5/24/2023 0 Comments Pines blake crouch kindle![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I first learned about this series about six months ago when one of my coworkers was reading it. So I picked up my Kindle, and started reading Pines, the first book in a sci-fi/fantasy/horror/mystery trilogy by Blake Crouch. Truly, I think I’ve read more descriptions of rainfall in 2015 than in any year prior. All coupled with detailed descriptions of the glorious weather the Irish are known for. I’ll go back to it soon, but I needed something a bit less heavy than the story of a forty-year-old woman coping with the death of her husband and having to raise their four children on her own. ![]() I got four percent of the way through it (another Kindle book), and decided I just couldn’t do it. I started Colm Tóibín’s lovely Nora Webster on Sunday, shortly after finishing The Temporary Gentleman and writing the bulk of my blog post about it. So apparently this is what happens when I try to read two contemporary Irish fiction novels written by authors who have been Booker Prize contenders in a row: I get so depressed that the only thing left to do is read the book that is currently number one on the Amazon best seller lists for sci-fi, fantasy, and supernatural books. ![]()
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5/24/2023 0 Comments Ashes by ilsa j bick![]() ![]() She stood a few feet away from the gas station’s bathrooms in a blush of salmon-colored light from the setting sun. So Aunt Hannah said bloody quite often, especially in church. She was originally from Wisconsin-Sheboygan, which Alex didn’t think was a real place until the Everly Brothers mentioned it-and said bloody was way better than other swears because all her friends, most of whom were Lutherans, thought she was just being cute: Oh, that Hannah. What the bloody hell’s in Michigan?” Aunt Hannah’s second husband had been a Brit. “I had to get gas.” Which was really neither here nor there. When she’d spotted the WELCOME TO MICHIGAN sign-GREAT LAKES! GREAT TIMES!-she felt a sense of things opening up, expanding, as if she’d been traveling in a perpetual night on a lonely road hemmed by a thick, black forest and was only now getting her first glimpse of the sun. “I just crossed into Michigan,” Alex said, choosing the easiest question first. “WHERE ARE YOU?” AUNT HANNAH DEMANDED AS SOON AS Alex thumbed TALK. ![]() I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes … ![]() ![]() ![]() With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. ![]() The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. ![]() And yet-in 6th-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. The remarkable, little-known story of two trailblazing women in the Early Middle Ages who wielded immense power, only to be vilified for daring to rule.īrunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Oliver sacks music![]() Oliver Sacks: Tony was a surgeon in his early 40's, very robust and athletic and extroverted, with very little interest in music and one day, this was in 1993, he was on the phone, it was an outside phone, a storm approached, a bolt of lightning flew out from the phone, hit him in the face, gave him a cardiac arrest and along with this an out-of-body experience. Sacks told Steve Paulson about one of the patients in his new book. He's done it again in his latest book called “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”. For over 30 years, in books like “Awakenings”, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, “Seeing Voices” and “An Anthropologist on Mars”, Oliver Sacks has found ways to touch the lives of people with disorders from Parkinson’s disease to autism and then he's told their stories in ways that touch our lives too. ![]() ![]() Jim Fleming: They don't award a Nobel Prize for compassion but in the case of Oliver Sacks, maybe they should. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Mu hugo pratt![]() ![]() ![]() This feeling is highlighted by the return of all the characters that appeared throughout the long- running saga, almost like actors coming to the front of the stage to take their bow. There is a kind of premonition that hovers over the entire story, almost as if fate had decided in advance that this would be Corto Maltese’s last adventure.This can be perceived from the fact that Corto’s arrival at the lost continent of Mu, the mythical Atlantis, appears almost as a loop that naturally returns to the first theme that Pratt had explored many years before in the initial episode of the Corto Maltese series: Atlantis and its myths. ![]() Pratt chose her as a fairy-tale representative of magic and fantasy, who could evoke the wildest dreams ever for daydreamers. This kingdom is reigned over by the beautiful queen Anti, surrounded by her female warriors. Having passed the tests of the harmonic labyrinth, Corto finally reaches Mu, which is located under the ground of Quetzal Island (a clear reference to the Mayan people), right at the base of an extinct volcano. Before getting there he meets Tracy Eberhard, an intrepid aviator based on the real-life Amelia Earhart (whom Tracy says she knows), who was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo (1932) and mysteriously disappeared in the Pacific in 1937. Between 19 Corto Maltese is involved in the search for the legendary Atlantis. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Challenger deep book pages![]() ![]() ★ “Haunting, unforgettable, and life-affirming all at once.” - Booklist (starred review) Simply extraordinary.” - Laurie Halse Anderson, award-winning author of Speak ![]() “A brilliant journey across the dark sea of mental illness frightening, sensitive, and powerful. Laurie Halse Anderson, award-winning author of Speak, calls Challenger Deep "a brilliant journey across the dark sea of the mind frightening, sensitive, and powerful. Caden Bosch is torn.Ĭhallenger Deep is a deeply powerful and personal novel from one of today's most admired writers for teens. Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.Ĭaden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny. Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.Ĭaden Bosch is designated the ship's artist in residence to document the journey with images. ![]() National Book Award * Golden Kite Award Winner * Six Starred ReviewsĪ captivating novel about mental illness that lingers long beyond the last page, Challenger Deep is a heartfelt tour de force by New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman.Ĭaden Bosch is on a ship that's headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "Flannery O'Connor's Consecration of the End." Since Flannery O'Connor: Essays on the Contemporary American Short Story. "From 'The Geranium' to 'Judgement Day': Retribution in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor." Since Flannery O'Connor: Essays on the Contemporary American Short Story. Flannery O' Connor: The Imagination of Extremity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. All four versions of the story were published together in Flannery O'Connor: The Growing Craft in 1993. As " Judgement Day," it appeared as the final story of Everything That Rises Must Converge in 1965. O'Connor was fond of the story and rewrote it into "An Exile in the East" (1954), "Getting Home" (1964), and "Judgement Day" (1964). It later appeared in the 1971 collection The Complete Stories. It was first published in Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature in 1946 and is one of the six stories included in O'Connor's 1947 master's thesis The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories. " The Geranium" is an early short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor. For other uses, see Geranium (disambiguation). This article is about the Flannery O'Connor story. ![]() 5/24/2023 0 Comments Vicious book lj shen series![]() ![]() Non-librarians are welcome to join the group as well, to A place where all Goodreads members can work together to improve the Goodreads book catalog. ![]() ![]() She lives in Florida with her husband, three sons, and a disturbingly active imagination.Ī place where all Goodreads members can work together to improve the Goodreads book catalog. She writes angsty books, unredeemable anti-heroes who are in Elon Musk's tax bracket, and sassy heroines who bring them to their knees (for more reasons than one). Shen is USA Today, WSJ, Washington Post and #1 Amazon Kindle Store bestselling author of contemporary romance books. on all platforms: Newsletter Sign up ➜ Instagram➜ shorturl.at/cDJRZ TikTok ➜ shorturl.at/frw59 Facebook➜ Website ➜ L.J. She lives in Florida with her husband, three sons, and a disturbingly active imagination. ![]() ![]() ![]() This Saturday, May 6, history will be made as King Charles will be officially crowned at his coronation and the funny thing is that I don't really care. I even watched Harry and Meghan's Netflix special. I recorded and collected newspapers about Diana's funeral, the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the funeral of Prince Phillip, and of course, the funeral of my friend, Queen Elizabeth. I vividly remember where I was the day that I learned that Prince Charles and Princess Diana would be divorcing and the day the news broke that Diana had died. To the shock of everyone in my life, I received a return letter from Buckingham Palace a few months later and although the letter wasn't written by Queen Elizabeth, it was hand signed by one of her Ladies in Waiting and sealed with the official Buckingham Palace wax seal. ![]() ![]() ![]() Though protected by his unusual currentgift, once Akos and his brother are captured by enemy Shotet soldiers, Akos is desperate to get his brother out alive-no matter what the cost. But Cyra is much more than just a blade in her brother’s hand: she is resilient, quick on her feet, and smarter than he knows.Īkos is from the peace-loving nation of Thuvhe, and his loyalty to his family is limitless. Cyra’s currentgift gives her pain and power-something her brother exploits, using her to torture his enemies. Can they reclaim their gifts, their fates, and their lives, and reset the balance of power in this world?Ĭyra is the sister of the brutal tyrant who rules the Shotet people. While most benefit from their currentgifts, Akos and Cyra do not-their gifts make them vulnerable to others’ control. ![]() On a planet where violence and vengeance rule, in a galaxy where some are favored by fate, everyone develops a currentgift, a unique power meant to shape the future. Fans of Star Wars and Divergent will revel in internationally bestselling author Veronica Roth’s stunning new science-fiction fantasy series. ![]() |