Download or read book Pillar to the Sky written by William R. Forstchen and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A towering epic to rank with Douglas Preston's Blasphemy and Michael Crichton's Prey... Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people can prevent global chaos. Gary Morgan--a brilliant, renegade scientist is pilloried by the scientific community for his belief in a space elevator: a pillar to the sky, which he believes will make space flight fast, simple and affordable. Eva Morgan--a brilliant and beautiful scientist of Ukrainian descent, she has had a lifelong obsession to build a pillar to the sky, a vertiginous tower which would mine the power of the sun and supply humanity with cheap, limitless energy forever. Gunther Rothenberg--the ancient but revered rocket-scientist who labored at Peenemunda with von Braun to create the first rockets and continued on to build those of today. A legend, he has mentored Gary and Natalia for two decades, nurturing and encouraging their transcendent vision. Franklin Smith--the eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire who will champion their cause, wage war with Congress and government bureaucracy and most important, finance their herculean undertaking. This journey to the stars will not be easy--a tumultuous struggle filled with violence and heroism, love and death, spellbinding beauty and heartbreaking betrayal. The stakes could not be higher. Humanity's salvation will hang in the balance"--

Download or read book The Art of Detection written by Laurie R. King and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thrilling new crime novel that ingeniously bridges Laurie R. King’s Edgar and Creasey Awards—winning Kate Martinelli series and her bestselling series starring Mary Russell, San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli crosses paths with Sherlock Holmes–in a spellbinding dual mystery that could come only from the “intelligent, witty, and complex” mind of New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King…. Kate Martinelli has seen her share of peculiar things as a San Francisco cop, but never anything quite like this: an ornate Victorian sitting room straight out of a Sherlock Holmes story–complete with violin, tobacco-filled Persian slipper, and gunshots in the wallpaper that spell out the initials of the late queen. Philip Gilbert was a true Holmes fanatic, from his antiquated décor to his vintage wardrobe. And no mere fan of fiction’s great detective, but a leading expert with a collection of priceless memorabilia–a collection some would kill for. And perhaps someone did: In his collection is a century-old manuscript purportedly written by Holmes himself–a manuscript that eerily echoes details of Gilbert’s own murder. Now, with the help of her partner, Al Hawkin, Kate must follow the convoluted trail of a killer–one who may have trained at the feet of the greatest mind of all times.

Download or read book Spell Shaper written by Sarah Aghajanian and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-04-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finn hates everything about school except lunch and free time. He has been trying his best for years but he has not been able to get even one magic spell to work. His little sister, however, is a perfect student. Yet what Finn does not know is that his problems with magic are there for a reason. They will bring him hidden gifts and make him special in ways he could not have dreamed. And with a lot of hard work, he will discover he has powers that no one ever thought possible.

Download or read book Ways To Live Forever written by Sally Nicholls and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning author Sally Nicholls, her debut novel about a boy's last months with leukemia.1. My name is Sam.2. I am eleven years old.3. I collect stories and fantastic facts.4. I have leukemia.5. By the time you read this, I will probably be dead.Living through the final stages of leukemia, Sam collects stories, questions, lists, and pictures that create a profoundly moving portrait of how a boy lives when he knows his time is almost up.

Download or read book Await Your Reply written by Dan Chaon and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BONUS: This edition contains an Await Your Reply discussion guide. The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways–and with unexpected consequences–in acclaimed author Dan Chaon’s gripping, brilliantly written new novel. Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered his tracks skillfully, moving stealthily from place to place, managing along the way to hold down various jobs and seem, to the people he meets, entirely normal. But some version of the truth is always concealed. A few days after graduating from high school, Lucy Lattimore sneaks away from the small town of Pompey, Ohio, with her charismatic former history teacher. They arrive in Nebraska, in the middle of nowhere, at a long-deserted motel next to a dried-up reservoir, to figure out the next move on their path to a new life. But soon Lucy begins to feel quietly uneasy. My whole life is a lie, thinks Ryan Schuyler, who has recently learned some shocking news. In response, he walks off the Northwestern University campus, hops on a bus, and breaks loose from his existence, which suddenly seems abstract and tenuous. Presumed dead, Ryan decides to remake himself–through unconventional and precarious means. Await Your Reply is a literary masterwork with the momentum of a thriller, an unforgettable novel in which pasts are invented and reinvented and the future is both seductively uncharted and perilously unmoored.

