Download or read book A Wolf at the Table written by Augusten Burroughs and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2008-04-29 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we'd ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike most dreams, the memory of this one never left me. And sometimes...I wasn't altogether sure about one thing: was it just a dream?" When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named. Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten's childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn't exist for him. This father was distant, aloof, uninterested... And then the "games" began. With A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. Told with scorching honesty and penetrating insight, it is a story for anyone who has ever longed for unconditional love from a parent. Though harrowing and brutal, A Wolf at the Table will ultimately leave you buoyed with the profound joy of simply being alive. It's a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.

Download or read book Trackers written by Deon Meyer and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Thirteen Hours - A Sunday Times '100 best crime novels and thrillers since 1945' pick Milla has finally escaped her abusive husband, only to find herself at the heart of an anti-terrorist operation. Lemmer has agreed to protect a pair of smuggled rhinos on a thousand-kilometre journey - his strangest job yet will also be his most dangerous. And former policeman Mat already wants to quit his new job as a private investigator. But he has promised a young woman he will find her missing husband . . . wherever the trail may lead. From the vibrant streets of Cape Town to the wilds of Zimbabwe, from luxurious gated communities to the ganglands of the Cape Flats, different paths begin to cross in a novel of ever-increasing suspense.

Download or read book The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks written by E. Lockhart and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2004-03-03 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hilarious and razor-sharp story of how one girl went from geek to patriarchy-smashing criminal mastermind in two short years, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud. * National Book Award finalist * * Printz Honor * Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school. Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston. Frankie Landau-Banks. No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many pranks to be done. Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind. This is the story of how she got that way.

Download or read book How Fiction Works written by James Wood and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-07-22 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings—Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel—plainspoken, funny, blunt—in the traditions of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.

Download or read book Everyday Drinking written by Kingsley Amis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-08-09 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the beloved, bestselling compendium of Kingsley Amis's wisdom on the cherished subject of drinking. Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) the book includes Amis's musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man's Diet, The Mean Sod's Guide, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk-all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world. Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humor and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.

Download or read book The Plot Whisperer written by Martha Alderson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover how to create stories that build suspense, reveal character, and engage your audience with this ultimate guide to writing. When it comes to writing bestsellers, it’s all about the plot. Trouble is, plot is where most writers fall down—but you don’t have to be one of them. With this book, you’ll learn how to create stories that build suspense, reveal character, and engage readers—one scene at a time. Celebrated writing teacher and author Martha Alderson has devised a plotting system that’s as innovative as it is easy to implement. With her foolproof blueprint, you’ll learn to devise a successful storyline for any genre. She shows how to: -Use the power of the Universal Story -Create plot lines and subplots that work together -Effectively use a scene tracker for maximum impact -Insert energetic markers at the right points in your story -Show character transformation at the book’s climax This is the ultimate guide for you to write page-turners that sell!

Download or read book Guts written by Robert Nylen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a memoir: a package of boasts, false modesty, flawed memories, dropped names, outright errors, and embarrassing disclosures that I think are pretty neat–but may appall you, if you’re squeamish or have an orderly turn of mind.”—Robert Nylen The thing is, Robert Nylen should have died several times in 1968. He was a goner in 2006, and 2007 as well, and yet he survived through a combination of dumb luck and sheer perseverance. Of course, as you read these words, he’s already bit the dust. But let’s not dwell on that. A self-confessed reckless jerk, Nylen spent the last four years of his life grappling with Big Diseases (cancer, diabetes), an astonishing twelve broken bones, and ten surgeries. His lifetime total is twenty-four fractures, most of which resulted from a flagrant refusal to act his age–or anyone’s age, for that matter. And yet Guts is not a mere chronicle of injuries but a sharp and wry meditation on American Manhood. Growing up in suburbia in the ’50s and ’60s, with a father who had worked on the atom bomb, Nylen was an immature kid who was always eager for attention. In college he became a slovenly, hard-partying fraternity brother who barely graduated. Then came the realization that he was going to have to go to Vietnam. A dramatic tour of duty came to an abrupt end with multiple wounds, leading him to grow up fast. It was then that he started the real risky business: business itself. Some ventures succeeded and some failed. He exercised feverishly and often displayed a complete lack of common sense. And then he got sick, inevitably, with colon cancer. Hilarious, moving, and riveting, this is the life of a tough guy as seen through the scope of a national obsession with toughness. Whether he was facing Viet Cong as a platoon leader in Vietnam or doing battle with venture capitalists at home, Nylen never backed down from a good fight–and he had the many scars to prove it. In Guts, Robert Nylen writes with humor and precision about the travails–and glory–of manhood.

Download or read book Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering written by Leszek Maciaszek and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-11-18 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Software engineering is understood as a broad term linking science, traditional en- neering, art and management and is additionally conditioned by social and external factors (conditioned to the point that brilliant engineering solutions based on strong science, showing artistic creativity and skillfully managed can still fail for reasons beyond the control of the development team). Modern software engineering needs a paradigm shift commensurate with a change of the computing paradigm from: 1. Algorithms to interactions (and from procedural to object-oriented programming) 2. Systems development to systems integration 3.Products to services Traditional software engineering struggles to address this paradigm shift to inter- tions, integration, and services. It offers only incomplete and disconnected methods for building information systems with fragmentary ability to dynamically accom- date change and to grow gracefully. The principal objective of contemporary software engineering should therefore be to try to redefine the entire discipline and offer a complete set of methods, tools and techniques to address challenges ahead that will shape the information systems of the future.

