Download or read book A Very Large Expanse of Sea written by Tahereh Mafi and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature! From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Shatter Me series comes a powerful, heartrending contemporary novel about fear, first love, and the devastating impact of prejudice. It’s 2002, a year after 9/11. It’s an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She’s tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments—even the physical violence—she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she’s built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

Download or read book Introduction to Baguazhang written by Kent Howard and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This clear, step-by-step guide to the fundamentals of Bagua Zhang lays out the principles, practices, and underlying philosophy of this cerebral and sophisticated Chinese internal martial art. Leading readers from the most basic precepts of Bagua Zhang practice to advanced techniques, Kent Howard draws on his deep understanding of the art and his decades of teaching to set students on a path toward mastery. While Bagua Zhang is often perceived as a complex martial art that is difficult to learn, Howard breaks it down into clear and easily absorbed principles and exercises that beginners can master and incorporate into higher levels of practice at their own pace. Numerous easy-to-follow photographs illustrate core practices such as circle-walking, post standing, and palm changes, as well as foundandational techniques of posture and alignment, fluid motion, generating whole-body power, absorbing and redirecting energy, striking while in motion, and much more. In addition to providing a solid foundation for a lifetime practice, Bagua Zhang Fundamentals also offers more advanced practitioners valuable tips on how to increase their knowledge and understanding of this multifaceted martial art.

Download or read book Jade Legacy written by Fonda Lee and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY NOVEL, 2022 "Lee's series will stand as a pillar of epic fantasy and family drama." —Library Journal (starred review) The Kaul siblings battle rival clans for honor and control over an East Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis in Jade Legacy, the page-turning conclusion to the Green Bone Saga. Jade, the mysterious and magical substance once exclusive to the Green Bone warriors of Kekon, is now coveted throughout the world. Everyone wants access to the supernatural abilities it provides. As the struggle over the control of jade grows ever larger and more deadly, the Kaul family, and the ancient ways of the Kekonese Green Bones, will never be the same. Battered by war and tragedy, the Kauls are plagued by resentments and old wounds as their adversaries are on the ascent and their country is riven by dangerous factions and foreign interference. The clan must discern allies from enemies, set aside bloody rivalries, and make terrible sacrifices . . . but even the unbreakable bonds of blood and loyalty may not be enough to ensure the survival of the Green Bone clans and the nation they are sworn to protect. Praise for the Green Bone Saga: "Jade City has it all: a beautifully realized setting, a great cast of characters, and dramatic action scenes. What a fun, gripping read!" —Ann Leckie "An instantly absorbing tale of blood, honor, family, and magic, spiced with unexpectedly tender character beats."—NPR The Green Bone Saga Jade City Jade War Jade Legacy

Download or read book Jade City written by Fonda Lee and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this World Fantasy Award-winning novel of magic and kungfu, four siblings battle rival clans for honor and power in an Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis. *Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time ​* World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, winner Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for -- and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion. Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon's bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation. When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone -- even foreigners -- wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones -- and of Kekon itself. Praise for Jade City: "An epic drama reminiscent of the best classic Hong Kong gangster films but set in a fantasy metropolis so gritty and well-imagined that you'll forget you're reading a book." --Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author "A beautifully realized setting, a great cast of characters, and dramatic action scenes. What a fun, gripping read!" --Ann Leckie, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author "An instantly absorbing tale of blood, honor, family and magic, spiced with unexpectedly tender character beats." --NPR The Green Bone Saga Jade City Jade War Jade Legacy

Download or read book Don t Know Tough written by Eli Cranor and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD WINNER OF THE PETER LOVESEY FIRST CRIME NOVEL CONTEST Friday Night Lights gone dark with Southern Gothic; Eli Cranor delivers a powerful noir that will appeal to fans of Wiley Cash and Megan Abbott. In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension. Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul. Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs.

