Download or read book Sharks in the Time of Saviours written by Kawai Strong Washburn and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'As vivid as it is splendid' New York Times 'Beautifully written and completely absorbing' Sarah Moss, Guardian A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2020 A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR in the NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OPRAH MAGAZINE and BBC CULTURE At seven years old, Nainoa falls into the sea and a shark takes him in its jaws – only to return him, unharmed, to his parents. For the next thirty years Noa and his siblings struggle with life in the shadow of this miracle. Sharks in the Time of Saviours is a brilliantly original and inventive novel, the sweeping story of a family living in poverty among the remnants of Hawai‘i’s mythic past and the wreckage of the American dream.

Download or read book The King at the Edge of the World written by Arthur Phillips and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Queen Elizabeth’s spymasters recruit an unlikely agent—the only Muslim in England—for an impossible mission in a mesmerizing novel from “one of the best writers in America” (The Washington Post) “Evokes flashes of Hilary Mantel, John le Carré and Graham Greene, but the wry, tricky plot that drives it is pure Arthur Phillips.”—The Wall Street Journal NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE WASHINGTON POST The year is 1601. Queen Elizabeth I is dying, childless. Her nervous kingdom has no heir. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable occurs. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen’s spymasters—hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism—fear that James is not what he appears. He has every reason to claim to be a Protestant, but if he secretly shares his family’s Catholicism, then forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. With time running out, London confronts a seemingly impossible question: What does James truly believe? It falls to Geoffrey Belloc, a secret warrior from the hottest days of England’s religious battles, to devise a test to discover the true nature of King James’s soul. Belloc enlists Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Muslim physician left behind by the last diplomatic visit from the Ottoman Empire, as his undercover agent. The perfect man for the job, Ezzedine is the ultimate outsider, stranded on this cold, wet, and primitive island. He will do almost anything to return home to his wife and son. Arthur Phillips returns with a unique and thrilling novel that will leave readers questioning the nature of truth at every turn.

Download or read book The Descendants written by Kaui Hart Hemmings and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a major motion picture starring George Clooney and directed by Alexander Payne Fortunes have changed for the King family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty and one of the state’s largest landowners. Matthew King’s daughters—Scottie, a feisty ten-year-old, and Alex, a seventeen-year-old recovering drug addict—are out of control, and their charismatic, thrill-seeking mother, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident. She will soon be taken off life support. As Matt gathers his wife’s friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation is made worse by the sudden discovery that there’s one person who hasn’t been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair. Forced to examine what they owe not only to the living but to the dead, Matt, Scottie, and Alex take to the road to find Joanie’s lover, on a memorable journey that leads to unforeseen humor, growth, and profound revelations.

Download or read book Everything Now written by Rosecrans Baldwin and published by MCD. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER. NAMED A BEST CALIFORNIA BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES A provocative, exhilaratingly new understanding of the United States’ most confounding metropolis—not just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-state America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny—this is the city-state of Los Angeles. Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin's Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself—vastly more than its many, many parts. Baldwin’s concept of the city-state allows us, finally, to grasp a place—Los Angeles—whose idiosyncrasies both magnify those of America, and are so fully its own. Here, space and time don’t quite work the same as they do elsewhere, and contradictions are as stark as southern California’s natural environment. Perhaps no better place exists to watch the United States’s past, and its possible futures, play themselves out. Welcome to Los Angeles, the Great American City-State.

Download or read book One Shark No Swim written by Lehua Parker and published by Makena Press. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Niuhi sharks, even out of the water, you're not safe. My dreams are nightmares. I don’t dare fall asleep. Guro Hari’s teaching me Filipino knife fighting, but I’m too scared to come out of the bathroom. I’d rather learn Lua and train with Jay and Char Siu, but Uncle Kahana won’t let me. He says it’s for our safety, but I don’t believe him. Uncle Kahana’s obsessed with Niuhi stories, Hawaiian myths about sharks in human form. If he’s right, even out of the water, no one’s safe. I have a secret knife I call Shark Tooth. I may have to use it. That thought excites me. And that’s the scariest thing of all. __________________ One Shark, No Swim is Book 2 in the Niuhi Shark Saga trilogy. Told from an indigenous perspective and set in a contemporary Hawaiian world where all the Hawaiian myths and legends are real, the series explores belonging, adoption, being different, bullying, defining family, and learning to turn weaknesses into strengths. Through the series, Zader discovers he's not really a boy allergic to water; he's something much more special, dangerous, and powerful. His adoptive brother Jay discovers what happens when the golden surfing star falls from his pedestal and has to choose to make the long climb back from serious injury. It's the ties that bind and support the brothers that allow them to create their own destinies. As typical local islanders, characters use common Hawaiian and Pidgin words and phrases. The meaning is usually clear from the context, but there is also a Hawaiian & Pidgin Glossary for additional support. Each chapter begins with a related island word or phrase and its definitions. A Discussion Guide for book club or classroom use is included. Free additional classroom support materials are available on www.NiuhiSharkSaga.com. One Boy, No Water, Book 1 in the Niuhi Shark Saga, was a 2017 Nene Award Nominee. The Nene Award is Hawaii's Children's Choice Book Award recognizing outstanding literary works.