Download or read book Another Insane Devotion written by Peter Trachtenberg and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the mysteries of love and marriage, pleasure and obligation--through the lens of cat ownership

Download or read book The Shadow Land written by Elizabeth Kostova and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the #1 bestselling author of The Historian comes a mesmerizing novel that spans the past and the present—and unearths the troubled history of a gorgeous but haunted country. A young American woman, Alexandra Boyd, has traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria, hoping that life abroad will salve the wounds left by the loss of her beloved brother. Soon after arriving in this elegant East European city, however, she helps an elderly couple into a taxi—and realizes too late that she has accidentally kept one of their bags. Inside she finds an ornately carved wooden box engraved with a name: Stoyan Lazarov. Raising the hinged lid, she discovers that she is holding an urn filled with human ashes. As Alexandra sets out to locate the family and return this precious item, she will first have to uncover the secrets of a talented musician who was shattered by political oppression—and she will find out all too quickly that this knowledge is fraught with its own danger. Elizabeth Kostova’s new novel is a tale of immense scope that delves into the horrors of a century and traverses the culture and landscape of this mysterious country. Suspenseful and beautifully written, it explores the power of stories, the pull of the past, and the hope and meaning that can sometimes be found in the aftermath of loss. Praise for The Shadow Land “A compelling and complex mystery, strong storytelling, and lyrical writing combine for an engrossing read.”—Publishers Weekly “In The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova, a master storyteller, brings vividly to life an unfamiliar country—Bulgaria—and a painful history that feels particularly relevant now. You won’t want to put down this remarkable book.”—Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs “In this brilliant work, what appears at first a minor mystery quickly becomes emblematic of a whole country’s hidden history. Lyrical and compelling, The Shadow Land proves a profound meditation on how evil is inflicted, endured, and, through courage and compassion, defeated. Elizabeth Kostova’s third novel clearly establishes her as one of America’s finest writers.”—Ron Rash, author of The Risen

Download or read book Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action written by Jamil Azher and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-11-30 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In complex software projects, managing the development process can be as critical to success as writing the code itself. A project may involve dozens of developers, managers, architects, testers, and customers, hundreds of builds, and thousands of opportunities to get off-track. To keep tabs on the people, tasks, and components of a medium- to large-scale project, most teams use a development system that allows for easy monitoring, follow-up, and accountability. Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 (TFS), the server component of Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System (VSTS), provides a powerful collaborative platform for software-development teams. The product offers an integrated toolset for tracking work items, creating test cases, managing source code, generating builds, constructing database schemas, and so on. Because in software development one size does not fit all, TFS provides process customization, project management, and reporting capabilities to build solutions around your requirements. Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action is a hands-on guide to Team Foundation Server 2008. Written for developers with a good handle on TFS basics, this book shows you how to solve real-life problems. It's not a repetition of Microsoft's product documentation. Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action is a practitioner's handbook for how to work with TFS under common constraints. This book walks you through real-life software engineering problems based on hundreds of hours of TFS experience. You'll benefit from expert author Jamil Azher's extensive interactions with members of Microsoft's TFS team and MVPs, survey feedback from the author's blog, and interviews with organizations and user groups using TFS. Instead of just offering a high-level overview, the book provides detailed solutions for solving common-and not-so-common-problems using TFS. It discusses the strengths as well as weaknesses of TFS, and suggests appropriate problem resolution steps, workarounds, or custom solutions. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

Download or read book The Motel Life written by Willy Vlautin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With "echoes of Of Mice and Men"(The Bookseller, UK), The Motel Life explores the frustrations and failed dreams of two Nevada brothers—on the run after a hit-and-run accident—who, forgotten by society, and short on luck and hope, desperately cling to the edge of modern life.

Download or read book Blackbringer written by Laini Taylor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magpie Windwitch, faerie, devil hunter, and granddaughter of the West Wind, must defeat an ancient evil creature, the Blackbringer, who has escaped from his bottle and threatens to unmake all of creation.

Download or read book This is how You Lose Her written by Junot Díaz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of stories that explores the heartbreak and radiance of love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy.

Download or read book The Size of the World written by Joan Silber and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engineer in Vietnam is shaken when he discovers why his company's planes are getting lost, a marriage between a Thai Muslim and an American woman sparks a terrible family fight, and a young woman in 1920s Siam experiences her brother's colonial stance.

Download or read book The Quick and the Dead written by Joy Williams and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • From one of our most heralded writers comes the “poetic, disturbing, yet very funny” (The Washington Post Book World) life-and-death adventures of three misfit teenagers in the American desert. Alice, Corvus, and Annabel, each a motherless child, are an unlikely circle of friends. One filled with convictions, another with loss, the third with a worldly pragmatism, they traverse an air-conditioned landscape eccentric with signs and portents—from the preservation of the living dead in a nursing home to the presentation of the dead as living in a wildlife museum—accompanied by restless, confounded adults. A father lusts after his handsome gardener even as he's haunted (literally) by his dead wife; a heartbroken dog runs afoul of an angry neighbor; a young stroke victim drifts westward, his luck running from worse to awful; a sickly musician for whom Alice develops an attraction is drawn instead toward darker imaginings and solutions; and an aging big-game hunter finds spiritual renewal through his infatuation with an eight-year-old—the formidable Emily Bliss Pickless. With nature thoroughly routed and the ambiguities of existence on full display, life and death continue in directions both invisible and apparent. Gloriously funny and wonderfully serious, The Quick and the Dead limns the vagaries of love, the thirst for meaning, and the peculiar paths by which all creatures are led to their destiny. A panorama of contemporary life and an endlessly surprising tour de force: penetrating and magical, ominous and comic, this is the most astonishing book yet in Joy Williams's illustrious career. Joy Williams belongs, James Salter has written, "in the company of Céline, Flannery O'Connor, and Margaret Atwood."

Download or read book The Story of a New Name written by Elena Ferrante and published by . This book was released on 2020-05 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The international bestseller, now in B-format paperback with a brand new cover.