Per of Esterpike is a standard knight-in-training; brave, hardworking, noble. Oh, and her sister Elena is the nation’s most beloved hero. No pressure. Then Per is the only living witness to Elena’s death at the hands of a barbarian horde set on wiping Esterpike off the map, and someone has to carry word to the rest of Unity. This is a job for a hero; a job for Elena. But Per is all they have. Together with Elena’s second-in-command Amelia, Per must impersonate her sister and travel to Unity’s capital to rally the people against the oncoming horde. But as Per moves forward on her quest, she comes upon a conspiracy that could undermine everything Per, and Elena, has ever fought for. Join newcomers C.R. Chua (Adventure Time Comics) and Paolo Chikiamco on Per’s grand adventure all about strength, swords, and sisterhood.
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end. Praise for The Sparrow “A startling, engrossing, and moral work of fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review “Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them.”—Entertainment Weekly “Powerful . . . The Sparrow tackles a difficult subject with grace and intelligence.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Provocative, challenging . . . recalls both Arthur C. Clarke and H. G. Wells, with a dash of Ray Bradbury for good measure.”—The Dallas Morning News “[Mary Doria] Russell shows herself to be a skillful storyteller who subtly and expertly builds suspense.”—USA Today
From the Nobel Prize-winning writer and acclaimed author of Snow Country comes a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age—about an elderly Tokyo businessman who must face the failures of his memory and the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate the end of a life. “A rich, complicated novel.... Of all modern Japanese fiction, Kawabata’s is the closest to poetry.” —The New York Times Book Review By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death. In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingo’s life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law, who inspires in him both pity and the stirrings of desire. Out of this translucent web of attachments, Kawabata has crafted a novel that is a powerful, serenely observed meditation on the relentless march of time. Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker
Love lives in the most dangerous places of the heart The real world. That's what Leda desperately seeks when she flees her life of privilege to travel to Kenya. She finds it at a boys'orphanage in the slums of Nairobi. What she doesn't expect is to fall for Ita, the charismatic and thoughtful man who gave up his dreams to offer children a haven in the midst of turmoil. Their love should be enough for one another-it embodies the soul-deep connection both have always craved. But it is threatened by Ita's troubled childhood friend, Chege, a gang leader with whom he shares a complex history. As political unrest reaches a boiling point and the slum erupts in violence, Leda is attacked…and forced to put her trust in Chege, the one person who otherwise inspires anything but. In the aftermath of Leda's rescue, disturbing secrets are exposed, and Leda, Ita and Chege are each left grappling with their own regret and confusion. Their worlds upturned, they must now face the reality that sometimes the most treacherous threat is not the world outside, but the demons within.
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.
With thousands of outlets worldwide and growing, audio drama is the new frontier in storytelling. From family dramas tales to epic space battles and period pieces to large-cast musicals, it is a medium without limits, because the audience creates the visual world in their mind. In Stories Told through Sound, audio-dramatist Barry M. Putt, Jr. lays out the essentials of the form in an engaging, easy-to-understand manner. He offers dozens of tactics and strategies: the top reasons audiences don’t connect with a character and how to avoid them, ways to create exciting plot twists, career pitfalls to watch out for, and how to draft a dynamic marketing plan that will keep your work in the forefront of any industry professional’s mind. It includes tips from a number of top-tier professionals to help give a deeper understanding of how to find success in a new and exciting creative industry. Dust off that story idea you’ve been wanting to develop and learn how to craft an engaging script that can become a fully realized production. In audio drama, everything is possible!
Madhubun’s Grammar for Learners is a series of eight books for students of Classes 1 to 8. It aims at helping learners grasp grammatical concepts with ease through its learner-friendly approach. It offers sufficient practice in grammar,comprehension and composition. The ebook version does not contain CD.
Grammar Magic is a series of eight books for students of Classes 1 to 8. It aims at helping learners grasp grammatical concepts with ease through its learner friendly approach. It offers sufficient practice in grammar, comprehension and composition. The ebook version does not contain CD.
