![]() ![]() Set in an unnamed city by the sea, it is the story of four disenfranchised strangers-a widow, a young student, and two tailors-who are forced by their impoverished circumstances to share a cramped apartment. Instead, it is a beautiful and compassionate portrait of the resiliency of the human spirit when faced with death, despair, and unconscionable suffering. Though it takes place in a time of political upheaval and chaos, A Fine Balance is not a political diatribe. Times Prize in Fiction, Commonwealth Writers Best Book of the Year, and Giller Prize.Īt 600 pages, Mistry's stunning second novel looks intimidating, yet this moving tale of four people caught up in India's 1975 state of emergency-when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution in order to hold on to power following a scandal-is an incredibly detailed, compelling read that sweeps you along from the opening pages and is over far too soon. ![]()
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![]() ![]() “HEAD INCORRECT SIZE,” he writes on the form. The clerk says her photos aren’t up to code because her hair is too close to her face and her face is too small. A young woman, Elisabeth, goes to the post office to renew her passport. Throughout the ordeal, I kept thinking of an early scene from the novel Autumn, by the prolific Scottish writer Ali Smith. I never could find a source for that statistic. Only later did I learn my neighbors’ doctor claimed 30 percent of tests were false negatives. The problem was I could barely breathe at all - I felt worse than ever. My neighbors - the presumed source of my cough - couldn’t get tested. I felt lucky for the clarity it would bring. ![]() That one got it right, and the hotline nurse scheduled a test for the following morning. It went to the office’s normal scheduler, who transferred me to the actual hotline, but he did it wrong, so I ended up with a different scheduler. IN EARLY MAY, I got a cough my doctor’s online portal directed me to a COVID-19 hotline. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Big who, moribund, wants the source found before he dies. The snapshot, which he uses to illustrate a newsletter, shows a field of sheep with one unique crossbreed, and the picture is special enough to have attracted the attention of both the nomadic friend who sent it to him and a right-wing Mr. The narrator is a modern Japanese yuppie: divorced, in a mildly exciting relationship and a much less exciting job as an ad copywriter, he lives unexceptionally until a photograph throws his life into chaos. Immensely popular in Japan, the author's first novel to be published here is a comic combination of disparate styles: a mock-hardboiled mystery, a metaphysical speculation and an ironic first-person account of an impossible quest. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Touched by shame…Īs you may have read from some of my previous blog posts, we are all touched by shame. When it comes to ‘self-help’ books, Dr Downs has managed to create something special in ‘The Velvet Rage’ a book that can truly impact and change the lives of countless gay men while also being an engaging and touching body of work. ![]() I often found myself going back over certain passages due to the beautifully poetic feel of the writing, allowing both the meaning to resonate with me as well as the feelings and thoughts that came up as a result. There is something about The Velvet Rage that feels almost as though Alan Downs is sitting down to an intimate chat with you, exploring the seemingly common themes amongst gay men’s lives that are influenced and often impacted from the effects of toxic shame and inauthenticity. Book Review: The Velvet Rage Dr Alan Downs, PhD ![]() ![]() ![]() Book Review: The End of Marking Time by C.J.Book Review: A King of Infinite Space by Tyler Dilts.Book Review: The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton.The Active Creative Child by Stephanie Vlahov: Tea.Danny is a likeable guy and I'd love to see him in action again in other detective fiction.Ībout the author: Tyler Dilts teaches in the MFA program at California State University, Long Beach. The novel fits the category of hardboiled crime fiction for those who enjoy the genre. ![]() A bit too violent for my tastes, especially as the victim is a school teacher in her classroom at night, a vulnerable victim that makes the crime even more horrific. ![]() ( adapted from amazon).Ĭomments: A page turner for sure, but like detective Danny Beckett, my stomach turned at the details of the murder. A King of Infinite Space Jul-2010 Book - 1 Long Beach, California, homicide detective Danny Beckett is pouring the weekend’s first shot of vodka when the call comes in: Elizabeth Williams, a teacher at nearby Warren High School, has been brutally murdered in her classroom. A riveting crime novel introduces Danny Beckett to the ranks of fiction’s favorite hardened detectives. Book Description: Long Beach, California, homicide detective Danny Beckett investigates when Elizabeth Williams, a high school teacher, is brutally killed in her classroom. What could this young woman have done to make her the target of such a violent attack? And what is the significance of the victim’s left hand, taken by the killer