Download or read book The Icarus Girl written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The audacious first novel from the award-winning and bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours • “Oyeyemi brilliantly conjures up the raw emotions and playground banter of childhood. . . . A masterly first novel.”–The New York Times Book Review "Remarkable. . . . As original as it is unsettling, The Icarus Girl runs straight at the heart of what it means to belong."– O, The Oprah Magazine Jessamy “Jess” Harrison, age eight, is the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother. Possessed of an extraordinary imagination, she has a hard time fitting in at school. It is only when she visits Nigeria for the first time that she makes a friend who understands her: a ragged little girl named TillyTilly. But soon TillyTilly’s visits become more disturbing, until Jess realizes she doesn’t actually know who her friend is at all. Drawing on Nigerian mythology, Helen Oyeyemi presents a striking variation on the classic literary theme of doubles — both real and spiritual — in this lyrical and bold debut.
Download or read book The Opposite House written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Rich and witty ... it confirms Helen Oyeyemi as a true original' Ali Smith 'Powerful ... wonderfully unsettling ... Oyeyemi's raw style is great' Time Out 'Beautiful ... this is about the difficulties of knowing who you are, especially if you are born of several incompatible cultures. It has the ring of truth' The Times Maja Carmen Carrera was only five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London, leaving her with one complete memory: a woman singing - in a voice both eerie and enthralling - at their farewell party, while little Maja peered out from beneath a table. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja herself is a singer, in love with Aaron, pregnant and haunted by what she calls 'her Cuba'. Growing up in London, she has struggled to negotiate her history and the sense that speaking the Spanish or the English of her people's conquistadors made her less of a black girl. But she is unable to find in herself the Ewe, Igbo, or Swahili of her roots. It seems all that's left is silence. And on the other side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, Yemaya of the ocean, lives in the Somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya is troubled by the ease with which her fellow gods have disguised themselves as saints and reappeared under different names and faces... ________________________ The Opposite House is about the disquiet that follows us across places and languages, a feeling passed down from mother and father to son and daughter. It is an unforgettable second novel from the author of The Icarus Girl.
Download or read book Gingerbread written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Exhilarating...A wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel." - The New York Times Book Review "[W]ildly inventive…[Helen Oyeyemi's] prose is not without its playful bite." –Vogue The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy Snow Bird, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, and Peaces returns with a bewitching and imaginative novel. Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe. Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there's the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it's very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee's early youth. The world's truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet's charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met. Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother's long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet's story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi's inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.
Download or read book Children of Icarus written by Caighlan Smith and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It�s Clara who�s desperate to enter the labyrinth and it�s Clara who�s bright, strong, and fearless enough to take on any challenge. It�s no surprise when she�s chosen. But so is the girl who has always lived in her shadow. Together they enter. Within minutes, they are torn apart forever. Now the girl who has never left the city walls must fight to survive in a living nightmare, where one false turn with who to trust means a certain dead end.
Download or read book Secret Son written by Laila Lalami and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2010-05-09 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raised by his mother in a one-room house in the slums of Casablanca, Youssef El Mekki has always had big dreams of living another life in another world. Suddenly his dreams are within reach when he discovers that his father—whom he’d been led to believe was dead—is very much alive. A wealthy businessman, he seems eager to give his son a new start. Youssef leaves his mother behind to live a life of luxury, until a reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends. Trapped once again by his class and painfully aware of the limitations of his prospects, he becomes easy prey for a fringe Islamic group. In the spirit of The Inheritance of Loss and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Laila Lalami’s debut novel looks at the struggle for identity, the need for love and family, and the desperation that grips ordinary lives in a world divided by class, politics, and religion.
Download or read book Black and White written by Jackie Kessler and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the ultimate battle of good versus good. They were best friends at an elite academy for superheroes in training, but now Callie Bradford, code name Iridium, and Joannie Greene, code name Jet, are mortal enemies. Jet is a by-the-book hero, using her Shadow power to protect the citizens of New Chicago. Iridium, with her mastery of light, runs the city’s underworld. For the past five years the two have played an elaborate, and frustrating, game of cat and mouse. But now playtime’s over. Separately Jet and Iridium uncover clues that point to a looming evil, one that is entwined within the Academy. As Jet works with Bruce Hunter—a normal man with an extraordinary ability to make her weak in the knees—she becomes convinced that Iridium is involved in a scheme that will level the power structure of America itself. And Iridium, teaming with the mysterious vigilante called Taser, uncovers an insidious plot that’s been a decade in the making…a plot in which Jet is key. They’re both right. And they’re both wrong. Because nothing is as simple as Black and White.
