Download or read book Under Fishbone Clouds written by Sam Meekings and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under Fishbone Clouds is a universal love story, a family saga, and a journey through Chinese history, myth, and culture. Following a young Chinese couple as their love grows, and is tested, during Mao's Cultural Revolution, this elegant debut novel provides a rare and personal glimpse into the birth modern China. When the Kitchen God is challenged by the Jade Emperor to fathom the workings of the human heart, he chooses to follow the life of Jinyi and his wife Yuying, from their blossoming love until their old age, in hope of finding an answer. The Kitchen God watches as the new government strictures split their family in two, living inside their hearts as they they endure the loss of two children, homesickness, and isolation, all while keeping alive a love that survives famine, forced labor, and even death. Weaving together the story of their life with China's recent political history, as well as traditional folktales and myths, the Kitchen God illuminates the most impenetrable aspects the human condition. Sam Meekings's remarkable debut novel showcases his luminous, poetic writing, as well as insights that belong to a writer twice his age. Part love story and part historical narrative, Under Fishbone Clouds carries the weight and beauty of a lifetime's achievement.
Download or read book The Book of Crows written by Sam Meekings and published by Polygon. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of delicately interlaced stories, Sam Meekings' richly poetic and gripping second novel follows the journeys of characters whose lives, separated by millennia, are all in some way touched by the mysterious Book of Crows - a mythical book in which the entire history of the world - past, present and future - is written down.
Download or read book Chalktown written by Melinda Haynes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-06-04 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the heels of her Oprah-selected debut blockbuster "Mother of Pearl, " Melinda Haynes returns with a lush and deeply affecting story of redemption and renewal set in 1960s Mississippi.
Download or read book The Last Green Tree written by Jim Grimsley and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-11-28 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three hundred years after the Conquest, as the Great Mage rules over all humankind, the long peace is over as a mysterious and omnipotent force rises on the planet Aramen, where sentient trees keep human symbionts as slaves.
Download or read book The Lilac House written by Anita Nair and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meera is happily submerged in the role of corporate wife and cookbook writer. Then, one day, her husband fails to come home. Overnight, Meera, disoriented and emotionally fragile, becomes responsible not just for her two children, but also her mother, grandmother and the running of Lilac House, their rambling old family home in Bangalore. A few streets away, Professor J.A. Krishnamurthy or Jak, cyclone studies expert, has recently returned from Florida, to care for his nineteen-year-old daughter, the victim of a tragic accident. What happened on her holiday in a small beachside village? The police will not help, Smriti's friends have vanished, and a wall of silence and fear surrounds the incident. But Jak cannot rest until he gets to the truth. Meera and of Jak's paths intertwine as they uncover the truth about the secrets of their pasts and the promise of the future. The Lilac House is a sweeping story of redemption, forgiveness and second chances.
Download or read book Piranesi written by Susanna Clarke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction World Fantasy Awards Finalist From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality. Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. For readers of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
Download or read book Manazuru written by Hiromi Kawakami and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future. Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three–year–old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something. Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memory—a profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members.
Download or read book Everything I Never Told You written by Celeste Ng and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the Alex Award and the Massachusetts Book Award • Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Grantland Booklist, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, School Library Journal, Bustle, and Time Our New York The acclaimed debut novel by the author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts “A taut tale of ever deepening and quickening suspense.” —O, the Oprah Magazine “Explosive . . . Both a propulsive mystery and a profound examination of a mixed-race family.” —Entertainment Weekly “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.
Download or read book The Statues that Walked written by Terry Hunt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing and vexing of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why was the island the Europeans encountered a sparsely populated wasteland? The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse. When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they fully expected to find evidence supporting these accounts. Instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth. In this lively and fascinating account of Hunt and Lipo’s definitive solution to the mystery of what really happened on the island, they introduce the striking series of archaeological discoveries they made, and the path-breaking findings of others, which led them to compelling new answers to the most perplexing questions about the history of the island. Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence. Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time. Shattering the conventional wisdom, Hunt and Lipo’s ironclad case for a radically different understanding of the story of this most mysterious place is scientific discovery at its very best.
Download or read book Fishbone s Song written by Gary Paulsen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An orphan reflects on the lessons he was taught by the wise old man who raised him in this lyrical novel that reads like poetry from three-time Newbery Honor–winning author Gary Paulsen. Deep in the woods, in a rustic cabin, lives an old man and the boy he’s raised as his own. This sage old man has taught the boy the power of nature and how to live in it, and more importantly, to respect it. In Fishbone’s Song, this boy reminisces about the magic of the man who raised him and the tales that he used to tell—all true, but different each time.
Download or read book The Secrets of Blueberries Brothers Moose and Me written by Sara Nickerson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015"--Title page verso.
