As she enters adulthood in the turbulent 1970s, Sylvie thinks the way to change a violent world is to become a peaceful person. Yet she slowly sees how a childhood trauma thwarts her peaceful intentions and leads her to men with a dark side – including Enzo, the man she marries. Even as his behavior becomes increasingly volatile, she believes she can make things better with love and understanding. But finally living in terror. Sylvie must find a way to escape with her daughter and a way to claim her place in the world.
"One of my favorite books of the year." —Lee Child “Cancel all your plans and call in sick; once you start reading, you'll be caught in your own escape room—the only key to freedom is turning the last page!” —Kirkus Reviews (starred) "A sleek, well-crafted ride." —The New York Times In Megan Goldin's unforgettable debut, The Escape Room, four young Wall Street rising stars discover the price of ambition when an escape room challenge turns into a lethal game of revenge. Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive. In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style—but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost. Invited to participate in an escape room challenge as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high-rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival. Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive?
First published in 1889, this novel has two main plots; one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fictional world of Fairyland.
First published in 1889, this novel has two main plots; one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fictional world of Fairyland.
A series of malicious poison pen letters leads Maggie into a snake pit of revenge, spitefulness, and murder. When the village cheese seller is shot to death, an easy scapegoat is found on the strength of the vicious lies in the letters. Maggie knows what small-minded villagers are capable of--especially when a decades-old grievance is at the heart of the bitterness. If she doesn't work fast, the festering resentment could very well send an innocent woman to prison for a murder she didn't commit.
Freedom is out of the question for practitioners of the Institute, and any supporters otherwise are dealt with violently. A system Sylvie Sirx neither refutes, nor endorses—born from an enviable family, talented in her skills, and entirely too content with her position, her path has always been a straight one… until now. Her qualifications backfire when an elder from the north descends upon her home for a Choosing. He calls upon the Drowned Tower’s most sought after practitioners for a simple job that ends in blood, and then Sylvie’s blissful world erupts. She finds herself in the company of the Elementalist, Jacques Dace, an insufferable but deadly enthusiast of personal reform. Together, they’re swept into a spiral of powerful magic and ancient grudges. Where truth bends, stones whisper secrets of the past, and their home lies at the heart of what could very well be Ferus Terria’s next recorded war. And for once, she is forced to choose a side, learning for herself what it means to master fate.
In Venus in Exile renowned cultural critic Wendy Steiner explores the twentieth century's troubled relationship with beauty. Disdained by avant-garde artists, feminists, and activists, beauty and its major symbols of art—the female subject and ornament—became modernist taboos. To this day it is hard to champion beauty in art without sounding aesthetically or politically retrograde. Steiner argues instead that the experience of beauty is a form of communication, a subject-object interchange in which finding someone or something beautiful is at the same time recognizing beauty in oneself. This idea has led artists and writers such as Marlene Dumas, Christopher Bram, and Cindy Sherman to focus on the long-ignored figure of the model, who function in art as both a subject and an object. Steiner concludes Venus in Exile on a decidedly optimistic note, demonstrating that beauty has created a new and intensely pleasurable direction for contemporary artistic practice.
Sylvie is a girl who longs to be a woman. When her friend Betty invites her to a dance at the local airfield, where a US squadron is based, Sylvie knows she has to go, even if it means lying to her parents. Upon meeting Jack, a young American airman, life becomes even more complicated. A World War II romance, set in Norfolk, rural England. "Short and sweet story about love, innocence and loss." "An insight into a young girl's heart as she falls for a soldier. Her mind-set felt true to the era and compassion develops quickly between reader and character," (Goodreads review). "In the latter days of the Second World War, Sylvia is thrilled to be invited to the hangar dance held by the US squadron now based near her Norfolk home. Her parents are less than happy about it, so she sneaks out, determined to see the glitz and glamour of the US and escape the grind of the war years. She never plans to fall in love. ‘The Hangar Dance’ is a short and touching romance that nonetheless develops its characters and world fully in the short space of time we see them. Jack, Bradley, Mitzi and especially Sylvia, come to life on the page in this bittersweet story," (4 star press review by Bookangel).