Download or read book The Fall of Icarus the Elevator the Fall of Icarus and the Girl written by Nr Bates and published by NR Bates Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three interconnected short-stories set in Paris explore the issue of choice, survival and transformation. In the first story, a young man on his first business trip is waylaid by an aberrant elevator. In the pivotal tale, a young scientist re-imagines the Greek myth of Icarus and his fall to earth. In the final story, a young woman who cannot recall her own name relates the fantastical tale of a girl who can fly.
Download or read book The Salt Roads written by Nalo Hopkinson and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the SFWA Grand Master, a“sexy, disturbing, touching, wildly comic . . . tour de force” that blends fantasy, women’s history, and slavery (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). In 1804, shortly before the Caribbean island of Saint Domingue is renamed Haiti, a group of women gather to bury a stillborn baby. Led by a lesbian healer and midwife named Mer, the women’s lamentations inadvertently release the dead infant’s “unused vitality” to draw Ezili—the Afro-Caribbean goddess of sexual desire and love—into the physical world. As Ezili explores her newfound powers, she travels across time and space to inhabit the midwife’s body, as well as those of Jeanne—a mixed-race dancer and the mistress of Charles Baudelaire living in 1880s Paris—and Meritet, an enslaved Greek-Nubian prostitute in ancient Alexandria. Bound together by Ezili and “the salt road” of their sweat, blood, and tears, the three women struggle against a hostile world, unaware of the goddess’s presence in their lives. Despite her magic, Mer suffers as a slave on a sugar plantation until Ezili plants the seeds of uprising in her mind. Jeanne slowly succumbs to the ravages of age and syphilis when her lover is unable to escape his mother’s control. And Meritet, inspired by Ezili, flees her enslavement and makes a pilgrimage to Egypt, where she becomes known as Saint Mary. With unapologetically sensual prose, Nalo Hopkinson, the Nebula Award–winning author of Midnight Robber, explores slavery through the lives of three historical women touched by a goddess in this “electrifying bravura performance by one of our most important writers” (Junot Díaz).
Download or read book These Broken Stars written by Amie Kaufman and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-12-10 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the most intense, thrilling, and achingly beautiful stories I've ever read."--Marie Lu, New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy The first in the New York Times bestselling author duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds. It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen are the only survivors. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help. Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other's arms. Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won't be the same people who landed on it.
Download or read book Juniper s Whitening written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-05-29 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two plays exploring the pain of living and the difficulty of dying by a sensational new writer Juniper's Whitening "Tell me this - is it true that if you make someone die, and they come out the other side, it doesn't matter? I'm sure something clung to Lazarus. Something must've shone through him." In Aleph, Beth and Juniper's nightmare house, kindness is entrapment, and resurrection is a weapon. Aleph love/hates Beth, Beth love/hates Aleph, and all Juniper knows is that Beth can't seem to stop being murdered. One thing above all: none of them must look out of the window. Victimese "I was thinking, Eve, that you need to touch bottom - just so you know you can do it. So you know it's not that difficult; so you know that you don't have to tunnel far; so you know that you're not that actually as deep as you think you are." Eve is unable to leave her student room but unable to bear staying in it. In harming herself she hopes to demonstrate her courage and independence to both herself and her friends. But her sister's arrival and need for her friendship forces her to face painful truths and to examine whether it is possible to temper emotional courage with the humanity to give and ask for aid.
Download or read book White is for Witching written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-04-02 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunting in every sense, White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi is a spine-tingling tribute to the power of magic, myth and memory. High on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the loss of Lily, mother of twins Eliot and Miranda, and beloved wife of Luc. Miranda misses her with particular intensity. Their mazy, capricious house belonged to her mother’s ancestors, and to Miranda, newly attuned to spirits, newly hungry for chalk, it seems they have never left. Forcing apples to grow in winter, revealing and concealing secret floors, the house is fiercely possessive of young Miranda . . .
Download or read book Project Icarus written by R.D. Shah and published by Canelo. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An old enemy, a new threat, and a secret that could tear the world apart. Hostage negotiator Ethan Munroe is called urgently to a developing crime scene. A serial killer is holding a young girl hostage, and, inexplicably, demands his attendance. Events quickly spiral out of control, and the security of Ethan's life is stripped away, as he is thrown headlong into a perilous world of deception, espionage and danger, lurking deep within the shadows of political power. Ethan will discover things about himself he could never have suspected, come face-to-face with a terrifying foe, and uncover an unthinkable truth that could not only shatter his own future but that of the world... The enigma that is Project Icarus. A totally gripping conspiracy thriller with a twist you will never see coming, perfect for fans of Lee Child, Scott Mariani, and Adam Hamdy.
