Download or read book Upon a Sleepless Isle written by Andrew Fidel Fernando and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dense Green forests in Yala, white-sand coasts in Trincomalee, azure waters off the South Coast, Anuradhapura's ancient temples, and cricket. Civil war, political assassinations, internally displaced communities, industrial-scale corruption. All are Sri Lanka. As are smug bureaucrats, nosy neighbours, and stray dogs with serious axes to grind. Through the eyes of Andrew Fidel Fernando, cricket writer par excellence, both a local and a tourist in his home country, Sri Lanka comes alive as he hurtles down hills in Kandy, breathes in the history at the rock fortress of Sigiriya, grapples with the aftermath of war in Jaffna, and has himself evicted from restaurants near Galle. Weaving through all manner of villages, paddy fields, mountains, jungles and marshlands, and pausing for the pests at grimy guesthouses and the vacationers of luxury hotels, Fernando has the time for every genre of person and wildlife in this chaotic, exquisite, frustrating, bewitching, tumultuous and intoxicating land. Hilariously witty yet wistfully sombre, Upon a Sleepless Isle is the story of a country and a people caught between long historical traditions and global capitalism, resulting in this ingenious paradise.
Download or read book Frozen Charlotte written by Alex Bell and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2016-11-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this young adult horror novel, a girl staying on a remote island suspects the tiny Victoria-era dolls in her family’s old mansion are up to murder. When her best friend dies under mysterious circumstances, Sophie sets off to stay with her cousins on the remote Isle of Skye. It’s been years since she last saw them—brooding Cameron with his scarred hand; Piper, who seems too perfect to be real; and peculiar little Lilias with her fear of bones. Still, Sophie never expected the strange new rules the family now lives by: Make no mention of Cameron’s accident. Never leave the front gate unlocked. Above all, don’t speak of the girl who’s no longer there, the sister whose death might have closer ties to Sophie’s past—and more sinister consequences for her future—than she ever knew. A wondrously haunting and modern thriller, Frozen Charlotte drips with mystery and madness, secrets and survival, and the chilling sense that the impossible might be all too real. “Teens looking for a novel to keep them up at night will find it in this one.” —School Library Journal “Gothic ghosts combine with crime for a fast read.” —Kirkus
Download or read book Isle of Dragons written by Pam Elise Harris and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sixteen-year-old girl is on the run, banished from her family's noble fiefdom and resolute to save her father after the royal court exiled him to a faraway land of untamed magic. In this provocative and fast-paced fantasy adventure, Jade Sol must survive on her wits and determination while unraveling the secrets and lies of the royal court. She discovers that their machinations not only threaten her and her family, but the world itself.
Download or read book Mrs M written by Luke Slattery and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of Australia's foremost journalists, Luke Slattery, comes a rich, intense novel of desire and dashed dreams, and one passionate, unforgettable woman - Elizabeth Macquarie. 'A richly evocative piece of historical fiction...beautifully written.' Good Weekend Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the disgraced former Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning - not only for her husband, but the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept isle of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country; a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history; and her dangerous alliance with the brilliant, mercurial Francis Greenway, the colony's maverick architect. A stirring, provocative and thrilling novel of passion, ideas, reforming zeal and desire. 'Moving, intricate novel ... Every love story has at its heart a vision of inherent human worth in the beloved; Slattery's achievement is to render, subtly and powerfully both a human love story, and a love story to the nation.' Anna Funder, author of All That I Am 'A remarkable early 19th century heroine comes alive for us in this story: we share Mrs M.'s thoughts and feelings in almost uncanny fashion. Luke Slattery's debut sets new standards for the Australian historical novel.' Nicolas Rothwell 'A richly evocative piece of historical fiction...beautifully written.' Good Weekend 'It is, at its core, the story of Slattery's most extraordinary creation: Mrs M, whose real-world counterpart was the wife of Lachlan Macquarie, fifth governor of the colony of New South Wales (1810-21). ... There is a kind of clarion certainty to her ... I think readers will be swept up by this creation. The narrative would grab me with moments of exquisite cadence and perfect emotional truth ... Told in Elizabeth's voice, and seen through her eyes, the sensuous descriptions of her Scotland and her Sydney - as well as her own inner world - rise off the page with a poet's perfect pitch.' The Australian 'Saul Bellow says somewhere that in fiction sentences should be 'charged' - something should quietly beat through them. When one begins reading this is what you should listen for - imaginative confidence, a sense of sureness. This applies to historical fiction as much as any other. You don't ask, 'Is this true to history?' You ask 'Is this true to itself?' Luke Slattery's Mrs M is imaginatively true from beginning to end.' Barry Oakley
