For more than a decade, Bailey White has delivered a story each Thanksgiving to National Public Radio's All Things Considered listeners. Long awaited by her many fans, Nothing with Strings is the entire collection of these Thanksgiving stories, published together for the first time. With wit and charm, Bailey White writes about an almost-gone little town where a spoon player is a guardian angel, an old woman fears that John James Audubon is living in her attic, and a homely governess wins a baby bull in a raffle and loses her heart. It's the kind of place where Heavenly Blue morning glories grow in through the windows of old houses and funeral food is shared on a Greyhound bus on a fall afternoon. You may not have ever been there, but you will feel right at home in these pages. Bailey White's beautifully written stories, teetering on the edge of the unreal, are sure to bring back memories you don't really have.
One mistake leads to a year of exile... Used to the busy playground of Winter Park, police chief Reese Daniels is shipped off to sleepy Lake City, Colorado. She takes the job of sheriff seriously, but makes it clear to one and all: this year is just a blip in her life. When it's done, she's gone. Forest Ranger M. Z. Morgan has lived in Lake City long enough to be considered a local. The pace, the quiet and the many friends make life there well worth the lack of dating material. A girlfriend would still be nice, and the new sheriff is easy on the eyes. It's entirely natural for Morgan and Reese to be friendly, but Reese's repeated reminders that she's not sticking around make it impossible for anything more between them. That is, until they strike a no strings bargain. Some guaranteed exchange of heat as the long winter sets in seems just what they need to pass the time. So what if it's the best sex they've ever had? It's still only temporary. They won't mistake sex for more, even if it only gets better—month after month. After month. No Strings—it seemed like a good idea at the time.
STRINGS is an action-packed, existential sci-fi horror that challenges the very mythos of the cosmos. Beyond space and time, beyond the gods of reality, something was consuming it all. Daniel was lost; torn from his own reality and trapped in a violent universe of old gods, enigmas, and decay. The corporeality around him no longer followed the logic of time or physics, and the threat to his life was becoming more real with each breath. A mysterious condition, known only as The Syndrome, threatens the existence of four remaining deities. As his sanity unravels and dissolves like the rotting flesh of the nightmarish beast that hunted him, Daniel must fight to understand the truth of his significance to these gods. Only then may he find a way out of these convolutions of reality before his own mind succumbs to madness.
The first novel from “one of the leading masters of epic fantasy”—a tale of a place where death holds no sway and heroes are born (Publishers Weekly). Alya has an almost magical talent. Her hunches are never wrong. The scientists of planet 4‐I want to use her talent and promise her a spot on the next off-world colonization team in return for her assessment of the potential of the latest worlds they have discovered. But Alya meets Cedric, the grandson of the brilliant and tyrannical director of 4‐I, and she begins to doubt her own intuition. Cedric has dreamed of becoming a scout and exploring new worlds, and when he meets Alya, he is more determined than ever to leave 4‐I with her. His grandmother needs him on 4‐I, though, because she has schemes afoot to protect her planet and to cover up a murder, and she does not intend to let him go. However, she has underestimated her grandson—and the young woman whose intuition is strong and whose destiny is linked to Cedric’s.
Superstring theory and its successor, M-theory, hold promises of a deeper understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics, the unification of the four fundamental forces, the quantum theory of gravity, the mysteries of quantum black holes, Big Bang cosmology and, ultimately, their complete synthesis in a final theory of physics.This volume records the proceedings of the major annual international conference on the subject, ?Strings 2000?, which involved 42 talks by the world's leading experts on string theory and M-theory. It will be of interest not only to researchers in the field but also to all those who wish to keep abreast of the latest developments and breakthroughs in this exciting area of theoretical physics.
"This delightful collection of Bible verses, poetry, devotional insights, and beautiful quotes from Mother Teresa, C.S. Lewis, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and others will inspire you each day to lift your heart to greater joy."--Page 4 of cover.
Puppeteer Beatrice Snowdrop is well used to chatty dolls with attitude. Fortunately, headmistressy Miss Beatti knows how to discipline naughty toys. And how! A failed relationship forces Beatti to shut up shop and hunker down for winter. The days become lonely and cold. She misses crafting dolls, but she isn’t going to make another puppet or date another woman. Definitely not! Come springtime, old flame Evie Fine offers a cash prize for the best Easter doll. Beatti wonders if her ex wants to lure her back to the toy business or if she seeks to rekindle their relationship. Either way, temptation is difficult to resist and Beatti eventually crafts a new doll. Pokio ... Oh, Pokio, a feisty doll with cheek aplenty. She insults Beatti from the get-go and proves to be more than a handful. Worse, Pokio can read her mistress’s innermost thoughts, and can spot a fib a mile away. Quite soon the strings controlling Pokio are abandoned. It’s Miss Beatti who does as she’s told and Pokio who calls the shots. Switching roles is fun! They forget every rule of doll making and instead notice each other as women. Pokio develops into a loving, thoughtful doll who adores her mistress. Exactly what Beatti needs. It’s only natural and right when affection blossoms like the spring flowers. A kiss is shared, an ancient spell released. Can a doll become a real woman? What does real even mean?
Anne Draffkorn Kilmer has had a long and fruitful career as an academic in Assyriology. After receiving her doctorate in Philadelphia and serving as assistant to Benno Landsberger in Chicago, she came to Berkeley in 1963 and stayed there for the long term, despite offers from other universities. During her career, in addition to her many contributions to Assyriology and ancient musicology, she served the university in various administrative functions. In Assyriology, her wide and varied interests included lexical texts, mathematics, animals, entertainment, and especially music. Her discoveries were often unexpected and dramatic. In this volume, the essays presented in her honor focus on many of Prof. Kilmer’s primary interests. The contributions are divided into two sections, reflecting the title, “Strings and Threads.” The “strings” portion of the volume collects essays that follow her interest in musicology and related matters, especially “music archaeology.” It is well known that she studied ancient Hurrian, Mesopotamian, and Ugaritic texts containing musical notations and/or songs, and has been at the forefront of decipherment and explanation of these texts. And a number of essays in this volume address various aspects of ancient music, whether it be the lyrics of the songs or the pictorial representation of music-making or the language in which music is described. In the “threads” portion of the volume are collected essays on various aspects of Mesopotamian narrative literature, an area to which Anne contributed significant insight on the structure of compositions and verbal wordplay used by ancient authors. A number of the articles in the volume follow up on or parallel Prof. Kilmer’s work in this area. Contributors include: G. Azarpay, D. Collon, J. Cooper, R. L. Crocker, D. Foxvog, E. Hickmann, A. B. Knapp, E. Leichty, S. L. Macgregor, S. B. Noegel, D. Pickworth, E. Robson, J. C. Ross, D. Schmandt-Besserat, D. Stronach, and R. L. Zettler. The volume concludes with a bibliography and an index of the works of A. D. Kilmer.