Download or read book Shark Island written by Chris Jameson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A shark attack survivor believes she has already lived through her worst nightmare. She's dead wrong. . . Naomi Cardiff is not one to give up without a fight—and now, after learning about a series of shark attacks in Cape Cod, she’s joined a team of scientists to put a stop to the terror. The plan: to lure the sharks to a remote island far from the populated coastline. Meanwhile, a fierce Nor’Easter is underway. . . In the midst of the storm, an alarming number of Great Whites have come to slaughter the seals in a vicious feeding frenzy. When sharks ram and breach the hull, Naomi and her team must jump ship and swim desperately through a sea of circling fins and gaping jaws to the tiny island. But as the swells from the storm begin to swallow their rocky refuge, how will they manage to make it out alive?

Download or read book The Story of Moana written by Disney Books and published by Disney Electronic Content. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Disney Animation Studios' latest film, Moana, this middle grade novel features characters and adventures based on the rich culture of Oceania. It includes original content in the form of mini folktales interspersed throughout the story of the film.

Download or read book The Lost Gate written by Orson Scott Card and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Orson Scott Card's The Lost Gate is the first book in the Mithermages series from the New York Times bestselling author of Ender's Game. Danny North knew from early childhood that his family was different, and that he was different from them. While his cousins were learning how to create the things that commoners called fairies, ghosts, golems, trolls, werewolves, and other such miracles that were the heritage of the North family, Danny worried that he would never show a talent, never form an outself. He grew up in the rambling old house, filled with dozens of cousins, and aunts and uncles, all ruled by his father. Their home was isolated in the mountains of western Virginia, far from town, far from schools, far from other people. There are many secrets in the House, and many rules that Danny must follow. There is a secret library with only a few dozen books, and none of them in English — but Danny and his cousins are expected to become fluent in the language of the books. While Danny's cousins are free to create magic whenever they like, they must never do it where outsiders might see. Unfortunately, there are some secrets kept from Danny as well. And that will lead to disaster for the North family. The Mithermages series The Lost Gate The Gate Thief Gatefather At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Grip of It written by Jac Jemc and published by FSG Originals. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon's Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine "Looking Back on 2017: Literature" Pick, and one of Vulture's 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017. Jac Jemc's The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home Touring their prospective suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real estate agent assures them with a smile. He is wrong. The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling and his general inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to start afresh. But this house, which sits between a lake and a forest, has its own plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to establish a sense of normalcy, the home and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The framework— claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of painful, grisly bruises. Like the house that torments the troubled married couple living within its walls, The Grip of It oozes with palpable terror and skin-prickling dread. Its architect, Jac Jemc, meticulously traces Julie and James’s unsettling journey through the depths of their new home as they fight to free themselves from its crushing grip.

Download or read book Summer Bird Blue written by Akemi Dawn Bowman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A lyrical novel about grief, love, and finding oneself in the wake of a tragic loss.” —Bustle “Gorgeous prose and heartbreaking storytelling.” —Paste Magazine “Grabs your heart and won’t let go.” —Book Riot A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Three starred reviews for this stunning novel about a mixed-race teen who struggles to find her way back to her love of music in the wake of her sister’s death, from the author of the William C. Morris Award finalist Starfish. Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea. Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish. Aching, powerful, and unflinchingly honest, Summer Bird Blue explores big truths about insurmountable grief, unconditional love, and how to forgive even when it feels impossible.

Download or read book Waimea Summer written by John Dominis Holt and published by Native Books. This book was released on 1976 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Tales of Two Planets written by John Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world. Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today's most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress--from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures with a dys¬topian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building, and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage about the most important crisis of our times.

Download or read book The Song Poet written by Kao Kalia Yang and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-05-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.

