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  Land Of Big Numbers - Stories

  Te-Ping Chen

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  A Best Book of the Year: Barack Obama · NPR · The Washington Post · The Philadelphia Inquirer · Esquire · Kirkus Reviews · Chicago Public Library · Electric Literature  
  Malala Yousafzai’s Fearless Book Club Pick for Literati  
   
   ""Dazzling...Riveting."" —New York Times Book Review 
   
  “Gripping and illuminating . . . At the heart of Te-Ping Chen’s remarkable debut lies a question all too relevant in 21st Century America: What is freedom?” —Jennifer Egan 
   
   “Immensely rewarding, from the first sentence to the last . . . An exceptional collection.” —Charles Yu 
   
  A “stirring and brilliant” debut story collection, offering vivid portrayals of the men and women of modern China and its diaspora, “both love letter and sharp social criticism,” from a phenomenal new literary talent bringing great “insight from her years as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal” (Elle). 
   
   Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present. 
   Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave. 
   With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.

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  The Pyramid - And Four Other...

  Henning Mankell

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  The story of the Swedish detective’s beginnings, told in five gripping short mysteries: “An indispensable chapter to the saga” (Booklist Online).   Here are the stories that trace, chronologically, Kurt Wallander’s growth from a rookie cop into a young father and then a middle-aged divorcé, illuminating how he became a first-rate detective and highlighting new facets of the character who “remains one of the most impressive and credible creations of crime fiction today” (The Guardian).   “Wallander’s First Case” introduces us to the twenty-one-year-old patrolman on his first homicide case: his next-door neighbor, seemingly dead by his own hand. In “The Man with the Mask”, Wallander is a young father confronting an unexpected threat on Christmas Eve. On the brink of middle age, he is troubled by a distant wife as he unravels the poisoning of a lonely vacationer in “The Man on the Beach.” Newly separated in “The Death of the Photographer,” Wallander investigates the brutal murder—and the well-concealed secrets—of the local studio photographer. In the title story, he is a veteran detective uncovering unexpected connections between a downed mystery plane and the assassination of a pair of elderly sisters.   Written from the unique perspective of an author looking back on the life of his own character, these mysteries are vintage Henning Mankell and essential reading for fans of the fiction series or the BBC program Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. The Pyramid is a wonderful display of Mankell’s virtuosity powers as “the unrivalled master of Swedish crime fiction and one of the finest practitioners of the genre anywhere” (Toronto Star).

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  The Shadow of the Shark

  G.K. Chesterton

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  When the body of the eccentric painter Sir Owen Cram is found on a deserted beach next to his easel, a murder enquiry is launched. It is clear that the injury which has killed him could not have been self-inflicted. Nor is the murder weapon anywhere to be found. But most mysterious of all, there is only one set of footprints in the sand leading up to the body, and these are Sir Owen's own. Even the scientists and police investigators are struggling to conceive how the murder has been committed. But the imaginative young poet Gale looks at all the evidence in a new light...in particular the presence of a red starfish next to the body.

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  The Burrawick Trees

  Gill Oliver

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  A single mum - an incomer to an island community - is told by a well-meaning friend that her little boy isn't like the other little boys. Which sets her thinking...

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  The Jules Verne Steam Balloon -...

  Guy Davenport

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  Guy Davenport’s cerebral and innovative stories intricately assemble centuries’ worth of images and ideas  Guy Davenport’s stories seamlessly illuminate his vast knowledge of theology, philosophy, botany, and art, in his singular style of finding harmony in the juxtaposition of different themes. Whether critiquing the politics of socialist realist art in “We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory,” revisiting biblical tales in “Jonah,” or depicting an ancient Greek philosopher in “The Meadow,” Davenport demonstrates his talent for blending high-minded ideas with literary wit.   Davenport’s writing is at its most confident when the author weaves between time periods and ideas, such as when he revisits Descartes through the eyes of an ancient Greek skeptic in “Pyrrhon of Elis,” wherein a doubting philosopher declares, “I may not be, I think”; or in “The Bicycle Rider,” in which a doctoral student studying imagery of demons in the Gospels is visited by angelic spirits and attempts to save the life of a nihilistic prostitute. In these stories and the others collected in The Jules Verne Steam Balloon, Davenport’s signature approach to culture and humanity is on bold display.

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  The Headhunters

  L. Ron Hubbard

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  Tom Christian is on the trail of revenge and gold. Square-jawed and rugged, Tom's headed into the jungles of the Solomon Islands to find the ruthless criminal who killed his partner. But these jungles are thick with danger ... and temptation. There's a pile of gold... There's a beautiful blonde... And there's a bloodthirsty tribe of headhunters. Will Tom lose his head... or will he get the gold and the girl? The answer will come in an all-out war. The sounds you are about to hear will take you deep into a jungle of danger, fear and suspense as the audio version of The Headhunters gets into your head.

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