Download or read book Everything Happens for a Reason written by Katie Allen and published by Orenda Books. This book was released on 2021-04-10 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Rachel's baby is stillborn, she becomes obsessed with the idea that saving a stranger's life months earlier is to blame. An unforgettable, heart-wrenching, warm and funny debut... 'Emotionally engaging, witty, clever and wonderfully satisfying' Daily Express 'A stunning debut ... a wise, moving, and thought-provoking novel' Susan Elliot Wright, author of The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood 'A heartbreaking, deeply moving and wonderfully witty tale, which celebrates all it means to be human' Isabelle Broom, author of The Getaway –––––––––––––– Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong. Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss. When a misguided well-wisher tells her that "everything happens for a reason", she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she'd stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she's now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son. Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola's seven-year-old daughter, Josephine, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results... Both a heart-wrenchingly poignant portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman's determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life- affirming read and, quite simply, unforgettable. –––––––––––––– 'A beautiful novel, bursting with raw emotional honesty and authenticity' Gill Paul, author of The Secret Wife 'So affecting. Profoundly sad. Funny. I just loved it' Louise Beech, author of This Is How We Are Human 'Darkly funny, yet poignant and moving ... Rachel's quest to find out if everything happens for a reason is both heartbreaking and heartwarming' Anna Bell, author of In Case You Missed It 'Some books teach you, others touch your soul, then there are books like this one that bury deep and create a home in your heart' Emma-Claire Wilson, Glass House Magazine 'A triumph ... a book of hope and ambition and making sense of the world, a tale of acting spontaneously, living in the moment and throwing caution to the wind' Isabella May, author of Oh! What a Pavlova 'An incredibly important and beautifully written book. Bittersweet and brave, it will keep you both laughing and crying until the last page' Kate Ford, actress, Coronation Street 'The perfect mix of clever, funny and intensely moving' Cari Rosen, author of Secret Diary of a New Mum Aged 43 1⁄4 'A heart-wrenching, soul-lifting read about loss and redemption in unlikely places' Eve Smith, author of The Waiting Rooms 'Read it and weep but also, incredibly, find moments to laugh and to know there is life after death' Julia Hobsbawm, author of The Simplicity Principle 'Simultaneously devastating and hilarious' Clare Allan, author of Poppy Shakespeare 'A memorable, poetic read ... The writing reminded me of Eleanor Oliphant' Becky Fleetwood, author of the Chroma series 'Quirky yet insightful, bright yet wistful, amusing yet emotional ... full of contradictions that fuse into the most surprising, moving, and beautiful novel' LoveReading For fans of Jonas Jonasson, Matt Haig, Graeme Simsion and Rachel Joyce.

Download or read book Mona written by Pola Oloixarac and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Both a wicked satire of the literary élite and an exploration of art and violence . . . Terrifying, brilliant, and dangerous." —The New Yorker Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity—a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings—she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity. When she is nominated for “the most important literary award in Europe,” Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged—and mostly male—competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain. As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won’t stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.

Download or read book Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath written by Lauren Child and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crack open Ruby Redfort’s second adventure — and you will literally be on the edge of your wits. Everyone’s favorite girl detective is back for a second mind-blowing installment, packed with all the off-the-wall humor, action, and friendship of the first book. This time, though, it’s an adventure on the wide-open ocean, and Ruby is all at sea. . . . Can she crack the case of the Twinford pirates while evading the clutches of a vile sea monster as well as the evil Count von Viscount? Well, you wouldn’t want to bet against her.

Download or read book Season of Secrets written by Sally Nicholls and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molly and Hannah have just lost their mother, and while Dad "figures things out," they're sent to stay with their grandparents in a quiet country town. Everything starts to change when Molly comes to the rescue of an injured man--a man with something magical about him.

