During the brutal Spanish colonization of the New World, the voice of the Aztec officer known as Xolotl, oft called Prodigal Monster, throws new light on the last days of the conquest of Mexico. He is about to open an enigmatic little can-of-worms. While ostensibly implying that a bit of treacheryperhaps mutinytook place in the palace before the retreat of June 30, Xolotl disputes Hernando Cortss claims that the Emperor was hit in the head with a stone while trying to calm a rebellious crowd in the streets below. And for once, Corts, the silver-tongued confidence man from Estremadura, is shocked to silence. The officers present believe there must be a compelling reason for the cover-up, but they have more immediate concerns that claim their attention that last desperate evening. The men must find a way to cross the Watertown causeway and the rain-drenched fields to the Anhuac border. But for the Conquistador, whose life has begun to come apart at the seams, the consequences of his decisions have reached critical proportions, and only time will tell if he will conquer the powerful Aztec empire and better yet, live to tell his story.
Kidnapped as a teenage girl, Ma has been locked inside a purpose built room in her captor's garden for seven years. Her five year old son, Jack, has no concept of the world outside and happily exists inside Room with the help of Ma's games and his vivid imagination where objects like Rug, Lamp and TV are his only friends. But for Ma the time has come to escape and face their biggest challenge to date: the world outside Room.
This book offers a very clever and provocative look at the origins of the English language and how it controls the thoughts of the masses; It takes the reader deep into the mystery surrounding the origins of the English Language, the most ingenious and diabolical mind control tool ever devised by man. The material in this book lays out clearly how language shapes human thoughts (via the media), and how large bodies of human thought energy shapes events. How could anything be more powerful, dictatorial, and persuasive than this? This book has the answers, painstakingly brought forth by its author over many years of hard research.
The sequel to The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals: “It was a pleasant delight to be invited back into this world” (The Bookbag). Set in 1926, two years after the end of The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals, Wendy Jones’s The World Is a Wedding finds Wilfred Price married to Flora Myffanwy and trying to be the perfect husband. His efforts only intensify when he learns that Flora is expecting. But something doesn’t feel right to Flora: she doesn’t feel at home. Meanwhile, Grace (to whom Wilfred was very briefly married before he met Flora) has fled Narberth for London, trying to escape what has happened to her and the secret she carries because of it. But secrets are not so easily escaped—and Grace’s will affect Wilfred and Flora, too. A sophisticated comedy of manners, The World Is a Wedding captures life in a small town in Wales and explores the complexities of marriage, motherhood, and masculinity and femininity with equal wit and insight. “Sometimes it’s just really nice to find a book that is well-written, straightforward and tells a relatively simple story . . . There are touches of Dylan Thomas in the villagers’ characters, with their whispered gossip and nightly drunkenness, but they’re not a bad lot. Naturally, there’s some tragedy and some joy, and good things that come out of bad situations. Thoroughly enjoyable.” —The Irish Times “The book is humorous throughout, often hilariously funny.” —Star Tribune
Mezz Mezzrow was a boy from Chicago who learned to play the sax in reform school and pursued a life in music and a life of crime. He moved from Chicago to New Orleans to New York, working in brothels and bars, bootlegging, dealing drugs, getting hooked, doing time, producing records, and playing with the greats, among them Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Fats Waller. Really the Blues, the jive-talking memoir that Mezzrow wrote at the insistence of, and with the help of, the novelist Bernard Wolfe, is the story of an unusual and unusually American life, and a portrait of a man who moved freely across racial boundaries when few could or did, “the odyssey of an individualist . . . the saga of a guy who wanted to make friends in a jungle where everyone was too busy making money.”
A comprehensive collection of writings by the revolutionary writer, feminist, and literary dissident Ding Ling (1904-85), one of the most colorful and important Chinese women writers of the twentieth century.
