Download or read book The Book of Basketball written by Bill Simmons and published by ESPN. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The NBA according to The Sports Guy—now updated with fresh takes on LeBron, the Celtics, and more! Foreword by Malcom Gladwell • “The work of a true fan . . . it might just represent the next phase of sports commentary.”—The Atlantic Bill Simmons, the wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining basketball addict known to millions as ESPN’s The Sports Guy, has written the definitive book on the past, present, and future of the NBA. From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens—and then closes, once and for all—every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball. Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

Download or read book The Orchardist written by Amanda Coplin and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There are echoes of John Steinbeck in this beautiful and haunting debut novel. . . . Coplin depicts the frontier landscape and the plainspoken characters who inhabit it with dazzling clarity.” — Entertainment Weekly “A stunning debut. . . . Stands on par with Charles Frazier’s COLD MOUNTAIN.” — The Oregonian (Portland) New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year: Washington Post • Seattle Times • The Oregonian • National Public Radio • Amazon • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly • The Daily Beast At once intimate and epic, The Orchardist is historical fiction at its best, in the grand literary tradition of William Faulkner, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx, and Toni Morrison. In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions. At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit at the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect them but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past. Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and crafts an astonishing novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in.

Download or read book No Meat Athlete written by Matt Frazier and published by Fair Winds Press (MA). This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Combining the winning elements of proven training approaches, motivational stories, and innovative recipes, No Meat Athlete is a unique guidebook, healthy-living cookbook, and nutrition primer for the beginner, every day, and serious athlete who wants to live a meatless lifestyle. Author and popular blogger, Matt Frazier, will show you that there are many benefits to embracing a meat-free athletic lifestyle, including: Weight loss, which often leads to increased speed; Easier digestion and faster recovery after workouts; Improved energy levels to help with not just athletic performance but your day-to-day life; Reduced impact on the planet. Whatever your motivation for choosing a meat-free lifestyle, this book will take you through everything you need to know to apply your lifestyle to your training. Matt Frazier provides practical advice and tips on how to transition to a plant-based diet while getting all the nutrition you need; uses the power of habit to make those changes last; and offers up menu plans for high performance, endurance, and recovery. Once you've mastered the basics, Matt delivers a training manual of his own design for runners of all abilities and ambitions. The manual provides training plans for common race distances and shows runners how to create healthy habits, improve performance, and avoid injuries. No Meat Athlete will take you from the start to finish line, giving you encouraging tips, tricks, and advice along the way"--

Download or read book Sugar Run written by Mesha Maren and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A shining debut, with a heady admixture of explosive plot and taut, burnished prose. This is a book that loves its wounded characters and troubled places, and in so deeply loving, it finds a terrible truth and beauty where other writers wouldn't have found the courage to look . . . Mesha Maren writes like a force of nature.” —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies On the far side the view was nothing but ridgelines, the craggy silhouettes rising up against the night sky like the body of some dormant god. Jodi felt her breath go tight in her chest. This road went only one way, it seemed, in under the mountains until you were circled. In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she’s sentenced to life in prison for manslaughter. She’s released eighteen years later and finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian mountains, she goes searching for someone she left behind, but on the way, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother. Together, they try to make a fresh start, but is that even possible in a town that refuses to change? Set within the charged insularity of rural West Virginia, Sugar Run is a searing and gritty debut about making a run for another life.

Download or read book Empire in Black and Gold written by Adrian Tchaikovsky and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbors. But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, it killing Art . . . And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable. Only the aging Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path. But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire's latest victim.

Download or read book House of Names written by Colm Toibin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of the Year * Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Dispatch From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra and her children—“brilliant…gripping…high drama…made tangible and graphic in Tóibín’s lush prose” (Booklist, starred review). “I have been acquainted with the smell of death.” So begins Clytemnestra’s tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal—his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. House of Names “is a disturbingly contemporary story of a powerful woman caught between the demands of her ambition and the constraints on her gender…Never before has Tóibín demonstrated such range,” (The Washington Post). He brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra’s thirst for revenge, but applaud it. Told in four parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes’s story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother’s lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.

Download or read book Summers at Castle Auburn written by Sharon Shinn and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A woman blessed, or cursed, with a talent for witchcraft returns to Castle Auburn where she spent her childhood in joy-only to find an aura of dread awaiting her.