Download or read book Terciel Elinor written by Garth Nix and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling novelist Garth Nix returns to the Old Kingdom for the never-before-told love story of Sabriel’s parents, Terciel and Elinor, and the charter magic that brought them together—and threatened to tear them apart. A long-awaited prequel to a classic fantasy series. In the Old Kingdom, a land of ancient and often terrible magics, eighteen year-old orphan Terciel learns the art of necromancy from his great-aunt Tizanael. But not to raise the Dead, rather to lay them to rest. He is the Abhorsen-in-Waiting, and Tizanael is the Abhorsen, the latest in a long line of people whose task it is to make sure the Dead do not return to Life. Across the Wall in Ancelstierre, a steam-age country where magic usually does not work, nineteen year-old Elinor lives a secluded life. Her only friends an old governess and an even older groom who was once a famous circus performer. Her mother is a tyrant, who is feared by all despite her sickness and impending death . . . but perhaps there is even more to fear from that. Elinor does not know she is deeply connected to the Old Kingdom, nor that magic can sometimes come across the Wall, until a plot by an ancient enemy of the Abhorsens brings Terciel and Tizanael to Ancelstierre. In a single day of fire and death and loss, Elinor finds herself set on a path which will take her into the Old Kingdom, into Terciel’s life, and will embroil her in the struggle of the Abhorsens against the Dead who will not stay dead. *USA Today Bestseller* “One of the greatest living fantasy writers. I will never get enough of the Old Kingdom.” —Sarah J. Maas, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Download or read book Far from the Tree written by Andrew Solomon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers adaptation of the best-selling exploration of the impact of extreme differences between parents and children.

Download or read book Understanding Reading written by Frank Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-05-20 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Reading revolutionized reading research and theory when the first edition appeared in 1971 and continues to be a leader in the field. In the sixth edition of this classic text, Smith's purpose remains the same: to shed light on fundamental aspects of the complex human act of reading--linguistic, physiological, psychological, and social--and on what is involved in learning to read. The text critically examines current theories, instructional practices, and controversies, covering a wide range of disciplines but always remaining accessible to students and classroom teachers. Careful attention is given to the ideological clash that continues between whole language and direct instruction and currently permeates every aspect of theory and research into reading and reading instruction. To aid readers in making up their own minds, each chapter concludes with a brief statement of "Issues." Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read, Sixth Edition is designed to serve as a handbook for language arts teachers, a college text for basic courses on the psychology of reading, a guide to relevant research on reading, and an introduction to reading as an aspect of thinking and learning. It is matchless in integrating a wide range of topics relative to reading while, at the same time, being highly readable and user-friendly for instructors, students, and practitioners.

Download or read book Notre Dame written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The wonderful cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the greatest achievements of European civilization, was on fire. The sight dazed and disturbed us profoundly. I was on the edge of tears. Something priceless was dying in front of our eyes. The feeling was bewildering, as if the earth was shaking.” —Ken Follett “[A] treasure of a book.” —The New Yorker In this short, spellbinding book, international bestselling author Ken Follett describes the emotions that gripped him when he learned about the fire that threatened to destroy one of the greatest cathedrals in the world—the Notre-Dame de Paris. Follett then tells the story of the cathedral, from its construction to the role it has played across time and history, and he reveals the influence that the Notre-Dame had upon cathedrals around the world and on the writing of one of Follett's most famous and beloved novels, The Pillars of the Earth. Ken Follett will donate his proceeds from this book to the charity La Fondation du Patrimoine.

Download or read book The Language Instinct written by Steven Pinker and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book Review The classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind In The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Download or read book The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Three Titan s Curse written by Rick Riordan and published by Disney-Hyperion. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this third book of the acclaimed series, Percy and his friends are escorting two new half-bloods safely to camp when they are intercepted by a manticore and learn that the goddess Artemis has been kidnapped.

Download or read book The Ranger s Apprentice Collection 3 Books written by John Flanagan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When fifteen-year-old Will is rejected by battleschool, he becomes the reluctant apprentice to the mysterious Ranger Halt, and winds up protecting the kingdom from danger.

Download or read book Gravity Falls Journal 3 Special Edition written by Alex Hirsch and published by Disney Press. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Untie the string and unwrap the brown paper to reveal . . . Journal 3 Limited Edition! This 288-page book contains all of the content of the regular edition, plus all-new top-secret black light pages on real parchment; a cover with leather texture and shiny metallic pieces; a magnifying glass; a tassel bookmark; and removable photos and notes. This $150 limited edition will also include a signed note from the creator of Gravity Falls and co-writer of Journal 3, Alex Hirsch himself.