Crow Lake is that rare find, a first novel so quietly assured, so emotionally pitch perfect, you know from the opening page that this is the real thingâa literary experience in which to lose yourself, by an author of immense talent.
Here is a gorgeous, slow-burning story set in the rural âbadlandsâ of northern Ontario, where heartbreak and hardship are mirrored in the landscape. For the farming Pye family, life is a Greek tragedy where the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and terrible events occurâoffstage. Centerstage are the Morrisons, whose tragedy looks more immediate if less brutal, but is, in reality, insidious and divisive.
Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Mattâs protegee, her fascination for pond life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope but seems blind to the state of her own emotional life. And she thinks sheâs outgrown her siblingsâLuke, Matt, and Boâwho were once her entire world.
In this universal drama of family love and misunderstandings, of resentments harbored and driven underground, Lawson ratchets up the tension with heartbreaking humor and consummate control, continually overturning oneâs expectations right to the very end.
Tragic, funny, unforgettable, this deceptively simple masterpiece about the perils of hero worship is a quiet tour de force that will catapult Mary Lawson to the forefront of fiction writers today.
"When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once."
Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tired already, from that winter. So when something would come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere -- we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time -- all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea -- I mean, wicca? -- and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over.
Born to the shape-shifting dragon king of Ippa, twin brothers Karadur and Tenjiro share an ancestry, but not a bloodline. Only Karadur carries dragon blood, destined to one day become a dragon and rule the kingdom. In an act of jealous betrayal, Tenjiro steals the talisman that would allow Karadur to take his true dragon form and flees to a distant, icy realm.
Now, years later, Tenjiro has reappeared as the evil sorcerer Ankoku. His frozen stronghold threatens to destroy Dragon Keep, and Karadur must lead his shape-shifting warriors on a journey to defeat his brother and reclaim his destiny. With Dragon's Winter, World Fantasy Award-winning author Elizabeth A. Lynn returns with the kind of richly drawn characters and intricate worlds her fans, both old and new, will love.
Darkfall marks the beginning of a stunning trilogy from one of Australia's leading writers of fantasy. This powerful, compelling saga, Book One of The Legendsong, is set in a mysterious, uncertain world that only Carmody could create.
After the death of her parents and her beloved instructor, Wind, Glynn devotes herself to the care of her sick twin sister, feeling her own life to be unimportant. One night, during a midnight swim, she is swept across the Void to the troubled watery world of Keltor, through a portal created to summon the mythical Unraveller.
What is the mysterious connection between Glynn's world and Keltor? And why does the man who rescued her from the waves bear an eerie resemblance to Wind?
While it stands on its own as an absorbing, seductive, and powerful novel, the sequels to Darkfall will be eagerly awaited.
Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home.
Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found.
The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.
Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.
The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."
Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.
Countless tombstones stand in rows throughout a small community, forming a bizarre tableau. What fate awaits a brother and sister after a traffic accident in this town of the dead? In another tale, a girl falls silent, her tongue transformed into a slug. Can a friend save her? Then, when a young man moves to a new town, he finds the house next door has only a single window. What does his grotesque neighbor want, calling out to him every evening from that lone window?
Fresh nightmares brought to you by horror master Junji Ito.
Pauline, Petrova, and Posy are orphans determined to help out their family by attending the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. But when they vow to make a name for themselves, they have no idea it's going to be such hard work!
They launch themselves into the world of show business, complete with working papers, the glare of the spotlight, and practice, practice, practice!
Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. But practical Petrova finds she'd rather pilot a plane than perform a pirouette. Each girl must find the courage to follow her dream.
Sent by her family to work in a silk factory just prior to World War II, young Pei grows to womanhood, working fifteen-hour days and sending her pay to the family who abandoned her.
In "Women of the Silk", Gail Tsukiyama takes her readers back to rural China in 1926, where a group of women forge a sisterhood amidst the reeling machines that reverberate and clamor in a vast silk factory from dawn to dusk. Leading the first strike the village has ever seen, the young women use the strength of their ambition, dreams, and friendship to achieve the freedom they could never have hoped for on their own.
Tsukiyama's graceful prose weaves the details of "the silk work" and Chinese village life into a story of courage and strength.
In the 1960s, political tension forces the GarcĂa family away from Santo Domingo and towards the Bronx. The sisters all hit their strides in America, adapting and thriving despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice.
But Mami and Papi are more traditional, and they have far more difficulty adjusting to their new country. Making matters worse, the girlsâfrequently embarrassed by their parentsâfind ways to rebel against them.
The GarcĂa sistersâCarla, Sandra, Yolanda, and SofĂaâtell their stories about being at homeâand not at homeâin America. Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, they arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind.
What they have lostâand what they findâis revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premier novelists of our time.
On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that â the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark.
In searching for it themselves, the Drews put their very lives in peril. This is the first volume of Susan Cooper's brilliant and absorbing fantasy sequence known as The Dark Is Rising.
It was a dark and stormy night. Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventureâone that will threaten their lives and our universe. Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time.
Meg's father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father? A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O'Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg's father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe invites readers into the magical world of Narnia. This classic fantasy novel, part of The Chronicles of Narnia series, has enchanted readers for generations.
Four siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie, find themselves transported to Narnia through a wardrobe. Narnia is a realm of perpetual winter, held under the sway of the malevolent White Witch. With the help of the majestic lion Aslan, the children embark on a perilous journey to free Narnia from her icy grip.
The novel celebrates themes of courage, sacrifice, and the triumph of good over evil. It is a beloved stand-alone tale, but also serves as a gateway to the larger world of Narnia for those who wish to explore further.
In the highly anticipated continuation of the Land of Stories series, Conner learns that the only place to fight the Masked Man's literary army is inside his own short stories!
When the twins and their friends enter worlds crafted from Conner's imagination, they find allies no one else could have ever dreamed of. The race begins to put an end to the Masked Man's reign of terror. Can the twins finally restore peace in the fairy tale world?
Bidadari-Bidadari Surga bercerita tentang pengorbanan seorang kakak, Laisa, untuk adik-adiknya - Dalimunte, Ikanuri, Wibisana, dan Yashinta - di Lembah Lahambay agar adik-adiknya dapat melanjutkan pendidikan mereka. Meski ia harus bekerja di terik matahari setiap hari, mengolah gula aren setiap jam 4 pagi, serta di malam hari menganyam rotan, Laisa tetap berjuang.
Meski pada dasarnya keempat adik-adiknya tersebut berasal dari darah yang berbeda dengan dirinya, Laisa digambarkan sebagai kakak yang galak dan tegas, mengejar-ngejar adiknya yang bolos sekolah dengan rotan dan ranting kayu. Di sisi lain, kontradiktif dengan fisiknya yang gempal, gendut, berkulit hitam, wajah yang tidak proporsional, ditambah dengan rambut gimbal serta ukuran tubuhnya yang tidak normal, lebih pendek, Laisa sesungguhnya adalah tipe kakak yang mendukung adik-adiknya.
Laisa rela mengorbankan diri untuk keselamatan âdua anak nakalâ Ikanuri dan Wibisana dari siluman Gunung Kendeng, serta mati-matian mencari obat bagi kesembuhan adiknya Yashinta yang diserang demam panas hingga kejang pada suatu malam.