Download or read book The Marriage Plot written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 A Publisher's Weekly Top 10 Book of 2011 A Kirkus Reviews Top 25 Best Fiction of 2011 Title One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2011 A Salon Best Fiction of 2011 title One of The Telegraph's Best Fiction Books of the Year 2011 It's the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead—charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy—suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus—who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange—resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology Laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love. Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.

Download or read book The Fall of Koli written by M. R. Carey and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: M. R. Carey's Rampart trilogy is "an epic post-apocalyptic fable" (Kirkus) like no other, set in a world where nature has turned against us. Now, in the unforgettable final chapter, the world that was lost comes back to haunt those who have survived–and Koli's journey comes to its astonishing close. "A gorgeous, borderline flawless trilogy." –Seanan McGuire What will the future hold for those who are left? Koli has come a long way since being exiled from his small village of Mythen Rood. In his search for the fabled tech of the Old Times, he knew he'd be battling shunned men, strange beasts and trees that move as fast as whips. But he has already encountered so much more than he bargained for. Now that Koli and his companions have found the source of the signal they've been following - the mysterious "Sword of Albion"—there is hope that their perilous journey will finally be worth something. They're searching for a way to help humanity fight back against nature. But what they'll find is an ancient war that never ended . . . The Rampart Trilogy The Book of Koli The Trials of Koli The Fall of Koli For more from M. R. Carey, check out: The Girl With All the Gifts Fellside The Boy on the Bridge Someone Like Me By the same author, writing as Mike Carey: The Devil You Know Vicious Circle Dead Men's Boots Thicker Than Water The Naming of the Beasts

Download or read book Benighted written by J. B. Priestley and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic novel of psychological terror, an unrelenting storm forces three travelers to take shelter in a sinister mansion. A powerful storm rages through the Welsh mountains, driving three travelers off the road. Philip Waverton, his wife, Margaret, and their friend Roger Penderel are desperate to get out of the torrential downpour. Their only option is a mysterious old mansion, home to the bizarre Femm family and their brutish butler, Morgan. Although the Femms have plenty rooms in their home, they are hesitant to allow guests to stay in them. Instead, Penderel and the Wavertons must settle in for the night by the ground-floor fireplace and hope the storm will pass by morning. But as the hours go by, their situation only gets worse. The storm intensifies, and the dark house begins revealing its secrets—like what lies behind the two locked doors on the top floor. Now the travelers can only pray they survive until morning . . . Published in 1927, Benighted served as the basis for the 1932 James Whale film The Old Dark House, starring Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, and Gloria Stuart. It was J. B. Priestly’s second novel. “Priestley’s book is a beautifully written affair, oftentimes thrilling and touching, that this reader found perfect company during a few recent stormy days in late October. . . . The novel will surely manage to chill the modern-day reader.” —Fantasy Literature

Download or read book Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking written by Anya von Bremzen and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Into the Grey written by Celine Kiernan and published by Candlewick. This book was released on 2014-08-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a heart-pounding, atmospheric ghost story, a teenage boy must find the resources within himself to save his haunted twin brother. After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they’ve summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. It’s there that the ghost appears — a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not-Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die — while their overwhelmed parents can’t even see what’s happening. Isolated and terrified, Pat needs to keep his brother’s cover while figuring out how to save him, drawing clues from his own dreams and Nan’s long-ago memories, confronting a mystery that lies between this world and the next — within the Grey. With white-knuckle pacing and a deft portrayal of family relationships, Celine Kiernan offers a taut psychological thriller that is sure to haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

Download or read book 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True written by Guy P. Harrison and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “What would it take to create a world in which fantasy is not confused for fact and public policy is based on objective reality?" asks Neil deGrasse Tyson, science popularizer and author of Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. "I don't know for sure. But a good place to start would be for everyone on earth to read this book." Maybe you know someone who swears by the reliability of psychics or who is in regular contact with angels. Or perhaps you're trying to find a nice way of dissuading someone from wasting money on a homeopathy cure. Or you met someone at a party who insisted the Holocaust never happened or that no one ever walked on the moon. How do you find a gently persuasive way of steering people away from unfounded beliefs, bogus cures, conspiracy theories, and the like? This down-to-earth, entertaining exploration of commonly held extraordinary claims will help you set the record straight. The author, a veteran journalist, has not only surveyed a vast body of literature, but has also interviewed leading scientists, explored "the most haunted house in America," frolicked in the inviting waters of the Bermuda Triangle, and even talked to a "contrite Roswell alien." He is not out simply to debunk unfounded beliefs. Wherever possible, he presents alternative scientific explanations, which in most cases are even more fascinating than the wildest speculation. For example, stories about UFOs and alien abductions lack good evidence, but science gives us plenty of reasons to keep exploring outer space for evidence that life exists elsewhere in the vast universe. The proof for Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster may be nonexistent, but scientists are regularly discovering new species, some of which are truly stranger than fiction. Stressing the excitement of scientific discovery and the legitimate mysteries and wonder inherent in reality, this book invites readers to share the joys of rational thinking and the skeptical approach to evaluating our extraordinary world.

