The cement garden novel6/12/2023 ![]() ![]() His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() The dark atmosphere that envelops the book as a whole hits you the minute you open to the first story and then never lets up. The visual imagery of these stories is also striking there are some scenes that are still playing in my head right now as I'm writing this post, especially from "Strappado," a story whose ramifications hit me like a sledge hammer. He's also one of the few horror writers in my experience who writes his stories with prose to equal pretty much any literary author, and he does not rely on cheap thrills, hack-em/slash-em gratuitous gore or gross shockers to strike a genuine chord of fear that continues to resonate long after the last page has been read. He is probably (at least, as far as those I have read) the only author who can put together a compilation of his stories and keep me totally involved, off balance and maximally creeped out through the entire book without any exceptions. I do believe I've found a new favorite contemporary horror writer in Laird Barron. " The brain is a camera, and once it sees what it sees there's no taking it back." ![]() ![]() ![]() Trouble is-in playing possum, they both may have gotten far more than they bargained for. ![]() Hoping to outplay, outwit, and outlast the Possum Trot matchmakers during the harvest festival, Cage Cooper proposes a pretend engagement to suffragette Theodosia Holland. When a confirmed spinster matchmaker accepts an unusual assignment and helps a wealthy widower choose the right mate for his daughter, more than one couple finds true love. But tables are turned when the boarders attempt to match her with the newest man in town, Landon Knipp. Home Grown Bride by Diana Lesire BrandmeyerĮmmie Mueller thinks the only way to leave Illinois and join her family in Kansas is to play matchmaker to the boarders who stand in the way of her grandmother selling her house. But what will it take to get these ladies to say “I do”? In small communities from Tennessee to Colorado, Wyoming to Indiana, love unexpectedly enters the women’s lives with men they never imagined marrying. ![]() They think they have mastered the art of recognizing romantic potential in others, but when it comes to their own lives they have been unlucky in love. Meet nine women of the late 1800s who have found themselves in the role of matchmaker. Nine Meddling Matchmakers Find Love When They Least Expect It ![]() The book thief e book6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() “Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” - USA TodayĭON’T MISS BRIDGE OF CLAY, MARKUS ZUSAK’S FIRST NOVEL SINCE THE BOOK THIEF. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. ![]() Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. “The kind of book that can be life-changing.” - The New York Times 1939, Nazi Germany - The country is holding its breath. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time. ![]() With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. When Death has a story to tell, you listen. The extraordinary, beloved novel about the ability of books to feed the soul even in the darkest of times. Woman from Shanghai by Xianhui Yang6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Other less graphic alternatives include Xinran’s The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices and China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation. In Woman from Shanghai, Xianhui Yang, one of Chinas most celebrated and controversial writers, gives us a work of fact-based fiction. Verdict: While absolutely necessary as historical testimony, Woman from Shanghai is unrelentingly difficult reading and not for the faint-hearted (or stomached) recommended for readers seriously interested in 20th-century Asian history. When the camp was shut down in 1961 because of mass deaths from starvation, only 500 had survived, through stealing, foraging, and even such horrifying means as culling excretions and harvesting corpses. Between 19, some 3000 dissidents were sent to Jiabiangou. ![]() ![]() Since the 1980s, Chinese writers determined to bear witness to the atrocities of Mao’s Communist regime have bypassed censorship by writing “documentary literature,” blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction.ĭrawing on 100-plus interviews, Xianhui Yang’s 13 thinly disguised stories chronicle the brutality of the Jiabiangou labor camp in China’s Gobi Desert region. ![]() ![]() ![]() As she struggles to “understand Israel,” Sarah is forced to question first her beliefs, then ultimately her own identity. Her experience clashes with her preconceived notions again and again, particularly when she tries to take a non-chaperoned excursion into the West Bank. Synopsis: A stunningly accomplished debut graphic novel, HOW TO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL IN 60 DAYS OR LESS is Sarah Glidden’s charming and funny travel memoir of her trip through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Masada and other historic locales, brought to life with lush watercolors in all of their quirky and breathtaking detail.At the same time, ISRAEL is a sensitive, deeply thoughtful and personal examination of a highly charged issue, an account of a journey Sarah never expected to take. Sarah Glidden is a progressive Jewish American twenty-some- thing who is both vocal and critical of Israeli politics in. Special Attractions: Nonfiction, Female Lead Characters, Multicultural Lead Characters, Social issues, For adults too This book title, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, ISBN: 9781770462533, by Sarah Glidden, published by Drawn & Quarterly Publications (August 30. Genre: Biography/Autobiography, Political ![]() Grade levels: 6-8, 9-12, Higher Education ![]() The ersatz elevator book6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Punch plays the terrible actress with the annoying laugh in Hot Fuzz, and you may also remember her as the smug, superior instructor, Lucy Squirrel, in Bad Teacher. ![]() Her acting work started in England, and she's been on the BBC, including a part in the 1999 show Let Them Eat Cake with English comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. The English actress, who now lives in LA, has played conniving and comedic characters before, as a wicked stepsister in both Ella Enchanted and in Into the Woods (pictured above). Along with Count Olaf's theater troupe (Hook-Handed Man, Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender, and the White-Faced Women), the orphans are pursued for their fortune by Esmé Squalor, played by Lucy Punch.įirst appearing in A Series of Unfortunate Events as the wife of guest star Tony Hale in episode three, "The Ersatz Elevator," Punch's character is vain and villainous with a darkly comedic twist, with lines like, "If we give money to poor people, they won't be poor anymore and we won't have anyone to feel sorry for." The dire circumstances don't let up in season two. If you've ignored the advice to "look away" in the theme song of Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events, then you've probably already realized that the series is definitely aptly named - a series of unfortunate events does happen to the three Baudelaire orphans, thanks to the devious plots of Count Olaf, played by Neil Patrick Harris. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. ![]() Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. ![]() Killing sarai book6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() As Victor and Sarai slowly build a trust, the differences between them seem to lessen, and an unlikely attraction intensifies. As they grow closer, he finds himself willing to risk everything to keep her alive even his relationship with his devoted brother and liaison, Niklas, who now like everyone else wants Sarai dead. While on the run, Victor strays from his primal nature as he succumbs to his conscience and resolves to help Sarai. But things don't go as planned and instead of finding transport back to Tucson, she finds herself free from one dangerous man and caught in the clutches of another. When Victor arrives at the compound to collect details and payment for a hit, Sarai sees him as her only opportunity for escape. Victor is a cold-blooded assassin who, like Sarai, has known only death and violence since he was a young boy. Over time she forgot what it was like to live a normal life, but she never let go of her hope to escape the compound where she has been held for the past nine years. Résumé: "Sarai was only fourteen when her mother uprooted her to live in Mexico with a notorious drug lord. ![]() The wasteland and other poems6/10/2023 ![]() ![]() With its clear present-day parallels, such as growing inequality, the war in Ukraine, the ongoing impact of the pandemic, and the ever-present threat of climate change, the poem resonates deeply with the challenges of the present moment. Originally published in 1922, following the devastation of both WWI and the Spanish Flu, The Waste Land reflected the challenges of its time. Eliot’s 100-year-old poem The Waste Land, including the impact of war on families and communities, environmental and societal collapse, colonial violence and pandemics. The Waste Land Project is a live, hybrid exchange to help frame a powerful, global discussion about some of the timeless themes of T.S. Poets from Ukraine, Toronto, and other parts of the world come together across borders and boundaries to present readings and reflections on each other’s poems as a catalyst for dialogue, healing, connection and community. ![]() |