Award-winning novelby Kirsty Eagar, author of Saltwater Vampires and Night Beach. Raw Blue was awardedthe 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction prize. Readersof Tim Winton's Breathwill be drawn to Raw Blue, an achingly beautiful young adult novel set in Sydney's northern beaches.Winner of the 2010 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, it is a haunting storyabout finding your passion in life. Carly has dropped out of uni to spend her days surfing and her nights working as a cook in a Manly cafe. Surfing is the one thing she loves doing ... and the only thing that helps her stop thinking about what happened two years ago. Then she meets Ryan and Carly has to decide.Will shelet the past bury her? Orcan shelet go of her anger and shame, and find the courage to be happy? Check out Kirsty Eagar'swebsite at www.kirstyeagar.com,and read herblogto find out about her thoughts on books, writing, music, surfing, and finding inspiration, or visit betweenthelines.com.au -the destination for Young Adult books. Praise for Raw Blue: 'Kirsty Eagar's fearless Raw Blue, a story of regeneration set on Sydney's northern beaches, is much more than just a promising debut: this one delivers.' Australian Book Review Best Books of 2009: Critics' Choices 'Kirsty Eagar's first novel explores dark territory with skill and sensitivity.' The Age 'An emotionally rich and powerful first novel.' Canberra Times 'If you only read one book this year ... it should be Kirsty Eagar's Raw Blue one of those kept-me-up-all-night novels that stays in your bones and sings in your ears long after you've finished it. It wouldn't be out of place next to Tim Winton's Breath, except this is the ocean as healer, not as an object to be conquered, or the site of self-destruction, of risk. The images crackle, the lines are full of the poetry of observation, the story is searing, gutting, beautiful. This should be compulsory reading for all teenagers especially boys.' julialawrinson.livejournal.com 'This is a psychologically intense novel that involves even non-surfing readers in the release Carly feels when conquering the waves we empathise with her in the long battle between desire and fear on the path to self-acceptance.' Magpies 'I read this book feverishly, desperate for a happy ending, and afterwards found it difficult to get Carly and the men who ride into her life out of my mind.' Newcastle Herald '[a] very moving book It's dark subject matter, but Eagar makes it uplifting.' Sunday Territorian 'A memorable first book by a writer who gives an honest approach to what young adults face growing up and growing wiser.' Woman's Day Read of the Week
Actor and longtime educational advocate LeVar Burton has had more than 30 years' experience speaking directly to children about grown-up situations, and The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm is a story that helps ease the fears and worries of a young childMica Mouse lost her house in a terrible storm, and now she trembles when the weather turns rough. She's not so different from other children who've experienced something very disturbing in their life or heard about tragic or frightening events in the news. Mica's father tells her the story of a brave blue rhinoceros who learns how to get through rough times with friendship, helpers, love, and by "feeling your feelings." LeVar Burton has poured a lifetime of experience storytelling to children into The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, and the result is more than a book—it's a manual for finding the light in the midst of dark times.
Miles Davis and Juliette Greco, Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan and William Burroughs. What do all these people have in common? Fame, of course, and undeniable talent. But most of all, they were cool. Birth of the Cool is a stunningly illustrated, brilliantly written cultural history of the American avant-garde in the 1940s and 1950s -- the decades in which cool was born. From intimate interviews with cool icons like poet Allen Ginsberg, bop saxophonist Jackie McLean, and Living Theatre cofounder Judith Malina, award-winning journalist and poet Lewis MacAdams extracts the essence of cool. Taking us inside the most influential and experimental art movements of the twentieth century -- from the Harlem jazz joints where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker invented bebop to the back room at Max's Kansas City when Andy Warhol was holding court to backstage at the Newport Folk Festival the night Bob Dylan went electric, from Surrealism to the Black Mountain School to Zen -- MacAdams traces the evolution of cool from the very fringes of society to the mainstream. Born of World War II, raised on atomic-age paranoia, cast out of the culture by the realities of racism and the insanity of the Cold War, cool is now, perversely, as conventional as you can get. Allen Ginsberg suited up for Gap ads. Volvo appropriated a phrase from Jack Kerouac's On the Road for its TV commercials. How one became the other is a terrific story, and it is presented here in a gorgeous package, rich with the coolest photographs of the black-and-white era from Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, and many others. Drawing a direct line between Lester Young wearing his pork-pie hat and his crepe-sole shoes staring out his hotel window at Birdland to the author's three-year-old daughter saying "cool" while watching a Scooby-Doo cartoon at the cusp of a new millennium, Birth of the Cool is a cool book about a hot subject...maybe even the coolest book ever.