Download or read book Mistress of Mistresses written by Eric Rücker Eddison and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Start an epic journey through a realm of enchantment and treachery in 'Mistress of Mistresses' by Eric Rücker Eddison. Within the mystical tapestry of the Three Kingdoms—Rerek, Meszria, and Fingiswold—powerful nobles and rulers engage in a deadly dance of political intrigue. As the charismatic King Mezentius breathes his last, the fate of the realm hangs in the balance, teetering on the edge of dissolution. Amidst shifting alliances and mounting conspiracies, the future of the kingdoms is uncertain, and destinies clash in a battle for supremacy.

Download or read book Simon the Fiddler written by Paulette Jiles and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critically acclaimed, bestselling author of News of the World and Enemy Women returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart. In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position in a regimental band. Weeks later, on the eve of the Confederate surrender, Simon and his bandmates are called to play for officers and their families from both sides of the conflict. There the quick-thinking, audacious fiddler can’t help but notice the lovely Doris Mary Dillon, an indentured girl from Ireland, who is governess to a Union colonel’s daughter. After the surrender, Simon and Doris go their separate ways. He will travel around Texas seeking fame and fortune as a musician. She must accompany the colonel’s family to finish her three years of service. But Simon cannot forget the fair Irish maiden, and vows that someday he will find her again. Incandescent in its beauty, told in Paulette Jiles’s trademark spare yet lilting style, Simon the Fiddler is a captivating, bittersweet tale of the chances a devoted man will take, and the lengths he will go to fulfill his heart’s yearning. "Jiles’ sparse but lyrical writing is a joy to read. . . . Lose yourself in this entertaining tale.” — Associated Press

Download or read book Sistergirls com written by Earl Sewell and published by Strebor Books. This book was released on 2003-08-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spirit of Blackgentlemen.com come five sensual novellas about the excitement—and danger—of meeting someone online. Welcome to Sistergirls.com, where men can meet the women of their dreams. Making a selection is just a beginning—these ladies are more than mere images, and getting to know them is the really fun part. But just like most things, looks can be deceiving. And while the guys who take this plunge think they're in for the adventure of a lifetime, some of them are headed for the worst nightmare. Gathering five dramatically different voices between two covers, these stories travel the tantalizing crossroads between romance and cyberspace. As today's world of dating expands beyond the traditional dinner-and-movie to the vast realm of internet, this collection offers a timely and exciting glimpse into the adventures of online relationships. Novellas include: "You Are Making Me Wet" by Earl Sewell; "Life Happens" by Rique Johnson; "The Wanting" by Michael Presley; "Somewhere Between Love and Sarcasm" by V. Anthony Rivers; and "Legal Days, Lonely Nights" by William Fredrick Cooper.

Download or read book Sedating Elaine written by Dawn Winter and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exuberant dark comedy about love, grief, sex, guilt, and one woman’s harebrained scheme to tranquilize her voraciously amorous girlfriend for a few days so that she might pay off her drug dealer, make soup, and finally get some peace and quiet. "A brilliantly quirky, surreally funny story.... An intriguingly headstrong yet vulnerable character with an astonishing talent for making the worst possible life-decisions." —Sarah Haywood, best-selling author of The Cactus Frances was not looking for a relationship when she met Elaine in a bar. She was, in fact, looking to drown her sorrows in a pint or twelve and nurse a broken heart, shattered by the gorgeous, electric Adrienne. But somehow (it involved a steady stream of beer and weed, as things often did with Frances) Elaine ended up in Frances’s bed and never left. Now, faced with mounting pressure from her drug dealer, Dom (and his goon, Betty), Frances comes up with a terrible idea: She asks Elaine to move in with her for real. Unfortunately, this seemingly romantic overture makes Elaine even more sex-crazed and maniacal with love. Frances fears she may never escape the relationship, so, given no choice, she makes the obvious decision: She will sedate Elaine. A story as enthusiastically madcap and funny as it is smart and emotionally surprising, Sedating Elaine introduces a roster of unforgettable characters and an indelible, wildly exciting new voice in fiction.