Edward Hirsch’s sixth collection is a descent into the darkness of middle age, narrated with exacting tenderness. He explores the boundaries of human fallibility both in candid personal poems, such as the title piece—a plea for his father, a victim of Alzheimer’s wandering the hallway at night—and in his passionate encounters with classic poetic texts, as when Dante’s Inferno enters his bedroom: When you read Canto Five aloud last night in your naked, singsong, fractured Italian, my sweet compulsion, my carnal appetite, I suspected we shall never be forgiven for devouring each other body and soul . . . From the lighting of a Yahrzeit candle to the drawings by the children of Terezin, Hirsch longs for transcendence in art and in the troubled history of his faith. In “The Hades Sonnets,” the ravishing series that crowns the collection, the poet awakens full of grief in his wife’s arms, but here as throughout, there is a luminous forgiveness in his examination of our sorrows. Taken together, these poems offer a profound engagement with our need to capture what is passing (and past) in the incandescence of language.
Imagine this: you, living with your homicidal cousin, the "little kid", and your aunt, get chased out into a forest and knocked out just to wake up in a new world, with more than enough surprises. That's what happens to me, Xylina Ulrica, a not-so-average 17-year-old, whisked off to a new world, filled with surprises, creatures beyond my belief, and a secret to my life. You won't believe what I meet here, including a wolf who's smarter than she seems and a prince of an unknown land. I get dumped into a world at war filled with fights between dragons, vampires, and werewolves! I have to fight for my life and others and figure out who I really am. Cause, believe me, so far I'm lost. Come on! Join me and my newfound friends on the adventure of a lifetime, avoiding the darkness that is prepared to consume this world and learning what it truly means to be Darkness, Obliged. Visit my web site at www.darknessseries.com
Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s. During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the party he has devoted his life to. Under mounting pressure to confess to crimes he did not commit, Rubashov relives a career that embodies the ironies and betrayals of a revolutionary dictatorship that believes it is an instrument of liberation. A seminal work of twentieth-century literature, Darkness At Noon is a penetrating exploration of the moral danger inherent in a system that is willing to enforce its beliefs by any means necessary.
A Way from Darkness is the unflinching and confessional story of Taylor Hunt's journey from addiction to health - physical, emotional, and spiritual. His parents' divorce set the stage for a downward spiral of self-destruction. The pressure he felt to keep his family together coupled with a deep desire to "fit in" fueled his experimentation with drugs and alcohol. His descent from upper-middle class teen with a promising future to the depths of heroin addiction left him bankrupt in every imaginable sense of the word. Soon, he was fully immersed in the dark underbelly of society and on the brink of death. Finding his way out of the abyss after ten years was neither quick nor easy. A twelve-step program of recovery and the practice of yoga provided the guiding lights toward a new path. Taylor does much more than share his story in A Way from Darkness; he invites the reader to find healing through community, Ashtanga yoga, and ultimately, acceptance.