Download or read book The Promise of Elsewhere written by Brad Leithauser and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comic novel about a Midwestern professor who tries to prop up his failing prospects for happiness by setting out on the Journey of a Lifetime. Louie Hake is forty-three and teaches architectural history at a third-rate college in Michigan. His second marriage is collapsing, and he's facing a potentially disastrous medical diagnosis. In an attempt to fend off what has become a soul-crushing existential crisis, he decides to treat himself to a tour of the world's most breathtaking architectural sites. Perhaps not surprisingly, Louie gets waylaid on his very first stop in Rome--ludicrously, spectacularly so--and fails to reach most of his other destinations. He embarks on a doomed romance with a jilted bride celebrating her ruined marriage plans alone in London. And in the Arctic he finds that turf houses and aluminum sheds don't amount to much of an architectural tradition. But it turns out that there's another sort of architecture there: icebergs the size of cathedrals, bobbing beside a strange and wondrous landscape. It soon becomes clear that Louie's grand journey is less about where his wanderings have taken him and more about where his past encounters with romance have not. Whether pursuing his first wife, or his estranged current wife, or the older woman he kissed just once a quarter-century ago, Louie reveals himself to be endearing, deeply touching, wonderfully ridiculous . . . and destined to find love in all the wrong places.
Download or read book The Book of Unconformities written by Hugh Raffles and published by Verse Chorus Press. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of lnsectopedia, a powerful exploration of loss, grief, endurance, and the absences that permeate the present. Unconformities are gaps in the geological record, physical evidence of breaks in time. For Hugh Raffles, these holes in history are also fissures in feeling, knowledge, memory, and understanding. In this endlessly inventive, riveting book, Raffles enters these gaps, drawing together threads of geology, history, literature, philosophy, and ethnography to trace the intimate connections between personal loss and world historical events, and to reveal the force of absence at the core of contemporary life. Through deeply researched explorations of Neolithic stone circles, Icelandic lava, mica from a Nazi concentration camp, petrified whale blubber in Svalbard, the marble prized by Manhattan's Lenape, and a huge Greenlandic meteorite that arrived in New York City along with six Inuit adventurers in 1897, Raffles shows how unconformities unceasingly incite human imagination and investigation yet refuse to conform, heal, or disappear. A journey across eons and continents, The Book of Unconformities is also a journey through stone: this most solid, ancient, and enigmatic of materials, it turns out, is as lively, capricious, willful, and indifferent as time itself.
Download or read book This Divided Island written by Samanth Subramanian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island. In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere, leaving few places, and fewer people, untouched. What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, he tells the story of Sri Lanka today. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.
Download or read book The Football Girl written by Thatcher Heldring and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For every athlete or sports fanatic who knows she's just as good as the guys. This is for fans of The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, Grace, Gold, and Glory by Gabrielle Douglass and Breakaway: Beyond the Goal by Alex Morgan. The summer before Caleb and Tessa enter high school, friendship has blossomed into a relationship . . . and their playful sports days are coming to an end. Caleb is getting ready to try out for the football team, and Tessa is training for cross-country. But all their structured plans derail in the final flag game when they lose. Tessa doesn’t want to end her career as a loser. She really enjoys playing, and if she’s being honest, she likes it even more than running cross-country. So what if she decided to play football instead? What would happen between her and Caleb? Or between her two best friends, who are counting on her to try out for cross-country with them? And will her parents be upset that she’s decided to take her hobby to the next level? This summer Caleb and Tessa figure out just what it means to be a boyfriend, girlfriend, teammate, best friend, and someone worth cheering for. “A great next choice for readers who have enjoyed Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s Dairy Queen and Miranda Kenneally’s Catching Jordan.”—SLJ “Fast-paced football action, realistic family drama, and sweet romance…[will have] readers looking for girl-powered sports stories…find[ing] plenty to like.”—Booklist “Tessa's ferocious competitiveness is appealing.”—Kirkus Reviews “[The Football Girl] serve[s] to illuminate the appropriately complicated emotions both of a young romance and of pursuing a dream. Heldring writes with insight and restraint.”—The Horn Book