Download or read book In the Time of the Butterflies written by Julia Alvarez and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2024, internationally bestselling author and literary icon Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies is "beautiful, heartbreaking and alive ... a lyrical work of historical fiction based on the story of the Mirabal sisters, revolutionary heroes who had opposed and fought against Trujillo." (Concepción de León, New York Times) Alvarez’s new novel, The Cemetery of Untold Stories, is coming April 2, 2024. Pre-order now! It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression. "Alvarez helped blaze the trail for Latina authors to break into the literary mainstream, with novels like In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents winning praise from critics and gracing best-seller lists across the Americas."—Francisco Cantú, The New York Times Book Review "This Julia Alvarez classic is a must-read for anyone of Latinx descent." —Popsugar.com "A gorgeous and sensitive novel . . . A compelling story of courage, patriotism and familial devotion." —People "Shimmering . . . Valuable and necessary." —Los Angeles Times "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time.” —St. Petersburg Times "Alvarez does a remarkable job illustrating the ruinous effect the 30-year dictatorship had on the Dominican Republic and the very real human cost it entailed."—Cosmopolitan.com
Download or read book Things They Lost written by Okwiri Oduor and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Most Anticipated Book by Vogue and Vulture “Alternately whimsical, sweet, and dark,” this astonishing debut novel about a lonely girl waiting for her mother “brim[s] with uncompromisingly African magical realism” (The New York Times). Ayosa is a wandering spirit—joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmother’s crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself: the ghostly Fatumas, whose eyes are the size of bay windows, who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas, cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman, who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano, the kind owner of a café no one ever visits. Unexpectedly, miraculously, one day Ayosa finds a friend. Yet she is always fixed on her beautiful mama, Nabumbo Promise: a mysterious and aloof photographer, she comes and goes as she pleases, with no apology or warning. Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one, Things They Lost sets out a rich and magical vision of “girlhood as a time of complexity, laced with unparalleled creativity and expansion” (Vogue). Heartbreaking, elegant, and written in “giddily exuberant prose” (Financial Times), it’s a story about connection, coming-of-age, and the dizzying dualities of love at its most intoxicating and all-encompassing.
Download or read book If I Say If written by Alistair Rolls and published by University of Adelaide Press. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boris Vian is a rare phenomenon. Nothing short of a national treasure in France, he is hardly known overseas. In his lifetime, he divided literary opinion with masterpieces that failed to sell and best sellers that caused outrage, trials and even deaths, including his own. As an impresario, he became the figurehead of the jazz scene that marked the French left bank at the end of the Second World War and was responsible for bringing Duke Ellington and Miles Davis to France. As a musician, he played his trumpet against the advice of cardiologists, sang pacifist songs before audiences of outraged patriots and, in passing, created French rock ‘n’ roll. Posthumously, he became known for his theatre, film scripts and poetry as well as for his novels. And in May ’68 he became a revolutionary icon.
Download or read book Donabe written by Naoko Takei Moore and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful and lavishly photographed cookbook focused on authentic Japanese clay-pot cooking, showcasing beloved recipes and updates on classics, with background on the origins and history of donabe. Japanese clay pot (donabe) cooking has been refined over centuries into a versatile and simple method for preparing both dramatic and comforting one-pot meals. In Donabe, Tokyo native and cooking school instructor Naoko Takei Moore and chef Kyle Connaughton offer inspiring Japanese home-style recipes such as Sizzling Tofu and Mushrooms in Miso Sauce and Dashi-Rich Shabu-Shabu, as well as California-inspired dishes including Steam-Fried Black Cod with Crisp Potatoes, Leeks, and Walnut-Nori Pesto or Smoked Duck Breast with Creamy Wasabi–Green Onion Dipping Sauce. All are rich in flavor, simple to prepare, and perfect for a communal dining experience with family and friends. Donabe also features recipes from luminary chefs such as David Kinch, Namae Shinobu, and Cortney Burns and Nick Balla, all of whom use donabe in their own kitchens. Collectible, beautiful, and functional, donabe can easily be an essential part of your cooking repetory.
Download or read book The Book of Atrix Wolfe written by Patricia A. McKillip and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic fantasy novel from the late World Fantasy Award-winning author Patricia A. McKillip (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld), the human world and the realm of faerie dangerously intertwine through chaotic magic. Told in McKillip's stunning prose, The Book of Atrix Wolfe is the spellbinding legend of a reluctant mage, a powerful wizard, a beleaguered heir, fae royalty, and a nearly invisible scullery-maid. When the White Wolf descends upon the battlefield, the results are disastrous. His fateful decision to end a war with powerful magic changes the destiny of four kingdoms: warlike Kardeth, resilient Pelucir, idyllic Chaumenard, and the mysterious Elven realm. Twenty years later, Prince Talis, orphaned heir to Pelucir, is meant to be the savior of the realm. However, the prince is neither interested in ruling nor a particularly skilled mage. Further, he is obsessed with a corrupted spellbook, and he is haunted by visions from the woods. The legendary mage Atrix Wolfe has forsaken magic and the world of men. But the Queen of the Wood, whose fae lands overlap Pelucir's bloody battlefield, is calling Wolfe back. Her consort and her daughter have been missing since the siege, and if Wolfe cannot intervene, the Queen will keep a sacrifice for her own.
Download or read book Mercury in Retrograde written by Paula Froelich and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Page Six reporter, a debut novel in which the lives of three New York women intersect when they move into the same Soho apartment building.
