Enter a magic-infused Victorian alternate history, where silver tigers and demon birds roam, and one young woman is caught up in a sweeping mutiny... In this epic historical fantasy by Kay Kenyon, discover an alternate 19th century where two warring continents vie for power: the scientific Anglica and magical Bharata. Inspired by her grandfather's final whispered secret of a magical lotus, young Tori Harding, an aspiring botanist, embarks on a quest to Bharata, where magic, intrigues, and ghosts await. There she will find what she most desires; less perfect than she had hoped and stranger than she could have dreamed. Her fate awaits. But how can she make the choice between two suitors - and two irreconcilable realms?
An emotionally charged story about the power of dreams, and how passion can turn to obsession. Beck hates his life. He hates his violent mother. He hates his home. Most of all, he hates the piano that his mother forces him to play hour after hour, day after day. He will never play as she did before illness ended her career and left her bitter and broken. But Beck is too scared to stand up to his mother, and tell her his true passion, which is composing his own music - because the least suggestion of rebellion on his part ends in violence. When Beck meets August, a girl full of life, energy and laughter, love begins to awaken within him and he glimpses a way to escape his painful existence. But dare he reach for it? Thrilling and powerfully written, this is an explosive debut for YA readers which tackles the dark topic of domestic abuse in an ultimately hopeful tale.
On October 23, 2001, Apple Computer, a company known for its chic, cutting-edge technology -- if not necessarily for its dominant market share -- launched a product with an enticing promise: You can carry an entire music collection in your pocket. It was called the iPod. What happened next exceeded the company's wildest dreams. Over 50 million people have inserted the device's distinctive white buds into their ears, and the iPod has become a global obsession. The Perfect Thing is the definitive account, from design and marketing to startling impact, of Apple's iPod, the signature device of our young century. Besides being one of the most successful consumer products in decades, the iPod has changed our behavior and even our society. It has transformed Apple from a computer company into a consumer electronics giant. It has remolded the music business, altering not only the means of distribution but even the ways in which people enjoy and think about music. Its ubiquity and its universally acknowledged coolness have made it a symbol for the digital age itself, with commentators remarking on "the iPod generation." Now the iPod is beginning to transform the broadcast industry, too, as podcasting becomes a way to access radio and television programming. Meanwhile millions of Podheads obsess about their gizmo, reveling in the personal soundtrack it offers them, basking in the social cachet it lends them, even wondering whether the device itself has its own musical preferences. Steven Levy, the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine and a longtime Apple watcher, is the ideal writer to tell the iPod's tale. He has had access to all the key players in the iPod story, including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom Levy has known for over twenty years. Detailing for the first time the complete story of the creation of the iPod, Levy explains why Apple succeeded brilliantly with its version of the MP3 player when other companies didn't get it right, and how Jobs was able to convince the bosses at the big record labels to license their music for Apple's groundbreaking iTunes Store. (We even learn why the iPod is white.) Besides his inside view of Apple, Levy draws on his experiences covering Napster and attending Supreme Court arguments on copyright (as well as his own travels on the iPod's click wheel) to address all of the fascinating issues -- technical, legal, social, and musical -- that the iPod raises. Borrowing one of the definitive qualities of the iPod itself, The Perfect Thing shuffles the book format. Each chapter of this book was written to stand on its own, a deeply researched, wittily observed take on a different aspect of the iPod. The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. "Shuffle" is a hallmark of the digital age -- and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lev Grossman comes a magical-realist romance that turns the Groundhog Day premise inside-out and upside-down—coming soon to Amazon as a major motion picture. Mark is 17-years-old and trapped in a time loop, and that’s just fine with him. It’s summertime and he’s spending this one infinitely repeating day reading his way through the town library. Then he discovers someone else in the loop with him: the brilliant, haunted Margaret. Together Mark and Margaret set out to find every wonderful, amazing, perfect thing that happens in that one day—a journey that will take them to the dark secret that waits at the very heart of their endless day. Thrilling, funny, and deeply romantic, this novella is perfect for fans of John Green, Nicola Yoon, and Jandy Nelson.
Set between Holland and a remote Indonesian island, this intimate magical realism novel offers “an offbeat narrative that has the timeless tone of a legend” (Time). “Dermoût’s sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.” —Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild The Ten Thousand Things is at once novel of shimmering strangeness—and familiarity. It is the story of Felicia, who returns with her baby son from Holland to the Spice Islands of Indonesia, to the house and garden that were her birthplace, over which her powerful grandmother still presides. There Felicia finds herself wedded to an uncanny and dangerous world, full of mystery and violence, where objects tell tales, the dead come and go, and the past is as potent as the present. First published in Holland in 1955, Maria Dermoût's novel was immediately recognized as a magical work, like nothing else Dutch—or European—literature had seen before. The Ten Thousand Things is an entranced vision of a far-off place that is as convincingly real and intimate as it is exotic, a book that is at once a lament and an ecstatic ode to nature and life.
An emotionally charged story about the power of dreams, and how passion can turn to obsession. Beck hates his life. He hates his violent mother. He hates his home. Most of all, he hates the piano that his mother forces him to play hour after hour, day after day. He will never play as she did before illness ended her career and left her bitter and broken. But Beck is too scared to stand up to his mother, and tell her his true passion, which is composing his own music - because the least suggestion of rebellion on his part ends in violence. When Beck meets August, a girl full of life, energy and laughter, love begins to awaken within him and he glimpses a way to escape his painful existence. But dare he reach for it? Thrilling and powerfully written, this is an explosive debut for YA readers which tackles the dark topic of domestic abuse in an ultimately hopeful tale.
Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.
Time travel was never like this--tied to the motions of the stars, a short cut across the galaxy, and--if you're a rare Dive pilot--a chance to be a hero. Clio Finn is one of these, a space pilot on the run from a dystopian and graying Earth toward the only future she ever wanted: the stars. Problem is, she's on the razor edge of burnout. Next stop: a labor camp in dictatorial America. Clio might be in it for escape, for adventure, but there's also that hero thing. Her mission: to retrieve viable biota to reseed the Earth. Now, a long way from home, she's found the jackpot, a lush paradise, with plant life so vital, its seeds could give Earth a second chance, or--as her enemies believe--seal its destruction. But she's determined to bring her payload home. It's Clio Finn's last Dive. It's Earth's last chance.
Human colonists have terraformed the planet Lithia, but now the green biosphere is unraveling. In its place is the old Lithia, toxic to some, preferable to others, including the orthong. Aliens. Monsters, some say. Finding himself marooned on Lithia, young Reeve Calder is determined to make a home--even rebuild the planet. But he is a newcomer, soon to encounter the powerful forces already embedded in the transforming ecology. There are the savage colonists, inhabiting the ruins of vanished power. There are the Somaformers, a doomsday cult tampering with adaptive genes. There is Loon, a feral girl who leads the marooned group by her mad, internal compass. There is Nerys, a young woman enslaved by the orthong, and determined to rise in their ranks. Driven by a whispered clue from a dying man, Reeve and his companions must reach the great rift valley where the final reckoning awaits, one that will decide world dominance--or an unthinkable world cataclysm.
