![]() ![]() Orchestrating the earthy narrative is the spirit of Old Cudjoe, who tells the story through the lives of his grown grandchildren, Cephus and Inez, their spouses, Doreen and Boysie, and children, Kwame and Kojo, as they react to the election of Anthony Roachford, one of the Hill's own, as prime minister. The community is a brilliant microcosm in which ancient wisdom is juxtaposed with modern naivete, lust with love and pettiness with honor. While political and religious avarice are as old as time, the people of the Hill come to life as original and vital creations, as do the spirits of their rambunctious deceased relatives. Originally from Barbados but now a Virginia resident, Kamau sets his tale on the Hill, a tight-knit community of farmers, craftsmen and dockworkers, focusing on the effects of the governmental shift on the common people. ![]() ![]() The epic power of the West Indies' storytelling tradition comes alive in this skillfully imagined first novel about an unnamed Caribbean island making the transition from colonial domination to self-rule. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Her novels and poetry often focus on feminist or social concerns, although her settings vary. "It taught me that there's a different world there, that there were all these horizons that were quite different from what I could see," she said in a 1984 interview.Īs of 2013, she is author of seventeen volumes of poems, among them The Moon is Always Female (1980, considered a feminist classic) and The Art of Blessing the Day (1999), as well as fifteen novels, one play ( The Last White Class, co-authored with her third and current husband Ira Wood), one collection of essays ( Parti-colored Blocks for a Quilt), one non-fiction book, and one memoir. Her first book of poems, Breaking Camp, was published in 1968.Īn indifferent student in her early years, Piercy developed a love of books when she came down with rheumatic fever in her mid-childhood and could do little but read. ![]() Winning a Hopwood Award for Poetry and Fiction (1957) enabled her to finish college and spend some time in France, and her formal schooling ended with an M.A. She was the first in her family to attend college, studying at the University of Michigan. Piercy was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a family deeply affected by the Great Depression. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. ![]() ![]() ![]() Vida has told any number of tales about her life, but only now, says Vida, is she prepared to tell the truth. Then one day she receives a letter requesting her services as a biographer from Vida Winter, an author of such magnitude that 22 biographers have already attempted (and failed) to write her life story. The most exciting thing in Margaret's life is a family secret she discovered as a child that has branded her like a scar. Margaret works in her father's bookshop, reading 19th-century novels and writing the occasional biography of obscure literary figures. ![]() So besotted is she by books that she makes sure she is sitting down whenever she reads, so as not to fall over and hurt herself while engrossed in a story. We book lovers have things in common, and Margaret Lea, the heroine of Diane Setterfield's heralded debut novel, is one of us. ![]() ![]() This book has a villainous hero, enemies to lovers, angst, and explicit/intense sexual situations. To remain true to the characters and the author’s origins, the vocabulary, grammar, and spelling of Cruel King is written in British English.Ĭruel King is a New Adult romance novel intended for adult readers only. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. ![]() ![]() It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. ![]() ![]() ![]() That crowd-sourced bonanza has made the printed guidebook an anachronism. ![]() It’s easier to find an abundance of online information on the best chicken rice in such-and-such covered food court in Singapore than it is to figure how to adequately save for retirement. I could watch those on a loop.Īside from sports news and general bile, no topic is better served by the internet than where to eat. It did have the salutary effect of sending me back to his shows. ![]() Reading what Bourdain once said aloud just made me miss Bourdain. Along with Martin Scorsese, he was the early 21st-century’s master of the voiceover monologue.īut untethered from the man, even his best lines land flat on the page. The result is something between a Frommer’s Guide and Schopenhauer’s Essays and Aphorisms.