as a grisly trophy? Beckett's hunt for the murderer soon morphs into a personal quest for atonement as he struggles to come to terms with the loss of his wife and family. ![]() ![]() If you’re looking to purchase the new paperback versions, then you’re in luck as we have all the info about when the new release dates are. Currently, Berkley has purchased the 4 books in the Lovelight series with book 4 coming out sometime in 2024. It’s just so awesome to see an indie author getting so much love and her series being picked up by a major publisher. As soon as I saw this news, I wanted to scream because I was so happy for B. Now, they’re being re-released after being picked up by Berkley. These romances were massive successful when published independently by her. Set in the fictional town of Inglewild, Maryland, her small-town romances are a delight. ![]() If there’s one author and series dominating the romance world, it’s B.K. ![]() ![]() ![]() Book Marks, the review aggregator of Literary Hub, assigned the book an average grade of B+. Nutshell received generally positive reviews from book critics. He jotted down a few notes, and soon afterward, daydreaming in a long meeting, the first sentence of the novel popped into his head: 'So here I am, upside down in a woman.'" Critical reception 'We were talking about the baby, and I was very much aware of the baby as a presence in the room,' he recalls. Miller explained: "The idea for the extremely unusual narrator of Ian McEwan's new novel Nutshell first came to him while he was chatting with his pregnant daughter-in-law. ![]() Interviewing McEwan for The Wall Street Journal, Michael W. It retells William Shakespeare's play Hamlet from the point of view of an unborn child, and is set in 2015. ![]() Nutshell is the 14th novel by English author and screenwriter Ian McEwan published in 2016. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Just when she’s about to be reunited with Percy-after six months of being apart, thanks to Hera-it looks like Camp Jupiter is preparing for war. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all-including Leo-related to a god. What’s troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper’s gone missing. ![]() Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Now her boyfriend doesn’t recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. Her father has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he’s in terrible danger. Apparently she’s his girlfriend Piper, his best friend is a kid named Leo, and they’re all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for “bad kids.” What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea-except that everything seems very wrong. He doesn’t remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The children hear that their father has sought refuge in Prague, Austria, along with Anna's older brother Max. Elsbeth, who is not Jewish, says the whole thing is silly and wants it to go away. Anna has never thought about Judaism in-depth, but she tells Elsbeth that she’s technically Jewish because of her mother. They discuss his pledge to ban Jews from Germany. The girls see fliers for his campaign around town. It is a few months before March 1933, and Adolf Hitler is running for Chancellor of Germany. The novel opens with the nine-year-old protagonist, Anna, walking around Berlin with her good friend Elsbeth. Its themes include survival, politics' incursion on domestic life, and the challenges of growing up. It won Germany’s top prize for children’s fiction in 1974. This coming of age novel was published in 1971. The family traveled around Europe for several years before settling in London, where Kerr completed middle and high school. Her father was the prominent cultural critic Alfred Kerr. ![]() Kerr is of German-Jewish heritage, and her family left Germany once Hitler rose to power in 1933. Kerr wrote and illustrated the book to explain her own history to her children. The children’s novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, by Judith Kerr, is the first in a trilogy based on the author’s experience during WWII. ![]() ![]() Realizing that the government plans to use him as a guinea pig, Redman flees the laboratory and soon meets Glen Bateman, formerly a New Hampshire sociology professor. Stu Redman, a laconic Texan, is taken to a disease laboratory in Maine, where the few remaining government scientists hope to discover what has given him immunity. A few people inexplicably survive to pick up the pieces. The world as all have known it is destroyed. ![]() In The Stand, nearly all of the world’s population is killed in only three weeks after a superflu virus escapes from a U.S. King is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to the American Letters and the 2014 National Medal of Arts. Best known for writing the horror novel ‘It’ which revolves around a mysterious maleficent being that terrorizes children, King is undoubtedly one of the most loved horror writers whose writings never fail to incite fear, terror and fright in the minds of the readers. One of the most popular writers of contemporary horror, suspense and science fiction, American author Stephen King has published over 50 novels and penned hundreds of short stories. ![]() |