A brooding monster. A quirky professor. A small Indiana town with a soul of its own. Imagine if the writers of Northern Exposure sat down with Stephen King and decided to craft a dark fantasy thriller starring absent-minded academians, everyday goofballs, and a dark fantasy creature for good measure. Pondering big picture questions like "Why am I here?" and "Does Love Conquer All?" has never been so fun. That's THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS, the top-rated dark fantasy debut novel by the author of TROLL OR DERBY, Red Tash. Nothing is as it seems to be, and no one behaves in ways characters are "supposed" to act. How will it end? It's anyone's guess, in a book that keeps you turning pages, racing to find out what will happen next. Christine Grace finds her predictable scholarly life comforting, if a bit boring. Her live-in boyfriend presses her for marriage, but she's too philosophically inclined to take an interest. So, really, why does she suddenly start imagining things in the window's reflection? Is time truly starting and stopping all around her, or is she inexplicably cracking up? Greachin is an age-old being so tortured by his own karmic cycle that he no longer knows how to connect, except to identify potential threats through the cosmic ripples of space. When he zeroes in on Christine Grace, he experiences second thoughts for the first time in millenia. Will he go through with his grisly plan of murder and destruction? And what of these other characters--an aging physicist of ill-repute, a stubborn monk who takes his vow of silence too far, and a time-shifting star visible only from Bloomington? What a tangled web we weave, when monsters practice to deceive. Dive into This Brilliant Darkness, and follow the journeys of these characters, from Britain to the Heartland, from January's snowfall to Halloween's costumed festivities. THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS is a smart, karmic mystery populated by lovable brainy characters. Climb on, strap in, and hold tight. Readers are saying: "This is a fast-paced, exciting book that keeps you guessing until the very end. With an eclectic cast of characters, time travel and a karmic mystery, how can you go wrong?" ~Zombie Bedtime Stories author Thea Gregory "By midnight, I had not put the book down, and had no intention of putting it down. At 12:15am, my fourteen-year-old son stumbled out to get a drink of water. "You're still up?" he asked. "Go to bed." I looked up from my Nook, smiled, and said, "Not on your life, dude. Not until this ends." ~Librarian Amy Marshall "The way the author weaves fantasy, humor, science fiction, and mystery is, for lack of a better word, brilliant. I read the entire thing with admiration/envy, taking notes and thinking 'THIS is how you write a novel.' Remember when Scream blew the horror world away by actually using technology in a realistic way? Well here's blogging and online forums and long distance cyber friendships, honestly depicting the way we live in the 21st century." ~Poet Christina Grey AN OFFICIAL JAMES MASON COMMUNITY BOOK CLUB MUST READ "The atmosphere of this book, so hard to simply label horror or paranormal...how about simply...A GREAT READ, is the true star. Ms. Tash so finely weaves a path of intrigue, terror, humor and suspense, that the reader is taken with each character, so very finely drawn. THIS BRILLIANT DARKNESS is that rare book that one truly does not want to end!! When it does...next question is 'What else by Red Tash can I get my hands on? QUICK!!!'"~ Rick Friedman
Are there athiests in a foxhole? Read Through the Darkness Comes the Light and find out about one Marine Sniper with two tours in the Vietnam. Through the Darkness is an unlikely story of the conversion of an athiest, Marine Sniper and alcoholic. Ed wasnt interested in religion or good for that matter. Then a friend, a member of no church, bore his testimony and changed a snipers life years after the war. He tells in stunning detail his continuing conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Before you turn off to the 'Mormon' thing, read on and learn how in this difficult journey he found out more than one truth when a non-member Christian friend once said to him "Eddie, we can never let our differences get in the way of the fact we love each other". It is a story of tragedy and challenge, love and hate and the ultimate peace in the end. Ed tells how a conversion is a living thing and must continue to the end. A must read for todays problems.
In a land where Light and Shadow are bastions of power, the Draska are healers and magicians of the Light. Elainya and her beloved Drenil serve in the court of King Cydril. But Cydril covets Elainya for his own. When the king threatens Drenil’s life, a mysterious traveler helps the couple escape. But not all helpful travelers can be trusted. Eighty years later, Elainya awakens as if from a restless night’s sleep. She is greeted by Nian, servant of the traveler-demon known as the Shadow Lord. Nian informs her that her beloved is dead, the kingdom at war, and the Draska destroyed by a plague that only she could have prevented. Caught between the powers of Shadow and Light, Elainya must find a way beyond her grief to defeat the demon, redeem the kingdom, and restore a magical race doomed by her own desperation.
This autobiography by Doctor Lloyd Duncan, a semi-retired surgeon in Tennessee, covers the period of time from his birth in 1931 to the present. The book is replete with accounts of the depression era, the pre WW ll and WW ll years, and high school triumphs and disappointments. Immature, broke, emaciated and homesick at Yale University, he nevertheless earned his letters swimming on some of the school’s greatest teams. He graduated from Yale in 1953 and from medical school in 1956. He vividly describes many humorous, dramatic or tragic events that he subsequently witnessed or experienced as a physician, Naval Flight Surgeon, practicing surgeon, husband, father and grandfather.
