Publisher: BookRix
A couple begins an epic new journey after the apocalypse of Earth. A new life in a new world, filled with magic, love, and the supernatural. Paradise awaits!
Mother Goose in Prose is a collection of twenty-two children's stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. It was the first children's book written by author L. Frank Baum, published in 1897. The author himself gives a great introduction to the book: "Many of these nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves, telling their story tersely but completely; there are others which are but bare suggestions, leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story. Perhaps therein may lie part of their charm, but however, that may be I have thought the children might like the stories told at greater length, that they may dwell the longer upon their favorite heroes and heroines. For that reason, I have written this book."Show book
This innovative novel combines Spanish folktales with Native American legends to create a captivating Southwestern version of The Arabian Nights. Like Scheherezade, who ensured her survival by telling her royal husband stories, the title character in Rudolfo Anaya’s creative retelling of The Arabian Nights must entertain the recently widowed governor with legends of Nueva Mexicana, or she and her fellow captives will die. With fresh snow covering the high peaks of Sangre de Cristo, a group of native dissidents prepare for revolt. In seventeenth-century Santa Fe, insurrection against a colony of the king of Spain is punishable by death. A Spaniard loyal to the governor names twelve conspirators. One of them is a young woman. Raised in a mission church, fifteen-year-old Serafina speaks excellent Spanish and knows many of her country’s traditional folktales. She and the governor strike a bargain: Each evening, she will tell him a cuento. If he likes it, he will release one prisoner the following day. The twelve tales recounted here mirror the struggle of a divided country. They include the social and political symbolism behind “Beauty and the Beast” and retell “Cinderella” as “Miranda’s Gift.” Interspersed with these timeless cuentos is the story of Serafina herself, and that of a people battling to preserve a vanishing way of life under the long shadow of the Inquisition.Show book
A sweet short story about risking your heart to find love. It’s Valentine’s Day and Rachel Price has a choice: Stay home and watch TV with her loveable doggy or let her best friend, Ellen, set her up on a blind date. What to do…? Ellen says the guy is a “10,” but the last guy she set her up with was a “–5.” Rachel’s been flirting with coworker Noah Peterson and she’s hoping he’s noticed. Then, she finds out Noah has big plans. Even worse, he advises Rachel to go on the blind date! Should she play it safe and spend the Hallmark holiday with her loyal pooch, Chester, or risk another dating disaster by trying yet again for love?Show book
Amanda Eyre Ward stormed onto the literary scene with this resounding first novel that commanded immediate acclaim. In Sleep Toward Heaven, Karen sinks inside herself as she awaits execution for murder. Karen’s prison doctor, Franny, is drowning in her own guilt over the death of a patient, and Celia, the widow of one of Karen’s victims, tries desperately to move on with her life. “[Ward’s] spare but psychologically rich portraits are utterly convincing.”—Publishers WeeklyShow book
Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants?all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. In this critically acclaimed collection, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in wildly inventive stories that “evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millet's ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millet’s spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness yet curiously vulnerable, as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales.Show book
John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922) was a popular American author, editor and satirist. 'The Speck on the Lens' is the story of an occulist who is approached by an unusual character holding a strange tin box. He introduces himself as the inventor of a special telescopic device with very unusual properties...but it is accessible only to someone with a very unique type of eye. The oculist, he says, has this kind of eye. The doctor puts the device to his eye and is astounded by what he sees. But then he perceives a strange speck on the lens...and things take a weird turn....Show book
