Book 6 in Ved Mehta's Continents of Exile series. Nearly 50 years in the making, Continents of Exile is one of the great works of twentieth-century autobiography: the epic chronicle of an Indian family in the twentieth century. From 1930s India to 1950s Oxford and literary New York in the 1960s-80s, this is the story of the post-colonial twentieth century, as uniquely experienced and vividly recounted by Ved Mehta. The Stolen Light engages with the particular difficulties of Mehta's experience: he was blind in a college made for the seeing, he was an Indian in the United States, a Hindu in a Christian environment, a dark-skinned man surrounded by white people. With compelling honesty and humour, Mehta describes his struggles to live an ordinary university life - dating, riding a bicycle, keeping up with his studies - while dealing with incredible obstacles.
Cuba 1958: American-born William Delany's sugar plantation is attacked by rebels. He is killed and his priceless art collection is presumed taken as plunder.Fifty years later, Delaney's widow dies, and his daughter, Helen Gilmore, endeavoring to understand the father her mother never spoke about, is determined to retrieve what she can of his legacy. In her quest to track down her father's art collection she enlists the help of a young writer named Erika Shawn. Together with seasoned art historian Harrison Wheatley, the two begin their quest to uncover what they can about Delany's collection.What begins as an academic exercise quickly escalates to something much more sinister. When Helen is brutally murdered and Erika is anonymously warned to drop the assignment, they press on undeterred to uncover the culprits and find justice for Helen.Their dogged determination to find Helen's killer as well as the stolen artwork lead them to what may be an historical find. Their sleuthing is complicated by their intensifying attraction, as irresistible and, likely as threatening as their mission.
The fact that Miller classifies his tales as “historical” requires an explanation. One of them, his accounts of the first murder recorded in Scripture, is historically accurate in its spirit and its conscription of evil. His second “historical” tale narrates the story of Noah and the construction of his ark, precedent to the global flood. That Noah, by faith alone, constructed his massive ark in the middle of a rainless desert marked him for “strange” and for the ridicule of his village. The balance of the tales deal with the histories of their central characters, and for that reason, the author includes them in his parameter of “historical”. This collection marks his fourth volume of short stories.
A stunning debut novel with an intriguing literary hook: written in part as a letter from a victim to her abductor. Sensitive, sharp, captivating!Gemma, 16, is on layover at Bangkok Airport, en route with her parents to a vacation in Vietnam. She steps away for just a second, to get a cup of coffee. Ty--rugged, tan, too old, oddly familiar--pays for Gemma's drink. And drugs it. They talk. Their hands touch. And before Gemma knows what's happening, Ty takes her. Steals her away. The unknowing object of a long obsession, Gemma has been kidnapped by her stalker and brought to the desolate Australian Outback. STOLEN is her gripping story of survival, of how she has to come to terms with her living nightmare--or die trying to fight it.
"A cinematic novel that travels between Ireland and America, following the life of a writer and her fictional counterpart as they wrestle with bitter pasts"--Provided by publisher.
How Do We Become Free and Enter into the Mystery of Life? The Fourfold Path takes us on a healing journey inspired by the philosopher Plato and his teachings on how to know yourself by transcending all limitations within the human space. The model of transcendence leaves behind the metaphors we live by to pioneer humankind into the deepest and most powerful gnosis ever attained through the love of wisdom. Through transcendence, you can discover how to free yourself from the suffering that obstructs the complete vision of the soul. You can heal from the unconscious processes and go beyond the limitations of the ego. Once you have learned the Path, you can attain enlightenment and become like God, and attain the characteristics of divinity, immortality, and bliss. Transcendence is basic to all human cultures who move through the limitless possibilities given to humankind to evolve using the wisdom of the mind and the wisdom of the heart. This wisdom invites us to go deeper and move from self-realization to knowledge of God. Life itself inspires this change through the experiences of love, birth, death, miracles, blessings, and family. True enlightenment occurs when we process these life experiences as lessons on a soul journey that initiate a spiritual awakening. It is as simple as arguing that there are two identities: a true self and a false self. Philosophy is the means to know the difference between the two, while transcendence is the path that can lead humankind to know the truth. When humankind comes to know their true selves, they will be set free from suffering. This is the ascent toward what Plato called The Good, which many believe is also called God. The Fourfold Path shows us how to leave behind the limitations of the human space to discover a sacred place in communication and communion with Spirit, so you can become one with God and find true happiness.
