Download or read book Where We Once Belonged written by Sia Figiel and published by . This book was released on 2009-03-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction. A bestseller in New Zealand and winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Prize, Sia Figiel's debut marks the first time a novel by a Samoan woman has been published in the United States. Figiel uses the traditional Samoan storytelling form of su'ifefiloi to talk back to Western anthropological studies on Samoan women and culture. Told in a series of linked episodes, this powerful and highly original narrative follows thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga as she navigates the mores and restrictions of her village and comes to terms with her own search for identity. A story of Samoan PUBERTY BLUES, in which Gauguin is dead but Elvis lives on -- Vogue Australia. A storytelling triumph -- Elle Australia.

Download or read book All the Light We Cannot See written by Anthony Doerr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

Download or read book We Once Belonged to the Sea written by Diriye Osman and published by Team Angelica Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two women - a reclusive queer Somali artist and a gifted Iranian-Somali teenage punk. Both have survived extraordinary circumstances, and find unexpected solace, inspiration and friendship when their lives intersect. In a novel anchored by memory and loss, art-making and ambition, both women will have to learn how to make peace with their ghosts. Told with poeticism, moral acuity and a sense of the surreal, We Once Belonged to the Sea marks Diriye Osman out as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Download or read book Where We Once Belonged written by Sia Figiel and published by Kaya/Muae. This book was released on 1999 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirteen-year-old Alofa Filiga struggles to come to terms with womanhood, her search for identity, and the restrictions of life in her Samoan village.

Download or read book Beyond the Bright Sea written by Lauren Wolk and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: - Winner of the 2018 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction - From the bestselling author of Echo Mountain and Newbery Honor–winner Wolf Hollow, Beyond the Bright Sea is an acclaimed best book of the year. An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Parents’ Magazine Best Book of the Year • A Booklist Editors' Choice selection • A BookPage Best Book of the Year • A Horn Book Fanfare Selection • A Kirkus Best Book of the Year • A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year • A Charlotte Observer Best Book of the Year • A Southern Living Best Book of the Year • A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year “The sight of a campfire on a distant island…proves the catalyst for a series of discoveries and events—some poignant, some frightening—that Ms. Wolk unfolds with uncommon grace.” –The Wall Street Journal ★ “Crow is a determined and dynamic heroine.” —Publishers Weekly ★ “Beautiful, evocative.” —Kirkus The moving story of an orphan, determined to know her own history, who discovers the true meaning of family. Twelve-year-old Crow has lived her entire life on a tiny, isolated piece of the starkly beautiful Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts. Abandoned and set adrift in a small boat when she was just hours old, Crow’s only companions are Osh, the man who rescued and raised her, and Miss Maggie, their fierce and affectionate neighbor across the sandbar. Crow has always been curious about the world around her, but it isn’t until the night a mysterious fire appears across the water that the unspoken question of her own history forms in her heart. Soon, an unstoppable chain of events is triggered, leading Crow down a path of discovery and danger. Vivid and heart-wrenching, Lauren Wolk’s Beyond the Bright Sea is a gorgeously crafted and tensely paced tale that explores questions of identity, belonging, and the true meaning of family.

Download or read book Queen of the Sea written by Dylan Meconis and published by Walker Books US. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cult graphic novelist Dylan Meconis offers a rich reimagining of history in this beautifully detailed hybrid novel loosely based on the exile of Queen Elizabeth I by her sister, Queen Mary. When her sister seizes the throne, Queen Eleanor of Albion is banished to a tiny island off the coast of her kingdom, where the nuns of the convent spend their days peacefully praying, sewing, and gardening. But the island is also home to Margaret, a mysterious young orphan girl whose life is upturned when the cold, regal stranger arrives. As Margaret grows closer to Eleanor, she grapples with the revelation of the island’s sinister true purpose as well as the truth of her own past. When Eleanor’s life is threatened, Margaret is faced with a perilous choice between helping Eleanor and protecting herself. In a hybrid novel of fictionalized history, Dylan Meconis paints Margaret’s world in soft greens, grays, and reds, transporting readers to a quiet, windswept island at the heart of a treasonous royal plot.

Download or read book Our Wives Under the Sea written by Julia Armfield and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (NPR, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, The Telegraph, Goodreads, Tor.com, them, and more) “A deeply strange and haunting novel in the best possible way...An impressive and exciting debut novel that may leave you thinking about your own relationships in a new light.” —NPR “Shocking...Achingly poetic...Sharp and beautiful as coral polyps...Armfield exercises an exquisite—even sadistic—sense of suspense." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp. By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that compels us nevertheless toward one another.

