Download or read book Our Tragic Universe written by Scarlett Thomas and published by HMH. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “delightfully whimsical novel riffs on the premise that ordinary lives stubbornly resist the tidy order that a fiction narrative might impose on them” (Publishers Weekly). Can a story save your life? Meg Carpenter is broke. Her novel is years overdue. Her cell phone is out of minutes. And her moody boyfriend’s only contribution to the household is his sour attitude. So she jumps at the chance to review a pseudoscientific book that promises life everlasting. But who wants to live forever? Consulting cosmology and physics, tarot cards, koans (and riddles and jokes), new-age theories of everything, narrative theory, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and knitting patterns, Meg wends her way through Our Tragic Universe, asking this and many other questions. Does she believe in fairies? In magic? Is she a superbeing? Is she living a storyless story? And what’s the connection between her off-hand suggestion to push a car into a river, a ship in a bottle, a mysterious beast loose on the moor, and the controversial author of The Science of Living Forever? Smart, entrancing, and boiling over with Thomas’s trademark big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, how we can rewrite our futures (if not our histories), and how stories just might save our lives.

Download or read book The End of Mr Y written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IF YOU KNEW A BOOK WAS CURSED, WOULD YOU READ IT? When Ariel Manto uncovers a copy of The End of Mr Y in a second-hand bookshop, she can't believe her eyes. She's read about its author before, the outlandish Victorian scientist Thomas Lumas, and this is his most notorious, and rarest, book. It is also believed to hold a curse. Anyone who's ever read it, including Lumas, has disappeared without trace. With Mr Y under her arm, Ariel is thrust into an adventure of faith, physics, love, death, and everything in between. Part gothic mystery, part time-travelling love story, The End of Mr Y lies somewhere between Shadow of the Wind and Dr Who. Scarlett Thomas sends us on a wild and irresistible quest into our deepest selves and our biggest questions.

Download or read book The Seed Collectors written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complex and fiercely contemporary tale of inheritance, enlightenment, life, death, desire and family trees, The Seed Collectors is the most important novel yet from one of the world's most daring and brilliant writers. Great Aunt Oleander is dead. To each of her nearest and dearest she has left a seed pod. The seed pods might be deadly, but then again they might also contain the secret of enlightenment. Not that anyone has much time for enlightenment. Fleur, left behind at the crumbling Namaste House, must step into Oleander's role as guru to lost and lonely celebrities. Bryony wants to lose the weight she put on after her botanist parents disappeared, but can't stop drinking. And Charlie struggles to make sense of his life after losing the one woman he could truly love. As Henry James said of George Eliot's Middlemarch, The Seed Collectors is a "treasurehouse of detail" revealing all that it means to be connected, to be part of a society, to be part of the universe and to be human.

Download or read book How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe Enhanced Edition written by Charles Yu and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This enhanced eBook includes video, audio, photographic, and linked content, as well as a bonus short story. Hear TAMMY talk. Learn the origins of Minor Universe 31. See the TM-31. Take a trip in it. Photos and illustrations appear as hyperlinked endnotes. Video and audio are embedded directly in text. *Video and audio may not play on all readers. Check your user manual for details. National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time. Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life. Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

Download or read book Monkeys with Typewriters written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ultimate guide to reading and writing fiction, with useful creative exercises and fascinating analyses of great plots—from Plato and Tolstoy to The Matrix and Toy Story. The bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y shows you how to unlock any narrative and create your own. Filled with creative exercises, structures, and charts, this creative writing manual breaks down the fiction writing process and demonstrates that everyone has material to write about—whether they believe it or not. Have you ever had your heart broken, or broken someone else’s heart? Have you ever won an argument but later realized you were wrong? Have you ever tripped in public or spilled wine on someone else’s carpet? Monkeys with Typewriters is an ode to the secret power of stories, and a guide to cracking those powers open. As a bestselling author, Thomas may appear as a naturally gifted writer. However, for Thomas, fiction unlocked itself only once she recognized the importance of an author’s individual experience and one’s willingness to ask questions, not simply provide solutions. She deems the communication of one’s humanity as the key to making a piece relatable, and Thomas does nothing less in her own work. With startling and original insights into how we construct stories, Monkeys with Typewriters is a creative writing book like no other. It will show you how to not only write, but also to a finer degree, how to read.

