZT is a wildly imaginative dramatization of the idea of a "dialogue of civilizations" and its potentially outlandish ramifications. As part of an advanced technological test program, volunteers are shuttled back and forth between the US and Iran, hidden from the watchful eyes of immigration police and state bureaucracies. Each is given a single opportunity to be received by a local host and to have a brief authentic experience of what it means to live as “them” before being transported back home. But far from heralding the bliss of mutual recognition, the experiment unleashes a series of displacements so disorienting that the fabric of reality begins to fray. Ordinary people become entangled in extraordinary situations, and everyday life bleeds into mythological encounters, alternate universes and dark psychedelic journeys in alien lands where the real and the imaginary are indistinguishable. A treasury of tales told from multiple perspectives and in a multiplicity of styles, XYZT is an audacious cross-genre experiment, a firsthand memoir of what it means to see what "they" see, and a science-fictional, nonstandard engagement with anthropology in which cross-cultural encounters take on all the unpredictable features of a contemporary fairy tale.

Download or read book City of God written by E.L. Doctorow and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-11-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With brilliant and audacious strokes, E. L. Doctorow creates a breathtaking collage of memories, events, visions, and provocative thought, all centered on an idea of the modern reality of God. At the heart of this stylistically daring tour de force is a detective story about a cross that vanishes from a rundown Episcopal church in lower Manhattan only to reappear on the roof of an Upper West Side synagogue. Intrigued by the mystery—and by the maverick rector and the young rabbi investigating the strange act of desecration—is a well-known novelist, whose capacious brain is a virtual repository for the ideas and disasters of the age. Daringly poised at the junction of the sacred and the profane, filled with the sights and sounds of New York, and encompassing a large cast of vividly drawn characters including theologians, scientists, Holocaust survivors, and war veterans, City of God is a monumental work of spiritual reflection, philosophy, and history by America’s preeminent novelist and chronicler of our time. Praise for City of God “A grander perspective on the universe . . . a novel that sets its sights on God.”—The Wall Street Journal “Dazzling . . . The true miracle of City of God is the way its disparate parts fuse into a consistently enthralling and suspenseful whole.”—Time “Blooms with humor, and a humanity that carries triumphant as intelligent a novel as one might hope to find these days.”—Los Angeles Times “Radiates [with] panoramic ambition and spiritual incandescence.”—Chicago Tribune “One of the greatest American novels of the past fifty years . . . Reading City of God restores one’s faith in literature.”—The Houston Chronicle