Download or read book The 4 Hour Body written by Timothy Ferriss and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will redefine how you approach losing weight. Based on over 15 years of research and with personal stories, amazing before and after photos, recipes and sidebars, The 4-Hour Body, from international bestselling author Tim Ferriss, will give unbelievable results and change the way you look forever. 'Mr. Ferriss makes difficult things seem very easy' -- NY Times 'The Superman of Silicon Valley' - Wired 'This book has changed my life' -- ***** Reader review 'An uncommon genius' -- ***** Reader review 'This book is awesome' -- ***** Reader review 'Educational and mind blowing' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************** Whatever your physical goal, The 4-Hour Body eclipses every other health manual by sharing the best kept secrets in the latest science and research to provide new strategies for redesigning the human body. And you don't need to exhaust yourself. International bestselling author, Timothy Ferriss, helps you reach your true genetic potential in 3-6 months with a commitment of less than four hours per week. You can pick and choose from a menu of options, from simple to extreme, for dramatic body changes. Packed full of personal case studies, before and after photos, recipes and top tips, this book will help you achieve your body goals in record time.

Download or read book Merci Su rez Can t Dance written by Meg Medina and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Meg Medina's follow-up to her Newbery Medal-winning novel, Merci takes on seventh grade, with all its travails of friendship, family, love--and finding your rhythm.

Download or read book Jiu Jitsu University written by Saulo Ribeiro and published by Victory Belt Publishing. This book was released on 2008-11-17 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saulo Ribeiro—six-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion—is world-renowned for his functional Jiu-Jitsu knowledge and flawless technique. In Jiu-Jitsu University, Ribeiro shares with the public for the first time his revolutionary system of grappling, mapping out more than 200 techniques that carry you from white to black belt. Illuminating common Jiu-Jitsu errors and then illustrating practical remedies, this book is a must for all who train in Jiu-Jitsu. Not your run-of-the-mill technique book, Jiu-Jitsu University is a detailed training manual that will ultimately change the way Jiu-Jitsu is taught around the globe.

Download or read book Bagua Swimming Body Palms written by Wang Shujin and published by Blue Snake Books. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bagua Swimming Body Palms is the second book written by Wang Shujin, one of the world’s foremost exponents of Chinese internal martial arts and a renowned expert of Bagua Zhang. This volume continues the process of bringing Master Wang’s important art to Western readers. More intricate than the Linked Palms form, Swimming Body Palms helps practitioners achieve fluent body mechanics and the ability to connect and flow from one movement to the next with power. Master Wang, who taught Swimming Palms to only a few advanced students, described it as “swim-walking,” or swimming around the body. Bagua Swimming Body Palms offers a thorough grounding in the basics of Bagua principles and practice, and illuminates the connection between the cultural meanings of the I Ching and the physical movements of Bagua Zhang. The photographs from the Chinese book are reprinted, along with hundreds of new photographs of translator Kent Howard demonstrating the exercises in greater detail. Sifu Howard provides extensive commentary on Master Wang’s writings, and Daoist master Huang Jinsheng contributes a thoughtful essay on Master Wang’s spiritual practice with the esoteric Daoist sect Yi Guan Dao. The book’s engaging style, fidelity to the Chinese text, and comprehensiveness make it a welcome addition to any martial arts library.

Download or read book Martial Arts Studies written by Paul Bowman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phrase “martial arts studies” is increasingly circulating as a term to describe a new field of interest. But many academic fields including history, philosophy, anthropology, and Area studies already engage with martial arts in their own particular way. Therefore, is there really such a thing as a unique field of martial arts studies? Martial Arts Studies is the first book to engage directly with these questions. It assesses the multiplicity and heterogeneity of possible approaches to martial arts studies, exploring orientations and limitations of existing approaches. It makes a case for constructing the field of martial arts studies in terms of key coordinates from post-structuralism, cultural studies, media studies, and post-colonialism. By using these anti-disciplinary approaches to disrupt the approaches of other disciplines, Martial Arts Studies proposes a field that both emerges out of and differs from its many disciplinary locations.