Download or read book Oligarchy written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Seed Collectors comes a darkly comic take on power, privilege, and the pressure put on young women to fit in—and be thin—at their all–girls boarding school It's already the second week of term when Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives at a vast English country house for her first day of boarding school. She soon discovers that the headmaster gives special treatment to the skinniest girls, and Tash finds herself thrown into the school's unfamiliar, moneyed world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst. The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraits—featuring a hypnotizing black diamond—hang everywhere and whose ghost is said to haunt the dorms. It's said that she fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake. But the girls don't really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about one another. When Tash's friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, the routines of the school seem darker and more alien than ever before. Tash must try to stay alive—and sane—while she uncovers what's really going on. Darkly hilarious, Oligarchy is Heathers for the digital age, a Prep populated with the teenage children of the European elite, exploring youth, power, and affluence. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of these privileged young women, in all their triviality and magnitude, seeking acceptance and control in a manipulative world.

Download or read book Boy Swallows Universe written by Trent Dalton and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2018-07-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade' Sydney Morning Herald 'Astonishing, captivating ... a wild, beautiful, heart-exploding ride' Elizabeth Gilbert The bestselling novel that has taken Australia, and the world, by storm. Winner of Book of the Year at the 2019 Indie Book Awards, winner of a record four Australian Book Industry Awards in 2019, including the prestigious Book of the Year Award, and winner of the 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards Brisbane, 1985: A lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli Bell's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart and understand what it means to be a good man, but fate keeps throwing obstacles in his way - not the least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But now Eli's life is going to get a whole lot more serious: he's about to meet the father he doesn't remember, break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day to rescue his mum, come face to face with the criminals who tore his world apart, and fall in love with the girl of his dreams. A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year. Awards: 2019 ABIA Book of the Year Award, Winner 2019 Indie Book Award, Winner 2019 UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner 2019 People's Choice Award, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Winner MUD Literary Prize 2019, Winner 2019 ABIA Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, Winner 2019 ABIA Audiobook of the Year, Winner 2019 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Longlisted 2019 Colin Roderick Award, shortlist Reviews: 'Boy Swallows Universe is a wonderful surprise: sharp as a drawer full of knives in terms of subject matter; unrepentantly joyous in its child's-eye view of the world; the best literary debut in a month of Sundays.' The Australian 'Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak.' Washington Post 'This thrilling novel' New York Times Book Review 'Marvelously plot-rich ... filled with beautifully lyric prose ...At one point Eli wonders if he is good. The answer is "yes," every bit as good as this exceptional novel.' Booklist 'Dalton's splashy, stellar debut makes the typical coming-of-age novel look bland by comparison ... This is an outstanding debut.' Publisher's Weekly (starred review) 'Extraordinary and beautiful storytelling' Guardian

Download or read book The Great Believers written by Rebecca Makkai and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-06-19 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler “A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” —The New York Times Book Review A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library

Download or read book Zero History written by William Gibson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollis Henry never intended to work for global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend again. But now she’s broke, and Bigend has just the thing to get her back in the game... Milgrim can disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic—so much so that he spoke it with his therapist in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of his addiction... Garreth doesn't owe Bigend a thing. But he does have friends from whom he can call in the kinds of favors powerful people need when things go sideways... They all have something Bigend wants as he finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift, after a Department of Defense contract for combat-wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy they can out-Bigend Bigend himself. “Zero History is [Gibson’s] best yet, a triumph of science fiction as social criticism and adventure.”—BoingBoing.net