īourdain was a better writer than he was a TV host, which is saying something. Using scripts he wrote for his shows, she has compiled a compendium of Bourdain’s thoughts about the places he visited. His former assistant, Laurie Woolever, talked to him about the specifics of it for only an hour. World Travel was a vague idea when Bourdain died by suicide in 2018. ![]() ![]() ![]() Kids will love picking out the familiar objects used in the bike, and parents will sympathize with the “fed-up mum” coping with all that energy. On recycled cardboard with richly hued acrylics and visible brushstrokes, Rudd’s striking illustrations are a joyful celebration of play and children’s imaginations overriding poverty or circumstances. This is street-artist Rudd’s first picture book, and his bold, strong illustrations brilliantly extend the sense of motion, with wide rippling streaks of thick paint flowing across the pages. ![]() The shicketty-shakes and winketty-wonks amplify the fun of the language and make the book a joy to read aloud. Clarke’s exuberant poetic text combines simple sentences with evocative onomatopoeia. ![]() In an unnamed village on the edge of a “no-go desert,” a little girl with beautiful cornrows confides in readers about how she and her rowdy brothers spend their time sliding, jumping, and climbing under the “stretching-out sky.” But the best thing is their bike, a cobbled-together creation of found parts, like a dented car seat, tin-can handles, and a bark license plate that keeps falling off. Kids make their own fun wherever they are, and Clarke’s The Patchwork Bike is an ode to this universal truth of childhood. ![]() ![]() ![]() What would this look like in the slow motion way that biological creatures experience time? Creatures are devolving from more complex to less complex forms, the very laws of the universe may be reversing themselves, the expanding universe has reached its apex and is now contracting back into singularity. The animating idea of this novel is that in a time not too far from our own present day, evolution has begun to go backwards. But I also found much of the text slow, repetitive, and curiously unemotional, and it lost a star for those aspects. ![]() I wanted to give this book 5 stars, and for audacity and imagination, I do. Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich ![]() ![]() ![]() Our worst argument was about this, and it was the only time I was really afraid that I would lose you. You’ve also often asked me (I wouldn’t say begged, though it’s not far off the mark) to stop. You’ve often asked me why I climb mountains. The only snag in his perfect life with Nick is the latter’s obsession with mountain climbing, a hobby that Sam finds mystifying, if not outright terrifying.īut Nick is adamant about his mountaineering, explaining perhaps more clearly why in his journals than in his conversations with Sam: But he has hidden depths, including a flair for languages that has him working on his master’s degree now that he’s settled down with the man he loves, after spending his first years at university partying instead of studying. Sam Avery seems like your stereotypical bored rich American expatriate, living in Amsterdam with his partner, Nick Grevers. ![]() ![]() ![]() Ganke is a nice guy and he deserves someone who is sincere. In the meantime, can we just celebrate the fact that Ganke has a girlfriend?! I’m glad to find out that Danika was legit because at first, I thought she was really only interested in what information he might be able to share with her about Spider-Man. ![]() ![]() Like how his parents are mysteriously working with some guy named Cable who wants Miles to be a part of his spy organization. With his mother now in on the secret, things will definitely be different. The dynamics may be different, but they can still be a family. For secrets to not keep the Davis family apart. I was rooting for relationships to be mended in this volume. He and Miles will never see eye-to-eye on this, and although he’s been warned to mind his own business, Miles is going after the Sinister Six anyway, leading to great misfortune. One may have thought that he’d use this second chance to live a better life, maybe even reconnect with his family, but he is a burglar at heart, and stealing from a corrupt system is his own form of justice. Uncle Aaron walks among the living and he’s teaming up with a nefarious bunch for the heist of a lifetime to steal a S.H.I.E.L.D. ![]() ![]() At the center of the dispute is a desperate young woman whom Emory can't turn her back on, even if it means breaking the law. Unexpectedly, however, the two have a dangerous encounter with people who adhere to a code of justice all their own. She's determined to escape him, and willing to take any risks necessary to survive. ![]() While police suspect Jeff of "instant divorce," Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won't even tell her his name. ![]() Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness and paralyze the search for her. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. ![]() From number one New York Times best-selling author Sandra Brown comes a heart-pounding story of survival, that takes the age-old question, "Does the end justify the means?" and turns it on its head.ĭr. ![]() |