Download or read book The Art of Being Human written by Michael Wesch and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropology is the study of all humans in all times in all places. But it is so much more than that. "Anthropology requires strength, valor, and courage," Nancy Scheper-Hughes noted. "Pierre Bourdieu called anthropology a combat sport, an extreme sport as well as a tough and rigorous discipline. ... It teaches students not to be afraid of getting one's hands dirty, to get down in the dirt, and to commit yourself, body and mind. Susan Sontag called anthropology a "heroic" profession." What is the payoff for this heroic journey? You will find ideas that can carry you across rivers of doubt and over mountains of fear to find the the light and life of places forgotten. Real anthropology cannot be contained in a book. You have to go out and feel the world's jagged edges, wipe its dust from your brow, and at times, leave your blood in its soil. In this unique book, Dr. Michael Wesch shares many of his own adventures of being an anthropologist and what the science of human beings can tell us about the art of being human. This special first draft edition is a loose framework for more and more complete future chapters and writings. It serves as a companion to anth101.com, a free and open resource for instructors of cultural anthropology. This 2018 text is a revision of the "first draft edition" from 2017 and includes 7 new chapters.

Download or read book Crimes Committed by Terrorist Groups written by Mark S. Hamm and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.

Download or read book Shadows of the Prophet written by Douglas S. Farrer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-06-05 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first in-depth study of the Malay martial art, silat, and the first ethnographic account of the Haqqani Islamic Sufi Order. Drawing on 12 years of research and practice, the author provides a major contribution to the study of Malay culture.

Download or read book Deconstructing Martial Arts written by Paul Bowman and published by Cardiff University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the essence of martial arts? What is their place in or relationship with culture and society? Deconstructing Martial Arts analyses familiar issues and debates that arise in scholarly, practitioner and popular cultural discussions and treatments of martial arts and argues that martial arts are dynamic and variable constructs whose meanings and values regularly shift, mutate and transform, depending on the context. It argues that deconstructing martial arts is an invaluable approach to both the scholarly study of martial arts in culture and society and also to wider understandings of what and why martial arts are. Placing martial arts in relation to core questions and concerns of media and cultural studies around identity, value, orientalism, and embodiment, Deconstructing Martial Arts introduces and elaborates deconstruction as a rewarding method of cultural studies.

Download or read book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running written by Haruki Murakami and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-08-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the best-selling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark, a rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running, and the integral impact both have made on his life. In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Haruki Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a slew of critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and includes settings ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvellous lens of sport emerges a cornucopia of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs and the experience, after the age of fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running.

Download or read book Fated written by Benedict Jacka and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enter a “gorgeously realized world”* and meet a mage destined for greatness in the first novel in the national bestselling Alex Verus series. Alex is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running a magic shop in London that caters to clientele who can do much more than pull rabbits out of hats. And while Alex’s own powers aren’t as showy as some mages, he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible future—allowing him to pull off operations that have a million to one chance of success. But when Alex is approached by multiple factions seeking his skills to crack open a relic from a long-ago mage war, he knows that whatever’s inside must be beyond powerful. And thanks to his abilities, Alex can predict that by taking the job, his odds of survival are about to go from slim to none....

Download or read book Jake Ransom and the Skull King s Shadow written by James Rollins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a mysterious envelope arrives for Jake Ransom, he and his older sister, Kady, are plunged into a gripping chain of events. An artifact found by their parents—on the expedition from which they never returned—leads Jake and Kady to a strange world inhabited by a peculiar mix of long-lost civilizations, a world that may hold the key to their parents' disappearance. But even as they enter the gate to this extraordinary place, savage grackyls soar across the sky, diving to attack. Jake's new friends, the pretty Mayan girl Marika and the Roman Pindor, say the grackyls were created by an evil alchemist—the Skull King. And as Jake struggles to find a way home, it becomes obvious that what the Skull King wants most is Jake and Kady—dead or alive.