Download or read book The Girl Who Belonged to the Sea written by Katherine Quinn and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-10 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One woman chosen by the God of the Sea. A king hellbent on saving his mysterious island home. And a forbidden romance that could destroy them all. Trapped in a society ruled by men, Margrete, daughter of a nefarious sea captain, accepts that the only way to escape her power-hungry father's cruel hand is to marry the wealthy Count Casbian. Cunning in her own right, Margrete yearns to craft her own fate, to flee to the sea, and to lose herself to the aquamarine waves that have called to her since birth. Bash, a devilishly handsome warrior seeking revenge, believes the beautiful daughter of his greatest enemy is the key to breaking a curse inflicted upon his people. On the day of Margrete's nuptials, Bash kidnaps the bride, whisking her away to an island where he reigns as king. Shielded from the mortal realm, Margrete finds herself on the fabled shores of Azantian-the birthplace of impossible magic... and a keeper of monstrous secrets. But secrets are not the only thing Margrete finds on the island, and Bash isn't the heartless rogue she once believed. Unable to hide her feelings, Margrete must choose between a forbidden love and a destiny spun for her by the God of the Sea himself-A god that has set his sights on Margrete... and the potent magic awakening inside of her soul. The first book of this exciting fantasy trilogy is perfect for readers who love high-seas adventures, swashbuckling heroes, and forbidden, steamy romance. Fans of Clare Sager's Beneath Black Sails and Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses will be enthralled.

Download or read book On Such a Full Sea written by Chang-rae Lee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more. . . . With On Such a Full Sea, [Chang-rae Lee] has found a new way to explore his old preoccupation: the oft-told tale of the desperate, betraying, lonely human heart.”—Andrew Sean Greer, The New York Times Book Review “I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with On Such a Full Sea, I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?”—Porochista Khakpour, The Los Angeles Times From the beloved award-winning author of Native Speaker,The Surrendered, and My Year Abroad, a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman’s legendary quest in a shocking, future America. On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class—descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China—find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement. In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan’s journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.

Download or read book The Sea written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Download or read book To Where we Once Belonged written by Cindy Lowe and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-10-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This novel is inspired by the reality of true events in a small coastal town during the Second World War, some of the characters are based on people who lived, others are purely fictitious. It is a fact realised only in recent years that the town of Colwyn Bay and its population deserved huge recognition for its vitally important administrative role during wartime in feeding the nation. This function is now celebrated annually at a festival each April since the publication of ‘Colwyn Bay Accredited’. The prologue describes a young girl fascinated by the diary of her great grandmother written as a teenager during the war years. We visit Spain, and continue on to Liverpool and North Wales in an obscure seemingly insignificant area. Set in the 21st century, stories of the past and wartime years surface in memories of the characters, all of whom have their own agenda for returning, and many have connections to each other. Rita, retired to the Costa Blanca is an ageing former singer, famous and successful in the past, and now wealthy but widowed and lonely. There has been a family rift with her brother and she has no children of her own. An explanation of the appearance of the mysterious stranger at The Metropole is eventually revealed in a surprising twist. A glimpse of the future is disclosed. Themes of regeneration, the downward spiral of society, in comparison to attitudes during former times of challenge and adversity, and nostalgic curiosity about the past in a hometown are explored. Many mysteries are explained but some things will never be known.

Download or read book I Know This Much Is True written by Wally Lamb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-06-03 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.

Download or read book If He Had Been with Me written by Laura Nowlin and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

Download or read book Given to the Sea written by Mindy McGinnis and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kings and queens rise and fall, loyalties collide, and romance blooms in a world where the sea is rising--and cannot be escaped. The first of an expansive fantasy duology from an up-and-coming YA author.

Download or read book Hungry as the Sea written by Wilbur Smith and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: London: Heinemann, 1978.

Download or read book Between The Land And The Sea written by Derrolyn Anderson and published by Derrolyn Anderson. This book was released on 2011-03-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marina is a privileged girl who's had an unusual upbringing. Traveling the world with her scientist father, doted on by her wealthy and glamorous neighbor Evie, Marina's life seems perfect.Everything changes in the summer of her sixteenth year when she is sent to live with her Aunt Abby and Cousin Cruz in the lovely seaside town of Aptos, California.Only a few weeks after arriving, sixteen year-old Marina has nearly drowned twice, enchanted the hottest guy in high school, and discovered a supernatural creature. If she can manage to survive some increasingly dangerous encounters with unpredictable mermaids, she might be able to unlock the mystery of her past and appease the mysterious forces that want something from her...And maybe even find true love along the way.

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 336 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.