Kunieda Kei is the up-and-coming Prince Charming of the evening news. Inside, he's the opposite: brash, hot-tempered, and prickly as can be. For years, Kei has successfully juggled his private and professional personas--until a chance meeting with a stop motion animator threatens to bring it all crashing down. But is that really as frightening as the possibility that someone might love and accept both sides of who he is?
'"Students of the prestigious Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School are given remarkable freedom--if they can win, barter, or save enough points to work their way up the ranks! Ayanokoji Kiyotaka has landed at the bottom in the scorned Class D, where he meets Horikita Suzune, who''s determined to rise up the ladder to Class A. Can they beat the system in a school where cutthroat competition is the name of the game? "'
I had to accept that I wasn’t just Arthur Leywin anymore, and that I could no longer be limited by the circumstances of my birth. If I was going to escape, if I was going to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful beings in this world, I needed to push myself to my utmost limit...and then I needed to push even further. After nearly dying as a victim of his own strength, Arthur Leywin wakes to find himself far from the continent where he was born for the second time. Alone, broken, and with no way to tell his family he’s alive, Arthur must rebuild his strength to survive. As he ascends through an ancient dungeon filled with hostile beasts and devious trials, he discovers an ancient, absolute power - a power that will either ruin him or take him to new heights. But the dungeon won’t give up its knowledge easily. Before he can plunder its depths, Arthur must learn to untangle the threads of fate. He must band together with the unlikeliest of allies if he hopes to escape with his life.
Goblin Slayer and his party head north to the snowy mountains in search of Noble Fencer, a young adventurer who disappeared during a goblin hunt. There, they discover a looming goblin threat more dangerous than anything they've faced before. A new battle for their lives begins-one that will not end until the mountains are blanketed with crimson snow...
With his stunning debut novel, She's Come Undone, Wally Lamb won the adulation of critics and readers with his mesmerizing tale of one woman's painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. Now, this brilliantly talented writer returns with I Know This Much Is True, a heartbreaking and poignant multigenerational saga of the reproductive bonds of destruction and the powerful force of forgiveness. A masterpiece that breathtakingly tells a story of alienation and connection, power and abuse, devastation and renewal--this novel is a contemporary retelling of an ancient Hindu myth. A proud king must confront his demons to achieve salvation. Change yourself, the myth instructs, and you will inhabit a renovated world. When you're the same brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your bands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the influence of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap. Dominick Birdsey's entire life has been compromised and constricted by anger and fear, by the paranoid schizophrenic twin brother he both deeply loves and resents, and by the past they shared with their adoptive father, Ray, a spit-and-polish ex-Navy man (the five-foot-six-inch sleeping giant who snoozed upstairs weekdays in the spare room and built submarines at night), and their long-suffering mother, Concettina, a timid woman with a harelip that made her shy and self-conscious: She holds a loose fist to her face to cover her defective mouth--her perpetual apology to the world for a birth defect over which she'd had no control. Born in the waning moments of 1949 and the opening minutes of 1950, the twins are physical mirror images who grow into separate yet connected entities: the seemingly strong and protective yet fearful Dominick, his mother's watchful "monkey"; and the seemingly weak and sweet yet noble Thomas, his mother's gentle "bunny." From childhood, Dominick fights for both separation and wholeness--and ultimately self-protection--in a house of fear dominated by Ray, a bully who abuses his power over these stepsons whose biological father is a mystery. I was still afraid of his anger but saw how he punished weakness--pounced on it. Out of self-preservation I hid my fear, Dominick confesses. As for Thomas, he just never knew how to play defense. He just didn't get it. But Dominick's talent for survival comes at an enormous cost, including the breakup of his marriage to the warm, beautiful Dessa, whom he still loves. And it will be put to the ultimate test when Thomas, a Bible-spouting zealot, commits an unthinkable act that threatens the tenuous balance of both his and Dominick's lives. To save himself, Dominick must confront not only the pain of his past but the dark secrets he has locked deep within himself, and the sins of his ancestors--a quest that will lead him beyond the confines of his blue-collar New England town to the volcanic foothills of Sicily 's Mount Etna, where his ambitious and vengefully proud grandfather and a namesake Domenico Tempesta, the sostegno del famiglia, was born. Each of the stories Ma told us about Papa reinforced the message that he was the boss, that he ruled the roost, that what he said went. Searching for answers, Dominick turns to the whispers of the dead, to the pages of his grandfather's handwritten memoir, The History of Domenico Onofrio Tempesta, a Great Man from Humble Beginnings. Rendered with touches of magic realism, Domenico's fablelike tale--in which monkeys enchant and religious statues weep--becomes the old man's confession--an unwitting legacy of contrition that reveals the truth's of Domenico's life, Dominick learns that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed, and now, picking through the humble shards of his deconstructed life, he will search for the courage and love to forgive, to expiate his and his ancestors' transgressions, and finally to rebuild himself beyond the haunted shadow of his twin. Set against the vivid panoply of twentieth-century America and filled with richly drawn, memorable characters, this deeply moving and thoroughly satisfying novel brings to light humanity's deepest needs and fears, our aloneness, our desire for love and acceptance, our struggle to survive at all costs. Joyous, mystical, and exquisitely written, I Know This Much Is True is an extraordinary reading experience that will leave no reader untouched.
Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her.
When Warren becomes roommates with cold and calculating Bridgette, tempers flare, but Warren is intent on turning her passionate antagonism into passionate love.
Kaito Sena's life hasn't exactly been easy. Unfortunately for him, death isn't about to get any better. Summoned by none other than Elisabeth Le Fanu, the "Torture Princess," Kaito has to choose what he wants for his second life-be her butler, or die a long, painful death by torture. What is he to do but become her servant...and help her eliminate the fourteen ranked demons wreaking havoc in the world! See the original light novel come to life in this gritty manga adaptation!
*record scratch* *freeze frame on Haru Koyama getting choked by a horny naked dude* Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation. Not by choice, I can tell you that! It started when my weirdo classmate, Chiba, tried to save me from a runaway truck and got us both killed instead. Idiot. Then we got transported to another world, which I guess is like an otaku dream come true, or something? Chiba ends up with cheat abilities, and what do I get? Nothing! Lucky me, I get to be a sex worker instead. Gotta earn money somehow  but since I have to do it, I'm gonna kick ass at it. This world treats women even worse than the one we came from, so things get...rough. Still, I've made friends with some of the girls, and if I can juggle Chiba's idiocy and Sumo the virgin's emotions on top of all the various kinks my customers throw at me, things will be all right...won't they?
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.