Download or read book A Child of the Sea and Life Among the Mormons written by Elizabeth Whitney Williams and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the vivid memoir of a mid-nineteenth-century girlhood spent mostly on the islands of Lake Michigan and the onshore communities of Manistique, Charlevoix, Traverse City, and Little Traverse (now Harbor Springs), written by a woman who grew up to be a lighthouse keeper on Beaver Island and in Little Traverse. Williams was brought up Catholic by a French-speaking mother and an English-speaking father who was a ship's carpenter for entrepreneurs engaged in the mercantile trade to and from these rapidly developing settlements. Williams depicts cordial, even intimate, relationships between her family and the Indians who lived nearby, and describes the courtship and arranged marriage of an Ottawa chief's daughter who lived with her family for an extended period. The major portion of the book, however, is devoted to her eye-witness recollections of James Jesse Strang's short-lived dissident Mormon monarchy on Beaver Island, amplified by stories she heard from disillusioned followers. Strang was expelled from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints after disputing Brigham Young's right to succeed Joseph Smith. Eventually he and his own loyal followers settled on Beaver Island and attracted a stream of new converts; at their demographic peak, the "Strangites" numbered 5,000 strong. Strang saw himself as a prophet and believed the rules he tried to establish were in accord with divine revelations. Williams describes the mounting tensions between Strang's followers and the "gentile" residents who fled the island as Strang's influence grew; incidents connected with Strang's assassination by two former followers; and the ensuing exodus of most Strangites from Beaver Island. She later moved back there with her family, as did many of the earlier inhabitants.
Download or read book The Boggart written by Susan Cooper and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-12-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a tumbledown castle in the Western Highlands of Scotland lives the Boggart. He is invisible -- an ancient mischievous spirit, solitary and sly, born of a magic as old as the rocks and the waves. He has lived in Castle Keep for centuries, playing tricks on the owners. But the last Scottish owner has died and left the castle to his great-nephew Robert Volnik of Toronto, Canada. The Volnik family -- including Emily and her nine-year-old computer genius brother Jessup -- visit Castle Keep, and when they return to Toronto, they unwittingly take the Boggart with them. The astonishments, delight, and horrors that invade their lives with the arrival of the Boggart fill this swiftly moving story. The collision of modern techology and the Old Magic brings perils nobody could have imagined -- and, in the end, an amazing and touching solution to the problem of the Boggart who has found himself on the wrong side of the ocean. Sometimes extremely funny, sometimes wildly scary,and always totally absorbing, this remarkable story -- brilliantly imagined and beautifully written -- marks the return of the Newbery Award winner Susan Cooper to the field of novels for young readers. An outstanding achievement, The Boggart will work its special magic on all who read it.
Download or read book Letters from Skye written by Jessica Brockmole and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________________________________ A sweeping love story told through letters, spanning two continents and two world wars. For fans of My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, The Postmistress and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. UNITED BY LETTERS. SEPARATED BY AN OCEAN. DEVASTATED BY WAR. A letter isn't always just a letter. Words on the page can drench the soul. Elspeth Dunn, a published poet living on the Isle of Skye, answers her first fan letter from Davey Graham, an impetuous young man in Illinois. Without having to worry about appearances or expectations, Elspeth and Davey confess their hopes, dreams and fears, things they've never told another soul. Even without meeting, they know one another. But as World War I engulfs Europe and Davey volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western front, Elspeth can only wait on Skye, anxious for his return; wondering if they'll ever get a chance to meet.
Download or read book The Alpine Path The Story of My Career written by L. M. Montgomery and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This memoir offers a charming and intimate look into the life and career of one of literature's most cherished writers, Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables series. In this captivating narrative, Montgomery takes readers on a journey through her childhood, filled with dreams and imaginings that would later shape her literary voice. She vividly recounts her early years on Prince Edward Island, sharing the experiences and influences that sparked her love for storytelling. As Montgomery progresses from a young girl with a passion for writing to a celebrated author, she candidly describes the challenges and triumphs she faced along the way. Her inspirational road to literary success is a testament to her perseverance, creativity, and unwavering belief in her craft. Originally published as a series of autobiographical essays in the Toronto magazine Everywoman’s World from June to November in 1917, The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career not only provides valuable insights into Montgomery's personal and professional life but also serves as an encouraging tale for aspiring writers and dreamers.
