Fourteen-year-old Shelby cannot understand why her mother, Zoe, is constantly packing them up and moving. Now that they've lived in the city for a year and Shelby even has a best friend, she's determined to stay put. She's tired of being at the mercy of her mother's strange moods and sudden whims. And she's tired of Zoe's evasions, especially on the subject of Shelby's father. When Shelby finds some concrete evidence of his existence--old photographs with a man's head carefully cut out--she determines to confront her mother. But before she has the chance, Zoe announces that they're taking a trip to Red Valley, where she used to live. Shelby hopes she can find some answers there and leave quickly. But Red Valley turns out to have a strange hold on Zoe, and Shelby discovers that some questions might be better left alone.
Shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2016! It has been estimated that over 90% of England's figurative medieval art was obliterated in the image destruction of the Reformation. Medieval angel roofs, timber structures with spectacular and ornate carvings of angels, with a peculiar preponderance in East Anglia, were simply too difficult for Reformation iconoclasts to reach. Angel roof carvings comprise the largest surviving body of major English medieval wood sculpture. Though they areboth masterpieces of sculpture and engineering, angel roofs have been almost completely neglected by academics and art historians, because they are inaccessible, fixed and challenging to photograph. 'The Angel Roofs of East Anglia' is the first detailed historical and photographic study of the region's many medieval angel roofs. It shows the artistry and architecture of these inaccessible and little-studied medieval artworks in more detail and clarity than ever before, and explains how they were made, by whom, and why. Michael Rimmer redresses the scholarly neglect and brings the beauty, craftsmanship and history of these astonishing medieval creations to the reader. The book also offers a fascinating new answer to the question of why angel roofs are so overwhelmingly an East Anglian phenomenon, but relatively rare elsewhere in the country.
Throughout his career as a novelist, Banks has also been a master of the short form, publishing four story collections, and winning O. Henry and Best American Short Story Awards and other prizes. Now with The Angel on the Roof, he offers readers an astonishing collection of thirty years of short fiction, resonant with irony and compassion, honesty and insight, extending into the vast territory of the heart and world, from working-class New England to Florida, the Caribbean and Africa. Along with nine new stories that are among the finest fiction he has ever written, he has selected the best from his collections and revised them for this volume.
L. E. Modesitt's bestselling fantasy novels set in the magical world of Recluce have established a standard of entertainment in contemporary fantasy. "In Modesitt's universe, where good and evil, chaos and order, are in perpetual conflict, a young wizard finds that his destiny is to strike a balance, but at considerable personal cost. Modesitt creates a deeper and more intricate world with each volume," says Publishers Weekly. "Modesitt's elaborate and intelligent working out of a systemof magic and a system of technology parallel to it is becoming more the lifeblood of the Recluce books with every new volume. . . . His saga continues to gain in popularity," says Booklist. Each Recluce novel tells an independent story that nevertheless reverberates though all the other Recluce novels to deepen and enrich the reading experience. Now in Fall of Angels, Modesitt moves deep into Recluce's past to chronicle the founding of the Empire of the Legend, the almost mythological domain ruled by woman warriors on the highland plateau of the continent of Candar. He tells the story from the point of view of Nylan, the engineer and builder whose job it is to raise a great tower on the plateau known as the Roof of the World. Here the exiled women warriors will live and survive to fulfill their destiny. Here a revolutionary new society will be born . . . if Nylan can get the tower built and defenses in place before the rulers of the lowland nations come with their armies to obliterate them all. And if Nylan can learn to control the magical powers that are growing within him. Thus Modesitt relates the story of how magic comes into the world of Recluce, in a fantasy novel destined to please the growing Recluce audience and win new readers to the series. Fall of Angels is the sixth book of the saga of Recluce.
In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend. "All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death." In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. "Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining." -- New York Times Book Review"Intimate and touching . . . the stuff of legend." -- San Francisco Chronicle"An immensely charming and moving tale." -- Boston GlobeNational Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year from National Public Radio, American Library Association, San Francisco Chronicle, BookPage, Newsday, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Literary Hub
'An utterly original and brilliant story' Reese Witherspoon A Most Anticipated Book according to The Millions, Ms. Magazine and Good Housekeeping Ruth, Esther and Chloe have been singing in harmony since before they could speak. Together they are The Salvations. Driven to success by their formidably ambitious mother, Vivian, they’re soon the hottest jazz band in San Francisco. When the girls receive a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a renowned talent manager, Vivian knows this is the big break she has been praying for. She can see a different future for her girls, one that is a far cry from her childhood in racially segregated Louisiana. But somewhere between the grind of endless rehearsals on the rooftop and the glamour of weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls grow up and start to imagine a life beyond their mother's reach. As Vivian’s hold on her family begins to weaken, she must confront changes in The Salvations, in the San Francisco neighbourhood she has made her home, and even in her own family.
Angels are sculpted everywhere in Paris, not just on churches but in unexpected places: holding a lightning rod atop the Théâtre du Châtelet’s roof, adorning a seventeenth-century gilded sundial inside a courtyard at the Sorbonne, hovering above a railroad headquarters where a beautiful stone frieze features young angels flying in to work on the tracks. Subtly, subliminally, the angels are a part of the fanciful and romantic spirit of Paris. Angels of Paris is the first book to explore this intriguing and extraordinary subject. Angels of Paris features beautiful photographs taken from dawn to dusk, in all seasons, accompanied by text explaining the story behind the creation of each angel and of the location in which it is found. Organized chronologically, the book delves into the artistic trends and historic movements the angels reflect and the stories of the artists who created them and of those who commissioned them. Readers will learn about Paris’s history, buildings, and monuments through the abundant, beautiful, and surprising depictions of angels from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Rosemary Flannery has found angels in friezes, plaques, and free-standing sculpture; on fountains and façades, clocks and sundials, monuments and mansions, rooftops and window frames. Angels of Paris is a unique way for lovers of Paris to learn more about the city in a new and unusual way.
FIRST IN THE GUILD HUNTER SERIES! Nalini Singh introduces readers to a world of beauty and bloodlust, where angels hold sway over vampires. Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux is hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael. But this time, it’s not a wayward vamp she has to track. It’s an archangel gone bad. The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other—and pull her to the razor’s edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn’t destroy her, succumbing to Raphael’s seductive touch just may. For when archangels play, mortals break.
A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the world In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. It is a story of the theater, following Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture. Solomon reveals how the show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is "so Japanese." Rich, entertaining, and original, Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.