Download or read book The Rock Eaters written by Brenda Peynado and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An NPR Best Book of 2021 NYPL 10 Best Books for Adults, 2021 A story collection, in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado, Kelly Link, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, spanning worlds and dimensions, using strange and speculative elements to tackle issues ranging from class differences to immigration to first-generation experiences to xenophobia What does it mean to be other? What does it mean to love in a world determined to keep us apart? These questions murmur in the heart of each of Brenda Peynado’s strange and singular stories. Threaded with magic, transcending time and place, these stories explore what it means to cross borders and break down walls, personally and politically. In one story, suburban families perform oblations to cattlelike angels who live on their roofs, believing that their “thoughts and prayers” will protect them from the world’s violence. In another, inhabitants of an unnamed dictatorship slowly lose their own agency as pieces of their bodies go missing and, with them, the essential rights that those appendages serve. “The Great Escape” tells of an old woman who hides away in her apartment, reliving the past among beautiful objects she’s hoarded, refusing all visitors, until she disappears completely. In the title story, children begin to levitate, flying away from their parents and their home country, leading them to eat rocks in order to stay grounded. With elements of science fiction and fantasy, fabulism and magical realism, Brenda Peynado uses her stories to reflect our flawed world, and the incredible, terrifying, and marvelous nature of humanity.

Download or read book We Ride Upon Sticks written by Quan Barry and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the town of Danvers, Massachusetts, home of the original 1692 witch trials, the 1989 Danvers Falcons will do anything to make it to the state finals—even if it means tapping into some devilishly dark powers. Against a background of irresistible 1980s iconography, Quan Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective progress of this enchanted team as they storm their way through an unforgettable season. Helmed by good-girl captain Abby Putnam (a descendant of the infamous Salem accuser Ann Putnam) and her co-captain Jen Fiorenza (whose bleached blond “Claw” sees and knows all), the Falcons prove to be wily, original, and bold, flaunting society’s stale notions of femininity. Through the crucible of team sport and, more importantly, friendship, this comic tour de female force chronicles Barry’s glorious cast of characters as they charge past every obstacle on the path to finding their glorious true selves.

Download or read book Sharks in the Time of Saviors written by Kawai Strong Washburn and published by MCD. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2020 PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL. One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020. A finalist for the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by the New York Times (#30), the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, BBC Culture, Good Housekeeping, LitHub, Spectrum Culture, Third Place Books, and Powell's Books. Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a groundbreaking debut novel that folds the legends of Hawaiian gods into an engrossing family saga; a story of exile and the pursuit of salvation from Kawai Strong Washburn. “Old myths clash with new realities, love is in a ride or die with grief, faith rubs hard against magic, and comic flips with tragic so much they meld into something new. All told with daredevil lyricism to burn. A ferocious debut.” —MARLON JAMES, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf “So good it hurts and hurts to where it heals. It is revelatory and unputdownable. Washburn is an extraordinarily brilliant new talent.” —TOMMY ORANGE, author of There There Named one of the most anticipated novels for 2020 by the Guardian and Paste Magazine. One of Book Riot’s Best Books to Give as Gifts in 2020. In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods—a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family’s legacy. When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai’i—with tragic consequences—they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.

Download or read book Always Home written by Fanny Singer and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-06-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A beautifully written celebration of food, home, and above all, family' - Jamie Oliver 'So charming and beautiful' - Gwyneth Paltrow 'The most delicious kind of memoir' - The Times Stories and recipes from growing up as the daughter of revered chef/restaurateur Alice Waters: food, family, and the need for beauty in all aspects of life. In this extraordinarily intimate portrait of her mother - and herself - Fanny Singer, daughter of food icon and activist Alice Waters, chronicles a unique world of food, wine, and travel; a world filled with colourful characters, mouth-watering traditions, and sumptuous feasts. Across dozens of vignettes with accompanying recipes, she shares the story of her own culinary coming of age, and reveals a side of her legendary mother that has never been seen before. A charming, smart translation of Alice Waters' ideals and attitudes about food for a new generation, Always Home is a loving, often funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely written look at a life defined in so many ways by food, as well as the bond between mother and daughter. 'Singer's writing reminds me about everything important to me in life, the four f's: friends, food, family and fun' - Claire Ptak, owner of Violet bakery 'Fanny [is] a seductive wordsmith of deliciousness!' - Sally Clarke, owner of Clarke's Restaurant 'Fanny's confident, honest, warm words beautifully read like a foodie fairy tale' - Skye Gyngell, owner of Spring Restaurant 'A true delight to read, full of pearls of homely wisdom.' - Lily Cole 'A delicious book and deserving of all the praise already heaped on it.' - Bryan Ferry 'Joyful, witty and loving...A book like no other, an instant classic.' - Al Hilton, staff writer at The New Yorker FEATURED IN VOGUE'S 'The 5 Best Books of 2020 (So Far)'