Inuit of northern Canada have a rich oral tradition in their ancient languages and a more recent tradition of written English. Penny Petrone traces the two paths that link the cultural past of arctic peoples with its expression in the present day. The book's first section includes traditional legends, myths, folk history told by native story-tellers, and poetry sung by Inuit composers. The second presents statements and observations by some of the first Inuit to come into contact with European newcomers, including official reports, interviews, letters, and diaries. Next are early poetry and prose in translation, much of it autobiographical. The final section includes contemporary Inuit writing, from essays and speeches to fiction, poetry, and other genres of imaginative literature. The editor has provided an introduction for each item and arranged the material chronologically to give historical perspective and continuity to the whole.
The haunting novel of love and survival that inspired Mexico’s official submission for International Feature Film—now shortlisted for the 94th Academy Awards® and streaming on Netflix “Prayers for the Stolen gives us words for what we haven’t had words for before, like something translated from a dream in a secret language. . . . Beguiling, and even crazily enchanting.”—Francisco Goldman, New York Times Book Review FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER PRIZE • AN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR Ladydi Garcia Martínez is fierce, funny, and smart. She was born into a world where being a girl is a dangerous thing. In the mountains of Guerrero, Mexico, women must fend for themselves, as their men have left to seek opportunities elsewhere. Here in the shadow of the drug war, bodies turn up on the outskirts of the village to be taken back to the earth by scorpions and snakes. School is held sporadically, when a volunteer can be coerced away from the big city for a semester. In Guerrero the drug lords are kings, and mothers disguise their daughters as sons, or when that fails they “make them ugly”—cropping their hair, blackening their teeth, anything to protect them from the rapacious grasp of the cartels. And when the black SUVs roll through town, Ladydi and her friends burrow into holes in their backyards like animals, tucked safely out of sight. While her mother waits in vain for her husband’s return, Ladydi and her friends dream of a future that holds more promise than mere survival, finding humor, solidarity, and fun in the face of so much tragedy. When Ladydi is offered work as a nanny for a wealthy family in Acapulco, she seizes the chance, and finds her first taste of love with a young caretaker there. But when a local murder tied to the cartel implicates a friend, Ladydi’s future takes a dark turn. Despite the odds against her, this spirited heroine’s resilience and resolve bring hope to otherwise heartbreaking conditions. An illuminating and affecting portrait of women in rural Mexico, and a stunning exploration of the hidden consequences of an unjust war, Prayers for the Stolen is an unforgettable story of friendship, family, and determination.
A gripping chronicle of psychological manipulation and abuse at a “therapeutic” boarding school for troubled teens, and how one young woman fought to heal in the aftermath. At fifteen, Elizabeth Gilpin was an honor student, a state-ranked swimmer and a rising soccer star, but behind closed doors her undiagnosed depression was wreaking havoc on her life. Growing angrier by the day, she began skipping practices and drinking to excess. At a loss, her parents turned to an educational consultant who suggested Elizabeth be enrolled in a behavioral modification program. That recommendation would change her life forever. The nightmare began when she was abducted from her bed in the middle of the night by hired professionals and dropped off deep in the woods of Appalachia. Living with no real shelter was only the beginning of her ordeal: she was strip-searched, force-fed, her name was changed to a number and every moment was a test of physical survival. After three brutal months, Elizabeth was transferred to a boarding school in Southern Virginia that in reality functioned more like a prison. Its curriculum revolved around a perverse form of group therapy where students were psychologically abused and humiliated. Finally, at seventeen, Elizabeth convinced them she was rehabilitated enough to “graduate” and was released. In this eye-opening and unflinching book, Elizabeth recalls the horrors she endured, the friends she lost to suicide and addiction, and—years later—how she was finally able to pick up the pieces of her life and reclaim her identity.