Download or read book Riding Icarus written by Lily Hyde and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A magical modern fairytale set in Kiev, featuring a girl called Masha who lives in a flying trolleybus called Icarus. When rich Uncle Igor sends her mother abroad to work, Masha stays in Kiev and moves into an old, disused trolleybus called Icarus. But one night there is a terrible storm and Icarus takes off! Masha is transported to an enchanted place where she discovers that, on midsummer eve, she will be able to wish for whatever her heart desires. But will Masha be able to find the enchanted place again and work out her heart's desire in time? And will she make the right wish to bring her mother back home so they can escape Igor's clutches for ever?
Download or read book When You Reach Me written by Rebecca Stead and published by Wendy Lamb Books. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Like A Wrinkle in Time (Miranda's favorite book), When You Reach Me far surpasses the usual whodunit or sci-fi adventure to become an incandescent exploration of 'life, death, and the beauty of it all.'" —The Washington Post This Newbery Medal winner that has been called "smart and mesmerizing," (The New York Times) and "superb" (The Wall Street Journal) will appeal to readers of all types, especially those who are looking for a thought-provoking mystery with a mind-blowing twist. Shortly after a fall-out with her best friend, sixth grader Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes, and she doesn’t know what to do. The notes tell her that she must write a letter—a true story, and that she can’t share her mission with anyone. It would be easy to ignore the strange messages, except that whoever is leaving them has an uncanny ability to predict the future. If that is the case, then Miranda has a big problem—because the notes tell her that someone is going to die, and she might be too late to stop it. Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Fiction A New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book Five Starred Reviews A Junior Library Guild Selection "Absorbing." —People "Readers ... are likely to find themselves chewing over the details of this superb and intricate tale long afterward." —The Wall Street Journal "Lovely and almost impossibly clever." —The Philadelphia Inquirer "It's easy to imagine readers studying Miranda's story as many times as she's read L'Engle's, and spending hours pondering the provocative questions it raises." —Publishers Weekly, Starred review
Download or read book Girl written by Edna O'Brien and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A stunning novel, another remarkable achievement from one of the English language’s greatest living writers,” the acclaimed author of The Country Girls (Michael Schaub, NPR). I was a girl once, but not anymore. So begins Girl, Edna O’Brien’s harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood. From one of the century’s greatest living authors, Girl is an unforgettable story of one victim’s astonishing survival, and her unflinching faith in the redemption of the human heart. “The rhythm of Girl is intermittent and fearsomely strong; reading this novel is like riding the rapids . . . O’Brien’s understanding of, and sympathy for, girls in trouble transcends culture.” —Terrence Rafferty, The Atlantic “A masterpiece, a heart-wrenching story of loss and redemption powerfully rendered in O’Brien’s singular voice, which is at once fierce and tender, conscientious and visionary.” —The Irish Times “Throughout her long career, Edna O’Brien has proved to be an exceptionally brave writer, resolved to tell the truth, loyal to nothing except her memory, her imagination and her faith in the power and beauty of language . . . It’s a tribute to O’Brien’s skill as a writer—her ability to inhabit the minds of her characters and to craft virtuosic sentences—that Girl is immensely painful to read.” —Francine Pose, New York Times Book Review
Download or read book What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Picador. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM THE WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD & GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST "What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours . . . boasts ambitious stories written masterfully by an adventurous author." New York Times The stories collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are linked by more than the exquisitely winding prose of their creator: Helen Oyeyemi's ensemble cast of characters slip from the pages of their own stories only to surface in another. The reader is invited into a world of lost libraries and locked gardens, of marshlands where the drowned dead live and a city where all the clocks have stopped; students hone their skills at puppet school, the Homely Wench Society commits a guerrilla book-swap, and lovers exchange books and roses on St Jordi's Day. It is a collection of towering imagination, marked by baroque beauty and a deep sensuousness. PRAISE FOR WHAT IS YOURS IS NOT YOURS "Oyeyemi's imagination is impressive and vast . . . Her ability to conceive her stories on such a grand scale is what makes her work so magnetic, sucking the reader into any number of netherworlds." Guardian "Alluring . . . the style and peculiar authority of this exceptional young writer will carry you carefully through the labyrinth and into a new and exciting literary landscape." Daily Mail "Ethereal beauty and unexpected humour" Independent on Sunday
Download or read book Boy Snow Bird written by Helen Oyeyemi and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. Flax Hill, Massachusetts, isn't exactly a welcoming town, but it does have the virtue of being the last stop on the bus route she took from New York. Flax Hill is also the hometown of Arturo Whitman - craftsman, widower, and father of Snow. SNOW is mild-mannered, radiant and deeply cherished - exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was, and Boy is utterly beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that's simply a characteristic she shares with her father, harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow's sister, Bird. When BIRD is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo's family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart.
