No matter how close you are to them, there are certain things you just don't say. No matter how lonely you feel, there are certain people you just don't befriend. No matter how much you've fallen, there's always a guy you shouldn't give your heart to... Sadly for me, I learned the last one only after I had gotten my heart broken. They say you shouldn't look down upon anyone, or you will be put in their situation and made to experience the crisis. When I was fourteen, I had looked disdainfully at a girl who was sobbing hysterically over a guy who liked her best friend. For which, I was probably paying the price now. However, I was trying my best to fit my feet in the shoes I had been given. I was trying and I was managing just fine. What I didn't need was a troublemaker who entered my life without permission. He was the guy who claimed to be bowled over by me, the one with a broken heart. Little did he know, I had entrusted myself to Al Malik, The Owner of me and my heart. If he had to reach me, he had to do so by pleasing Allah, which wasn't possible for a guy like him. Or so I thought.
Stirring up trouble… Vintage kitchenware and cookbook collector Jaymie Leighton has been estranged from her high school best friend Kathy Cooper since they were teenagers, but she never knew what turned Kathy against her. After fireworks at a Fourth of July picnic, Jaymie discovers the body of her former friend in the park. On the ground nearby is Jaymie’s own Depression-era glass bowl, broken in two. With her fingerprints all over the bowl and a troubled history with the victim, Jaymie suddenly finds herself at the top of the list of suspects. Did the killer intend to frame her for the murder? If so, she is ready to mix it up, because solving crimes is vintage Jaymie Leighton…
Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet—the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today’s fractured America. Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolized a significant social change that became the basis of the acclaimed bestseller, Bowling Alone, which The Washington Post called “a very important book” and Putnam, “the de Tocqueville of our generation.” Bowling Alone surveyed in detail Americans’ changing behavior over the decades, showing how we had become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether it’s with the PTA, church, clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. In the revised edition of his classic work, Putnam shows how our shrinking access to the “social capital” that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing still poses a serious threat to our civic and personal health, and how these consequences have a new resonance for our divided country today. He includes critical new material on the pervasive influence of social media and the internet, which has introduced previously unthinkable opportunities for social connection—as well as unprecedented levels of alienation and isolation. At the time of its publication, Putnam’s then-groundbreaking work showed how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction, and how the loss of social capital is felt in critical ways, acting as a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, and affecting our health in other ways. While the ways in which we connect, or become disconnected, have changed over the decades, his central argument remains as powerful and urgent as ever: mending our frayed social capital is key to preserving the very fabric of our society.
A big, rewarding novel about art, politics, family, terrorism, courage, and happiness. Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the National Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again--and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in the Taklamakan desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure, a bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, during the ceremony celebrating its acquisition. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has been embezzling from the museum to pay for her fertility treatments. And her far too handsome, far too elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good. Confronting challenge after challenge at work and at home, Promise is one of the most offbeat, original, winning characters in recent fiction. The Bowl Is Already Broken is all brains, all soul, and all heart--brimming with ideas, provocative, and deeply satisfying.
An atmospheric tale of corruption and abduction set on Mars, from the author of the award-winning science fiction novel Altered Carbon, now an exciting new series from Netflix. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN Hakan Veil is an ex–corporate enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. His former employers have abandoned him on a turbulent Mars where Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power amid a homegrown independence movement. But he’s had enough of the red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home—which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil . . . until it isn’t. When Veil’s charge starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, it stirs up a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the game, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it’s the expert assassin poised against powerful enemies hellbent on taking him down—by any means necessary. Praise for Thin Air “Kick-ass . . . Mixed in with the thriller-esque action and cyberpunk backdrop is a hard-boiled noir story complete with a twisting and turning plot that keeps readers on their toes.”—Los Angeles Times “Richard K. Morgan wants to destroy your Mars fantasies. . . . It’s a grim vision, but one that Morgan finds far more plausible than the cheerful visions of plucky Mars colonists common in sci-fi.”—Wired “A robotically enhanced Jack Reacher [in a] dazzlingly intricate game of political double- and triple-cross, spiced with tastily kinetic battle sequences.”—The Guardian “If you ever imagined that the core esthetics and themes of cyberpunk—lowlifes and high tech; corporate dominance; future noir; post-human evolution and cyborg adaptations; hardscrabble urban environments—were played out, Thin Air will set you straight, and kick your butt in the process. . . . Both kinematic and cinematic, [Thin Air is] limned by Morgan with balletic precision and smashmouth grace.”—Paul Di Filippo, Locus