Download or read book Dragon s Green written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This middle grade series starter is tailor-made for Harry Potter’s fans.” —Kirkus Reviews For fans of the Land of Stories and the Wings of Fire Series, this first enchanting adventure from acclaimed novelist Scarlett Thomas is set in a wondrous realm where magic most decidedly exists, a growing evil lurks, and a group of children is destined to save the world. Effie Truelove believes in magic, as does her grandfather Griffin (although he refuses to do any magic, let alone teach Effie how to use it). After a mysterious incident leaves Griffin close to death, Effie is given an unusual silver ring and told she must look after her grandfather’s library of rare and powerful books. But then the books fall into the hands of shady scholar Leonard Levar, and Effie is propelled into the most dangerous adventure of her life. Now, Effie and her friends—nerdy Maximilian, rugby-mad Wolf, helpful Lexy, and eccentric Raven—must discover their true powers if they are to get the books back. And Effie alone will have to travel to the Otherworld, where she will uncover the true meaning of the strange old book called Dragon’s Green…

Download or read book Child Of The Universe written by JLF Sullivan and published by Red Crystal Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Child of the Universe'' tells the apocalyptic tale of Atlantis and Lymuria, two ancient civilizations erased from the memory of mankind. Derived from a past life regression hypnosis experience, JLF Sullivan's remarkable debut novel takes you on a mesmerizing journey through the tumultuous life of Kala, Queen of a matriarchal empire destroyed by a cataclysmic wave. Captured during the chaos of her people's downfall, Kala is subjected to decades of mysterious experiments on the fabled island of Atlantis, as they seek to unlock her inherited otherworldly powers. “Child of the Universe” unfolds an alternative history of our humble beginnings on this planet and departs as a warning of the apocalyptic parallels surrounding us as we embark into an apprehensive future: “Perhaps it was best that this story remained locked away within me since the great cataclysms. But now my story can no longer stay buried, it must rest once and for all. It is my hope that by sharing this with you, my story will free us from this cycle of destruction we have become entangled in...Maybe you too have dreamt of the great wave of Amun, its towering greatness only to become your watery tomb. Or perhaps the mysteries surrounding the destruction of Atlantis have pulled your attention time and time again. It is my greatest wish that we may come to remember and understand our lost history so we may break free from the amnesia surrounding our humble beginnings. There is something you cannot deny, something that you have felt for all your days that tells you that you are connected to something greater. The lives we live now and those of the long-forgotten past will begin to show their true relationship as we together journey back to the lands of Amun and Atlantis.” If you've ever contemplated alternative theories surrounding Earth's origins or are intrigued by concepts such as Ancient Alien theory, Past Life Regression, Quantum Healing, and Higher Consciousness, this book offers a fresh perspective. It delves into the profound connections between past lives and their purpose in our current existence, as well as the illnesses we incur as a result of these past experiences and their traumatic legacy. Explore the legends of the animal people of Atlantis, the enigma of stone circles, and the awe-inspiring powers of the ancient Red Crystals. "Child of the Universe" is your gateway to a world of discovery and transformation, inviting you to remember and understand our lost history, break free from the amnesia surrounding our origins, and embrace your undeniable connection to something greater. This compelling narrative also serves as a companion to the books "A Hypnotist's Journey To Atlantis”and “A Hypntist’s Journey To The Secrets Of The Sphinx” by Sarah Breskman Cosme. Open your mind to a universe of possibilities and knowledge, and let the exploration of ancient civilizations and cosmic mysteries guide you on a captivating voyage.

Download or read book The Woman Who Died a Lot written by Jasper Fforde and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of Early Riser With more than one million books in print worldwide, Jasper Fforde’s beloved series charms a growing number of readers with each new adventure. In The Woman Who Died a Lot, Thursday Next faces her trickiest assignment yet. When her former SpecOps division is reinstated, Thursday assumes she’s the obvious choice to lead the Literary Detectives. Instead, she’s put in charge of the Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso’s Drink Not Included Library. But where Thursday goes, trouble follows. As the new Chief Librarian faces one-hundred-percent budget cuts and the ever-evil Jack Schitt, the Next children face their own career hiccups—and possible nonexistence.

