"A time long ago, when the Moon and Sun were friends and shared the same sky, a strange man wandered down an even stranger path." In this folkloric tale, a man known only as the Stranger finds his way to another world and embarks on a journey to take back what he has lost. Watched with growing interest by ancient celestial beings, he faces a different challenge at every turn and each one more tempting than the last. Can he resist the temptations, or will the Four Winds sway his heart with bribes cloaked as gifts? This is a world of shadow and light, where the winds follow no particular direction and where even time has a will of its own. Deeply rooted in dark, traditional storytelling and enriched with stunning olde worlde illustrations by Adam Oehlers, A Stranger's Tale introduces familiar characters in an unfamiliar world. Rich in imagery and a nostalgic charm, Natasa Xerri brings a fresh new voice to age-old themes, as she weaves a story that has readers of all ages spellbound from beginning to end.
Spun around the real events of December 1642, when Dutchman Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand and Maori people first saw Europeans, STRANGER LOVE is a tale seen through the eyes of Tasmans sixteen-year old cousin, Jakob, and the similarly-aged daughter of a Maori chieftain, Te Ao-mihia. Jakobs desire to leave his dull clerks job and become a sailor is brutally fulfilled, when, during an attempt to lose his virginity in a brothel, he is press-ganged onto a ship. His journey to the East Indies almost kills him, but once there he manages to join Tasmans expedition to the Great Southland. Te Ao-mihia also longs to break free from the rules and regulations of her role as a village princess by finding a boy to explore the secrets of love with. In the end, Tasmans expedition never sets foot on land and his arrival in Maori waters leads to misunderstandings and bloodshed. How, despite this tragic conflict, the Dutch boy and Maori girl meet and find love, albeit of a strange kind, only to see that love become a death sentence, carries this tale of STRANGER LOVE to its bittersweet climax and poignant resolution. Richard Woolley has the rare gift of keeping you anxious to know what happens next. David Robinson, The Times
The planets Earth and Vulcan experience a mysterious first contact in this fascinating Star Trek novel featuring the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Years before the formal first contact between Earth and another planet’s inhabitants, a Vulcan space vessel crash landed in the South Pacific, forcing humanity to decide whether to offer the hand of friendship, or the fist of war. Complicating matters is a second visitation: a group of people from two hundred years in the future, who serve on a starship called Enterprise. Discover the astonishing truth about this heretofore unknown first contact and the nightmares that plague Admiral James T. Kirk. Dreams of his dead comrades, of his earliest days aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise, and of a forgotten past in which he somehow changed the course of history and destroyed the Federation before it began.
Back in grade five, Bridge, Tabitha and Emily made a pact. Never to fight, ever. Now, two years later, they’re still best friends, but other things are changing. Bridge meets Sherm, and is soon excited and confused by her new, strange feelings. And when Emily starts texting pictures of herself to Patrick, Bridge and Tab find themselves complicit in a naïve plan that quickly spirals out of control. And while the three friends navigate the challenges of their changing friendship, another story—of betrayal and remorse—keeps you guessing until the very end. Goodbye Stranger is a tender and intricate story about friendships, and love, and the pain of sometimes making the wrong choices. Rebecca Stead is the author of four novels: First Light, When You Reach Me (a New York Times bestseller and Newbery Medal winner), Liar & Spy (Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize winner and New York Times bestseller) and, most recently, Goodbye Stranger. She lives in New York City with her family. ‘This memorable story about female friendships, silly bets, different kinds of love, and bad decisions is authentic in detail and emotion—another Stead hallmark.’ STARRED Review, Publishers Weekly ‘[Stead] captures the stomach-churning moments of a misstep or an unplanned betrayal and reworks these events with grace, humour, and polish into possibilities for kindness and redemption. Superb.’ STARRED Review, Kirkus ‘Stead shows how strongly love of all kinds can smooth the juddering path toward adulthood. Winsome, bighearted, and altogether rewarding.’ STARRED Review, Booklist ‘[Stead’s writing is] filled with humor, delightful coincidences, and the sorts of things...that escalate in ways that can seem life-shattering to a 13-year-old. The author keeps all her balls in the air until she catches them safely with ineffable grace.’ STARRED Review, School Library Journal ‘Rebecca Stead’s story is multi-layered and sumptuous, beautifully plotted and a real page-turner.’ Alpha Reader ‘An unforgettable book about young girls coming of age written with wit and compassion.’ ReadPlus ‘Goodbye Stranger was such a pleasure to read...[Stead’s] teenage characters are so real, and charming and likeable, even when they’re not making the best decisions...I will continue to sing the praises of this new book well into the rest of the year (and probably much longer).’ Middle Chapter ‘[Stead has] a profound appreciation for the young people she writes for...She creates the kind of situations that would shatter a vulnerable thirteen-year-old girl but somehow manages to do so with a deft, light touch full of empathy and humour.’ Readings ‘Goodbye Stranger is the kind of book you might call a revelation. It is surprising, generous, thoughtful, honest and it paints a picture of the time after childhood and before youth more honestly than I have ever seen depicted.’ Where the Writer Comes to Write ‘The language is often dazzling and the minor characters have great appeal. A very satisfying read.’ Stuff NZ ‘The emotional complexity is deftly done by Stead in a way that is satisfying and accessible for young adults and adults alike, without being patronising, and acknowledging that we all make mistakes along the way.’ New Zealand Book Council ‘Goodbye Stranger falls in the zone of upper middle fiction/young YA, and is a great book to discuss with a tween as it gently preempts teen issues...Stead opens up a discussion of phone use and photos that never veers into shaming or hysteria.’ Leanne Hall, Readings
Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.
