![]() When I first read Little, Big, many years ago, I didn't know anything about the author and, this being the land before the internet, didn't bother to find out. The closest achievement we have to the Alice stories of Lewis Carroll", and the vast novel does have an almost soporific, Wonderland quality to it – best read on lazy days in dappled sunshine. The esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom called Little, Big "a neglected masterpiece. The concept is rescued from tweeness by author Crowley's dazzling feats of aerobatics with the English language, which at first – especially in my tightly-typeset Methuen edition – take a bit of getting used to but, ultimately, draw you in and trap you with their beauty, not unlike the fabled world of faery itself. ![]() ![]() ![]() Like a One Hundred Years of Solitude set in New England, Little, Big spans several generations of the Drinkwater family and their relationship with the world of faerie. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() The writing is well done, and through it, Abdalla encourages the reader to piece things together – this is a style that works well for me but can lead to confusion if one doesn’t pay attention. Since the paths of these main characters do not overlap within A Touch of Light, this novel feels more like a series of separate stories that are set in the same literary world. ![]() It is her strange and violent powers, however, that remain a mystery… Desperate to redeem herself for past wrongs, can she help prevent the spread of a deadly disease before her guilt consumes her? This tale also features Nasha, an outsider whose motivations and loyalties are layered and nuanced. When Adrian loses yet another loved one, what will he sacrifice for the chance to preserve them in hopes that they can be revived in the future? Elsewhere, Lynn is hiding from a powerful organization after a series of unfortunate events. Adding to his troubles is a father who rarely shows affection and is tight-lipped about all he has planned. ![]() To start, Prince Adrian must find a way to cope with crippling grief following the loss of his brother in a society where it’s considered taboo to mention those who’ve passed on. A Touch of Light follows three individuals from vastly different walks of life. ![]() ![]() ![]() Nonoo, one of Meghan’s closest friends, and Anderson, the global membership director of Soho House, planned a group hang with a few friends at the club’s London location while Meghan was in town for Wimbledon and taking meetings. Who really introduced Meghan and Harry? Though the Sussexes haven’t told the story of how they met publicly, Finding Freedom makes the case that Misha Nonoo and Markus Anderson were responsible for planning their first date in July 2016. So while the book is an explicit attempt to tell the story from Meghan and Harry’s perspective, their attention to detail means that plenty of tabloid tall tales get a skeptical second look-and a few of them really do turn out to be true. “Our mission has been motivated by the desire to present the truth of misreported stories that have become gospel simply because of the amount of times they have been repeated,” they write. ![]() They state that they spoke to over 100 sources, including friends, current and former staff, charity representatives, and even a few times with the couple themselves at events and informal situations, and subjected all their information to strict fact-checking standards. In an author’s note at end of their new royal biography, Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand provide a bit of insight into how they reported their bombshell look behind the scenes of the years Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spent in the royal family. ![]() ![]() ![]() In this book, author Douglas Boyd has been given unrivalled access to the Legion to tell its story from its inception in the 1830s, when it was primarily used to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century, but it has also fought in almost all French wars including the Franco-Prussian War and both World Wars. Even today, the British are one of the largest foreign contingents in the world's longest standing mercenary army. For nearly two centuries adventure seekers or men on the run from all around the globe have found a home in the Foreign Legion and shed blood for France. ![]() The French Foreign Legion is an extraordinary and unique army, specifically created for foreign nationals wishing to serve in the French Armed Forces, but commanded by French officers. ![]() ![]() Today, automated systems-rather than humans-control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect. The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years-because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. ![]() ![]() WINNER: The 2019 Lillian Smith Book Award, 2018 McGannon Center Book Prize, and shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social JusticeĪstra Taylor, author of The People's Platform: "The single most important book about technology you will read this year."ĭorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body: "A must-read."Ī powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination?and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity ![]() ![]() We gain knowledge of the “root bin,” “head on a stick,” and other gruesome, sadistic “games” that Mick employs – and enjoys – both during the war and later, when he returns to Australia.įlipping back and forth between 1968 and the tourists and 1966-67 and Mick’s tour of Vietnam, the horrors just pile on and on. ![]() A sadistic sergeant, a fellow grunt with a grudge against Mick, and the ruthless nature of the war itself all lend themselves to putting the icing on the rotten cake that Mick is. but when two tires blow out at the same time, they do know they are in trouble.įlashback to August 1966, Vietnam, and the reader begins to learn more about how Mick became the monster we know him to be. Well, obviously the tourists have no idea of the horror that is waiting and watching for them almost from the moment they leave civilization behind and hit the backroads. Catch your own food, sleep under the stars, run into Mick Taylor. They are all looking forward to an eight-day, seven-night back-to-nature tour of the Outback. The Sand Surfer’s Overland Wilderness Tours, run by best mates Bruce and Duncan, has eight disparate folks aboard, ranging from Akira and his fiancée, Chiyo, from Japan, to Yanks Steve and his girlfriend, Cindy, to Aussies Sam and his son, Matt, and friends Amber and Jewel. ![]() ![]() In February 1968, a small group of tourists are traveling overland from Perth to Broome, via Western Australia’s brutal outback, in a VW bus (here referred to as a Kombi). ![]() ![]() ![]() War and Peace, also amazes me and easily belongs on the list of Great World Novels. "Love, marriage, family,-all lies, lies, lies."įirst, let me start this review by stating I think Anna Karenina might just be a perfect novel. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer. ![]() Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. ![]() Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. ![]() ![]() But as soon as she steps inside the lavish home, she’s overtaken by the pain of old wounds and the pull of past friendships, setting into motion a dangerous cascade of events that could, at any moment, cost Tina her life. It’s a job for the Goondas that finally brings Tina back to the Greyhill estate, giving her the chance for vengeance she’s been waiting for. With revenge always on her mind, Tina spends the next four years surviving on the streets alone, working as a master thief for the Goondas, Sangui City’s local gang. ![]() Greyhill's personal study, she knows exactly who’s behind it. So when her mother is found shot to death in Mr. But Tina soon learns that the Greyhill fortune was made from a life of corruption and crime. Her mother quickly found work as a maid for a prominent family, headed by Roland Greyhill, one of the city’s most respected business leaders. After fleeing the Congo as refugees, Tina and her mother arrived in Kenya looking for the chance to build a new life and home. ![]() In the shadows of Sangui City, there lives a girl who doesn't exist. ![]() ![]() ![]() It can be listened to as a standalone, or as additional content to the main story. The series is a prequel to the main series Behind Blue Eyes. This is the first book in a series of three novellas that tell the story of how Nephilim became the ultimate killing machine. Her 'MUC' novels have been nominated for the most prestigious awards for Fantasy and Science-Fiction in Germany. But unknown to anyone except Metatron, the High-Archangel, Nephilim is special, and like a puppetmaster in the shadows, he grooms her for something greater. Anna Mocikat was born in Warsaw, Poland, but spent most of her life in Germany where she attended film school, worked as a screenwriter and a game writer for several years. With her memory wiped, Nephilim finds herself in a brutal program that turns the traumatized kids into the deadliest weapon in human history. Nephilim was only a child when silent black-clad killers with neon-blue eyes invaded the village she grew up in, murdered her parents, and abducted her and the other children. But like all of her kind, she wasn’t born like that, she was made. Nephilim is ruthless, sexy, and the best of these elite cyborgs–an unstoppable killing machine. They are to protect the Olympias Conglomerate, the mega-corporation that owns them, and destroy its enemies–at any cost. Nephilim is a Guardian Angel, a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier created to protect and destroy. ![]() ![]() Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perk" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy. In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. Eight people are killed fifteen are wounded. ![]() Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. ![]() About the Book "In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands. ![]() |