Download or read book PopCo written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice Butler has been receiving some odd messages - all anonymous, all written in code. Are they from someone at PopCo, the profit-hungry corporation she works for? Or from Alice's long lost father? Or has someone else been on her trail? The solution, she is sure, will involve the code-breaking skills she learned from her grandparents and the key she's been wearing round her neck since she was ten. PopCo is a grown-up adventure of family secrets, puzzles, big business and the power of numbers.

Download or read book The Love That Split the World written by Emily Henry and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A truly profound debut."—Buzzfeed "A time-bending suspense that's contemplative and fresh, evocative and gripping."—USA Today "Henry's story captivates, both as a romance and as an imaginative rethinking of time and space."—Publishers Weekly "This time-traveling, magical, and beautifully written love story definitely deserves a spot on your bookshelf."—Bustle Emily Henry's stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler's Wife and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we've left untaken. Natalie's last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start . . . until she starts seeing the "wrong things." They're just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a preschool where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn't right. Then there are the visits from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls "Grandmother," who tells her, "You have three months to save him." The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it's as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

Download or read book Our Own Private Universe written by Robin Talley and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Aki Simon has a theory. And it's mostly about sex. No, it isn't that kind of theory. Aki already knows she's bisexual—even if, until now, it's mostly been in the hypothetical sense. Aki has dated only guys so far, and her best friend, Lori, is the only person who knows she likes girls, too. Actually, Aki's theory is that she's got only one shot at living an interesting life—and that means she's got to stop sitting around and thinking so much. It's time for her to actually do something. Or at least try. So when Aki and Lori set off on a church youth-group trip to a small Mexican town for the summer and Aki meets Christa—slightly older, far more experienced—it seems her theory is prime for the testing. But it's not going to be easy. For one thing, how exactly do two girls have sex, anyway? And more important, how can you tell if you're in love? It's going to be a summer of testing theories—and the result may just be love.

Download or read book Bright Young Things written by Scarlett Thomas and published by Canongate Books. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bright Young Things wanted for Big Project.' They're in the prime of their lives but our bright young things are all burnt out. Six sparky twenty-somethings just out of university and working dead-end jobs, they are all bored to tears with their lives and looking for a way out. When a mysterious job is advertised in the newspaper, they all apply. What they least expect is to find themselves prisoners on a deserted island. There's food in the fridge and they have a bedroom each, but there's no telephone, no television, and no way to escape.

Download or read book Field Guide to the Supernatural Universe written by Alyson Noël and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stranger Things meets Sideways Stories from Wayside School in this quirky supernatural middle grade novel about a boy on an unlikely quest to uncover an enchanted book to defeat an unearthly nemesis—from New York Times bestselling author Alyson Noël. When he first started seeing ghosts, Max mistakenly assumed everyone else could see them, too. Now, after years of being blamed for the pranks of mischievous spirits, Max is determined to do whatever it takes to make himself normal. But when he’s sent to spend the summer with his eccentric grandfather, Ramhart, being normal becomes impossible. Here in Glimmerville, bakeries sell enchanted pies, the lake is infested with mermaids, the town’s beloved ghosts roam free, and Ramhart himself is celebrated as the world’s most famous monster hunter. At first, all Max wants is to survive the summer, but the more time he spends in Glimmerville, the more he starts to wonder if he’s finally found a place where he can truly be himself. But when a supernatural attack steals Ramhart’s soul, Max—with the help of a few new friends—must go on a quest to find his grandfather’s renowned Field Guide, an enchanted book that contains all the knowledge Ramhart has gathered about defeating unearthly nemeses. And if they don’t find the book fast, Glimmerville will crumble into chaos, and Max will lose the only person who’s ever made him feel at home.