Five centuries after the Calamitous Times have left the Ancient (twenty-first century) World in shambles, new civilizations have arisen from the ashes, most of them intent on re-creating the glories of what they call the Golden Age. Anagaia is the chief of them and tries to submit the rest of the continent to its own control. Tiny Esperia is among a few societies resisting not only Anagaian domination, but its vision of an unsustainable way of life. In this context, a young man, Yaro Seekings, arrives in Esperia as a refugee. Though raised by Esperian missionaries in an Anagaian orphanage, he knows little about his new home. Learning that the differences between the two societies arise from their disparate mythic visions, he is eager to understand that Vision so he can truly integrate himself into Esperian society and perhaps even play some part in redeeming his homeland.
From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M
**NOW A MAJOR FILM - ALL OF US ARE STRANGERS - STARRING PAUL MESCAL, CLAIRE FOY, ANDREW SCOTT AND JAMIE BELL** 'Deeply satisfying. . . a wonderful study of grief and isolation.' Daily Mail 'A sharp, chilling contemporary ghost story.' The Scotsman 'Powerful.' Guardian 'Sexy, insightful and frequently funny.' Irish Examiner Middle-aged, jaded and divorced, TV scriptwriter Harada returns one night to the dilapidated downtown district of Tokyo where he grew up. There, at the theatre, he meets a likable man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. And so begins Harada's ordeal, as he's thrust into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they had died so many years before.
The Strangers, a breathtaking companion to Vermette's bestselling debut The Break, is a fierce exploration of of bonds that refuse to be broken even in the most traumatic of circumstances. Cedar, Phoenix, and Elsie—these are the strangers, each haunted in her own way. Cedar grapples with the pain of being separated from her mother, Elsie, and her sister, Phoenix. From a youth detention center, Phoenix gives birth to a baby she'll never get to raise. And Elsie, struggling with addiction and determined to turn her life around, is buoyed by the idea of being reunited with her daughters and striving to be someone they can depend on, unlike her own distant mother. Between flickering moments of warmth and support, the women diverge and reconnect, fighting to survive in a fractured system that pretends to offer success but expects them to fail. Facing the distinct blade of racism from those they trusted most, they urge one another to move through the darkness, all the while wondering if they'll ever emerge safely on the other side.
Based on a true story, a stray dog befriends an orphan boy in a refugee camp on a Greek island. The fishermen on Lesvos call her Kanella because of her cinnamon color. She’s a scrawny, nervous stray — easily intimidated by the harbor cats and the other dogs that compete for handouts on the pier. One spring day a dinghy filled with weary, desperate strangers comes to shore. Other boats follow, laden with refugees who are homeless and hungry. Kanella knows what that is like, and she follows them as they are taken to a makeshift refugee camp. There she comes to trust a bearded man, an aid worker, and gradually settles into a contented routine. Kanella grows healthy and confident. She has a job now — to keep watch over the people in her camp. One day, a little boy arrives and does not leave like the others. He seems to have no family and, like Kanella, he is taken in by the workers. He sleeps on a cot in the food hut, and Kanella keeps him warm and calm. When two new adults come to the camp. Kanella is ready to defend the boy from them, until she is pulled away by the bearded man. They are the boy’s parents, and now he must go with them. Eventually, the camp is dismantled, and Kanella finds herself homeless again. Until one night, huddled in the cold, she awakens to see two bright lights shining in her eyes — the headlights of a car. The bearded man has come back for her, and soon Kanella is on a journey, too, to a new home of her own. Key Text Features maps illustrations author's note Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.6 Describe how a narrator's or speaker's point of view influences how events are described.