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"Creatively speaking this book is marvelous; it is rich and refreshing and decadent. Written wryly and masterfully, Mr. Hayden's twenty one short literary journeys will take you through the gamut: horror, laughter, sarcasm, and of course happy and sad." --Lurid Lit "Hayden nails it again with this darkly delightful collection filled with unforgettable characters and their askew outlooks!" G.L. Giles "Mr. Hayden, the devil told me if you continue to write this well you’ll need to bargain the souls of your offspring as well." Alexander Beresford, Author of Charla “A fantastic mixed bag of highly imaginative tales. Spectacular and strange, wondrous and wild. It felt like Hayden was The Hatter and I was a wide-eyed enjoyably dazzled guest sitting at his tea-party table.” —HORNS, Author of Chophouse and Stationhouse No. 1
Broken Wings is mainstream fiction. It is the extraordinary story of Daniel ‘Surefire’ Lasky – an Apache-raised tracker and lion-killing Big Game Hunter – who is commissioned to find the grave of a missionary last seen in Northern Rhodesia, 30 years before. What starts out as a search for a missing priest, grows into a dangerous mission, evolving into a quest for existential meaning. What Surefire finds in Africa’s cursed Shinshika Mountains will change forever his cynical world view and cavalier lifestyle. This powerful and inspiring story, filled with drama, adventure, passion and love, is set to become another international bestseller for Keverne – a natural story-teller whose talent is richly expressed in this unique book. ACCLAIM FOR GLORY KEVERNE'S A MAN CANNOT CRY'. A PEOPLE magazine's Top Ten Book of the Year in America. A BOOKSELLER'S Most Promising Title in Britain. A MAN CANNOT CRY is the finest first novel I have ever handled (including THE COLLECTOR by John Fowles, and THE WATER IS WIDE by Pat Conroy). Close to 50 years in publishing as a writer, editor and agent and I have never heard such a story of how a relatively uneducated girl of eighteen in a little copper mining town in Northern Rhodesia, married to a miner, began a powerful first novel of 500,000 words (before cutting), and spent years writing it under the most amazing circum- stances. I have never been as overwhelmed by a first novel. She is simply a born story teller.' Julian Bach, New York Agent and a former editor of LIFE magazine. Gloria, you have a wonderful novel here. It moved me to tears and its editing has been a labor of love for me. A Man Cannot Cry has given me great pleasure and I thank you for it. Eventually the world will too.' Hillel Black, William Morrow, USA. This excellent novel is an African answer to THE THORN BIRDS. With first rate characterization and an unusual and ingenious plot, the combination of Africa, the Quaker settlement and medicine, is exceptionally good.' P Parkin, HarperCollins, UK. A MAN CANNOT CRY pulses with the life of Northern Rhodesia and all Africa besides. The story begins in 1958 with the arrival of Dr Than Profane at a Quaker mission to see his dying father. He does not intend to stay but before long he is taking Africa like a drug' and thriving like cut grass growing wild' He quickly earns the affectionate name Bwana Cowboy'. His methods and sometimes his morals are characteristically American, rough-hewn, deaf to both danger and defeat Inevitably he clashes with his conservative hosts. But he does much better with the local tribes there is a wonderful passage where he is trained as a witchdoctor and some of the book's finest characters, lovingly portrayed, are African The book is alive with people, places, and their interactions: births and deaths in squalid hut and shiny hospital, cruel savages and a tame leopard; the glory of a canoe trip on the Zambezi and a white man dressing as a witchdoctor to fight a smallpox epidemic; and in the background the murmuring voices of a changing Africa, Lumumba, Tshombe, Kasavubu, Kaunda. A MAN CANNOT CRY dramatizes all the conflicts and parallels between the white world and the black, the old Africa and the new, the familiar and the alien, the uncertain fears of the mind and the sure knowledge of the heart. Long, rich and detailed, it is a wonderful book.' Alan Ryan, THE WASHINGTON POST. An enormous array of human emotion is
An irreverent, allusive, scatalogical, tragicomic masterpiece that centers on the patrons of a run-down bar as they try to document the details of their lives in a country that appears to have forgotten the importance of remembering. In Republic of the Congo, in the town of Trois-Cents, in a bar called Credit Gone West, a former schoolteacher known as Broken Glass drinks red wine and records the stories of the bar and its regulars for posterity: Stubborn Snail, the owner, who must battle church people, ex-alcoholics, tribal leaders, and thugs set on destroying him and his business; the Printer, who had his respectable life in France ruined by a white woman, his wife; Robinette, who could outdrink and outpiss any man; and Broken Glass himself, whose own tale involves as much heartbreak, squalor, disappointment, and delusion. But Broken Glass fails spectacularly at staying out of trouble as one denizen after another wants to rewrite history in an attempt at making sure his portrayal will properly reflect their exciting and dynamic lives. Despondent over this apparent triumph of self-delusion over self-awareness, Broken Glass drowns his sorrows and riffs on the great books of Africa and the West. Brimming with life, death, and literary allusions, Broken Glass is Mabanckou's finest novel--a mocking satire of the dangers of artistic integrity.
What if you were in love not just with one, not just with two, but with three hot guys? And what if they wanted you back? There are three of them. Three boys. We’re friends. Neighbors. Our lives are linked through disaster, fear and pain. I love them all. Not sure I can live without them. Can we just stay friends? Can we ignore the desire flaring when we’re around each other? Can I kiss one and not the other? I can’t choose. Don’t want to choose. And I’m not sure they can, either. This story will either end up in heartache, or as any story should: in a happy ending. Love is not a road. It’s a country. A sprawling galaxy. Love has no compass. No rules. No limits. Love is a universe. Lose yourself in it.