Download or read book Entry Island written by Peter May and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times raved: "Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." Now Peter May takes us to a small island off the coast of Québec with an emotionally charged new mystery. When a murder rocks the isolated community of Entry Island, insomniac homicide detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at St. Hubert airfield bound for the small, scattered chain of Madeline Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as part of an eight-officer investigation team from Montréal. Only two kilometers wide and three long, Entry Island is home to a population of just more than 100 inhabitants, the wealthiest of whom has just been discovered murdered in his home. Covered in her husband's blood, the dead man's melancholy wife spins a tale for the police about a masked intruder armed with a knife. The investigation appears to be little more than a formality--the evidence points to a crime of passion, implicating the wife. But Sime is electrified by the widow during his interview, convinced that he has met her before, even though this is clearly impossible. Haunted by this strange certainty, Sime's insomnia is punctuated by vivid, hallucinatory dreams of a distant past on a Scottish island 3,000 miles away, dreams in which he and the widow play leading roles. Sime's conviction soon becomes an obsession. And despite mounting evidence of the woman's guilt, he finds himself convinced of her innocence, leading to a conflict between the professional duty he must fulfill and the personal destiny he is increasingly sure awaits him.
Download or read book Irish Girls About Town written by Maeve Binchy and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of sixteen short stories about family, friendship, and love features contributions from popular Irish women authors.
Download or read book Nil written by Lynne Matson and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transported through a "gate" to the mysterious island of Nil, seventeen-year-old Charley has 365 days to escape--or she will die.
Download or read book American Apocalypse written by Matthew Avery Sutton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2015 The first comprehensive history of modern American evangelicalism to appear in a generation, American Apocalypse shows how a group of radical Protestants, anticipating the end of the world, paradoxically transformed it. “The history Sutton assembles is rich, and the connections are startling.” —New Yorker “American Apocalypse relentlessly and impressively shows how evangelicals have interpreted almost every domestic or international crisis in relation to Christ’s return and his judgment upon the wicked...Sutton sees one of the most troubling aspects of evangelical influence in the spread of the apocalyptic outlook among Republican politicians with the rise of the Religious Right...American Apocalypse clearly shows just how popular evangelical apocalypticism has been and, during the Cold War, how the combination of odd belief and political power could produce a sleepless night or two.” —D. G. Hart, Wall Street Journal “American Apocalypse is the best history of American evangelicalism I’ve read in some time...If you want to understand why compromise has become a dirty word in the GOP today and how cultural politics is splitting the nation apart, American Apocalypse is an excellent place to start.” —Stephen Prothero, Bookforum
Download or read book The Wauchula Woods Accord written by Charles Siebert and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WHILE TRAVELING AROUND THE COUNTRY to report on the conditions in which captive chimpanzees in America live, Charles Siebert visited a retirement home for former ape movie stars and circus entertainers in Wauchula, Florida, known as the Center for Great Apes. There Siebert encountered Roger, a twenty-eight-year-old former Ringling Bros. star who not only preferred the company of people to that of his fellow chimps but seemed utterly convinced that he knew the author from some other time and place. "Mostly I was struck by Roger's stare," writes Siebert, "his deep-set hazel eyes peering out at me with what, to my deep discomfort, I'd soon realize is their unchanging expression. It is a beguiling mix of amazement and apprehension, the look, as I've often thought of it since, of a being stranded between his former self and the one we humans have long been suggesting to him. A sort of hybrid of a chimp and a person. A veritable 'humanzee.'" Haunted by Roger's demeanor, Siebert promptly moved into a cottage on the grounds of the Center for Great Apes, spending day after day with Roger, trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious connection between them. And then late one night, awakened by the cries of chimpanzees, a sleepless and troubled Siebert suddenly began to conjure a secret, predawn encounter with his new cross-species confidant, an apparently one-sided conversation that, in fact, takes us to the very heart of the author's relationship with Roger and of our relationship with our own captive primal selves. The result is The Wauchula Woods Accord, a strikingly written, wide-ranging physical and metaphysical foray out along the increasingly fraught frontier between humans and animals; a journey that encompasses many of the author's encounters with chimpanzees and other animals, as well as the latest scientific discoveries that underscore our intimate biological bonds not only with our nearest kin but with far more remoteseeming life-forms. By journey's end, the reader arrives at a deeper understanding both of Roger and of our numerous other animal selves, a recognition -- an accord -- that carries a new sense of responsibility for how we view and treat all animals, including ourselves.
