The essential Laurie Lee, a collection of occasional writings full of his unique vision and irresistible charm All of the wit and wisdom and poetry that made Laurie Lee one of the most celebrated English writers of the twentieth century can be found in this compilation of “first loves and obsessions.” In Part One, Lee revisits his idyllic boyhood in the Cotswolds village made famous by his bestselling autobiography, Cider with Rosie. In Part Two, he turns his attention to an earnest consideration of abstract concepts such as the power of charm, the pleasures of appetite, and the meaning of paradise. And in the final and longest section, the author of the acclaimed Spanish travelogues As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Rose for Winter tells the stories of his many other journeys—from sun-dappled Tuscany to melancholy Warsaw to the enchanting and exotic Sugar Islands of the Caribbean.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
If you don't like variety, controversy and the unpredictable, then don't read this book. Anonymous is an unorthodox collection of short stories and poetry. Th e diversity of its topics include: travels across America, war crimes, romance, global warming, the holocaust, tales of the Old West, religious fanaticism, the Great Depression, euthanasia and white supremacy, to name but a few. A recurring theme is the examination of the human psyche, with all of its contradictions, complexities, evil and virtue. Some chapters are light-hearted, a few are disturbing. Some are written through the eyes of an innocent child, others from the perspective of a cynical adult. One chapter will make you laugh, the next will invoke soul-searching. But all will entertain, enlighten, and stimulate the imagination. How will you react to the moral conflicts presented within? Are you an optimist or a pessimist concerning human nature? Anonymous will serve as a litmus test.
They have a powerful family bond, three brothers (Greg, Kevin, Michael) and one sister (Laylah) who all moved from Jamaica to the United States with their parents in the early 1990s. Follow their intriguing tale of becoming financially successful and finding love… Gregory was always the “love em and leave em type” or maybe his heart just couldn’t get over his best friend Francine. A new location and needing a break from his job may just have him changing priorities. Francine has had her fair share of bad break ups and broken relationships and is not welcoming to one of those contributors from the past. After secrets are revealed will the friendship between Francine and Gregory be able to overcome its past and blossom into the future with a happy ever after? Will love conquer all when Francine’s life is in danger?
Bestselling authors Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz bring us a romantic retelling of Little Women starring Jo March and her best friend, the boy next door, Theodore "Laurie" Laurence. 1869, Concord, Massachusetts: After the publication of her first novel, Jo March is shocked to discover her book of scribbles has become a bestseller, and her publisher and fans demand a sequel. While pressured into coming up with a story, she goes to New York with her dear friend Laurie for a week of inspiration--museums, operas, and even a once-in-a-lifetime reading by Charles Dickens himself! But Laurie has romance on his mind, and despite her growing feelings, Jo's desire to remain independent leads her to turn down his heartfelt marriage proposal and sends the poor boy off to college heartbroken. When Laurie returns to Concord with a sophisticated new girlfriend, will Jo finally communicate her true heart's desire or lose the love of her life forever?
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “One of the most important books I’ve ever read—an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. But Factfulness does much more than that. It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” —Melinda Gates "Factfulness by Hans Rosling, an outstanding international public health expert, is a hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases." - Former U.S. President Barack Obama Factfulness: The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts. When asked simple questions about global trends—what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty; why the world’s population is increasing; how many girls finish school—we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. In Factfulness, Professor of International Health and global TED phenomenon Hans Rosling, together with his two long-time collaborators, Anna and Ola, offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. They reveal the ten instincts that distort our perspective—from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse). Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think. That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is an urgent and essential book that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to the crises and opportunities of the future. --- “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance...Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. It wasn’t enough. But I hope this book will be.” Hans Rosling, February 2017.
Boris Kastel was born in Zagreb, Croatia in 1914. A few months later the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated some 300 kilometers away in Sarajevo, an act which touched off "The Great War." That catastrophic event presages Boris' tumultuous life, during which he traveled to five continents and mastered at least ten languages. Throughout the violent war years following the Nazi invasion of his country, he never lost sight of his great dream-a quest for peace. That quest had to wait through the long years of World War II, when duty called him first to the mountains of Northern Italy with the Italian Underground, and then to Tito's Partisans and life in nascent Yugoslavia. That quest was realized in a most unexpectedly beautiful way. His story takes us from war-torn Zagreb to post-revolution China, to Ghandi's India, through the birth of kibbutzim in Palestine, summer and winter Olympics in 1936, the resistance movements in Italy and Yugoslavia, Nazi hunting in Argentina and Uruguay, and ultimately to New York, where he met Eva, and the peace for which he yearned.
Anja, her brothers Alfie and Toby, and Rob Hemmersley; a young policeman, disappear from a small English village one midsummer night. Why does the Land; a sentient, vast and almost unpopulated world want Anja? Why do its servants; the old Gods of our world, take such interest in this child? One beguiles her, one helps her, one hunts her. What of Rob Hemmersley? Alone, driven insane after entering the Land. Turned into a vicious creature obsessed with taking retribution on the children who he blames for his misfortune? The Land watches dispassionately. The children will either survive or not. If they do they will never be the same, especially Anja; manipulated, terrified, enhanced with power she cannot control. If she survives she could become its most powerful servant. To what end: A child considering her humanity.
