![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() She slid her legs free from the bed and poked her feet into slippers.Īfter heading the stairs, Edna passed through a couple of rooms off the hall. Women her age suffered family nightmares, not of creatures that reached through the darkness. She yawned and stretched, heart-stopping fear sinking to foolishness. The dream ebbed away: the memory of the creeping terror slipping from her mind. On each, Alan’s precise handwriting had labelled the contents in thick black pen. In the corner stood cardboard boxes stacked three high in a pyramid. The gentle light of dawn slipped under the curtains, scattering the shadow of a chair across the wall at an odd angle. She sat upright, fragile chest pumping beneath her nightshirt.īeside her, the bed lay empty the sheets folded and straight. A study in making the everyday truly creepy, Daniel I Russell makes sure we won’t be hurrying back to the garden any time soon… SYĮdna snapped from the dream, her bony fingers gripping the bed sheets. But their dream turns nightmare when they can’t escape the insidious tree that covers the facade. Edna and Alan take on the challenge of a new home in their twilight years, buying a charming cottage in the country. ![]()
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![]() ![]() I recently saw a great Russian film, "Дурак" - Durak, meaning "The fool". As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.ĭazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness. ![]() He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell’s Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the wild and bizarre heart of twenty-first-century Russia. A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show ![]() ![]() ![]() He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He has often been called the founder of modern political science. Niccolò Machiavelli (May 3, 1469–June 21, 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, Humanist, and writer. The Prince describes strategies to be an effective statesman and infamously includes justifications for treachery and violence to retain power.His most famous text, The Prince, has been profoundly influential, from the time of his life up to the present day, both on politicians and philosophers. ![]() His writings were innovative because of his emphasis on practical and pragmatic strategies over philosophical ideals, exemplified by such phrases as “He who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation.”. ![]() ![]() ![]() Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels ![]() Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #2) (Mass Market):Ĭlub Dead (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #3) (Mass Market):ĭead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #4) (Mass Market):ĭead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #5) (Mass Market):ĭefinitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #6) (Mass Market):Īll Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #7) (Mass Market):įrom Dead to Worse (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #8) (Mass Market):ĭead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #9) (Mass Market):ĭead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #10) (Mass Market):ĭead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #11) (Mass Market):ĭeadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #12) (Mass Market):ĭead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #13) (Mass Market):Īfter Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood #14) (Hardcover): This is book number 1 in the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series. ![]() ![]() Journeying through Ingrid’s final days, Caitlin fights back through unspeakable loss to find renewed hope. In words and drawings, Ingrid documented a painful farewell in her journal. A life without the art, the laughter, the music, and the joy that she shared with her best friend. Ingrid’s suicide immobilizes Caitlin, leaving her unsure of her place in a new life she hardly recognizes. But by dawn Ingrid, and her promise, were gone. That night Ingrid told Caitlin, I’ll go wherever you go. A haunting and hopeful book about loss, love, and redemption.” – Gayle Forman, #1 bestselling author of If I Stay and I Have Lost My Way ![]() “Hold Still may be the truest depiction of the aching, gaping hole left in the wake of a suicide that I’ve ever read. A beautiful new edition of the stunning debut novel by Nina LaCour, award-winning author of We Are Okay ![]() ![]() ![]() This book has made me realize that Afghanistan also has been home & happiness for many and has given them good and bad memories like all of us with ours. I had many assumptions about this book before and when I started reading it. ![]() ![]() The Kite Runner makes you think for not just the characters but for yourself over your faults when you were a child and felt that you were too small or immature to be able to correct that mistake or even face it just like it helped me forgive and comfort my younger self. ![]() The characters became real to me, and it was difficult for me to put the book down and leave their world. Similarly, I became attached to Hassan and his family. I sympathized with him, cheered for him and felt angry with him at different points. It tells of Amir's childhood friendship with Hassan, his relationship with his father and growing up in a privileged place in society. The Kite Runner looks at how Amir deals with a secret in his past and how that secret shaped who he became. The story revolves around the main narrator “Amir”. The facts that my life is worlds different from theirs and that my perceptions of Afghanistan are those that are often stereotypical and stained by negative media. I’ve read a lot of books with a variety of genres and this is the first time a book of fiction based on true events has made me feel a sense of deep connection to the characters regardless of two facts. Hosseini’s The Kite Runner has moved me beyond words. This book has been recommended to me by many of my friends and now I understand why. ![]() ![]() Only as she neared retirement did she learn she was being paid significantly less than male colleagues with similar seniority and experience. After working for Goodyear for nineteen years, Ledbetter received an anonymous note revealing that she was making thousands less per year than the men in her position. In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter was hired by Goodyear, working as a supervisor. Lilly Ledbetter worked at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama, as the Assistant Director-Financial Aid from May 1974 to December 1975. She remained married until Charles's death in December 2008. After graduating from high school, Lilly McDaniel married Charles Ledbetter and had two children, Vicky and Phillip. McDaniel was a mechanic at the Anniston Army Depot. Ledbetter was born Lilly McDaniel in Jacksonville, Alabama and graduated from Jacksonville High School in 1956. In 2011, Ledbetter was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She has since become a women's equality activist, public speaker, and author. ![]() ![]() ![]() Congress passed a fair pay act in her name, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Lilly Ledbetter (born Lilly McDaniel April 14, 1938) was the plaintiff in the American employment discrimination case Ledbetter v. ![]() ![]() ![]() Packing his duffel for that first Memorial Day Weekend, he prayed for clarity. In 2013, John Glynn joined the share house. Against the moonlight the house’s octagonal roof resembled a bee’s nest. The house was a ramshackle split-level set on a hill, and each summer thirty-one people would sleep between its thin walls and shag carpets. ![]() They call Montauk the end of the world, a spit of land jutting into the Atlantic. Out East is his first book.Īn “extraordinary” debut memoir of first love, identity, and self-discovery among a group of friends who became family in a Montauk summer house (Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winner). He grew up in Longmeadow, Massachusetts and lives in New York City. John Glynn is an editor at Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. The Monsters for Templeton by Lauren Groff The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata These three titles-two recent favorites, and one enduring go-to-remind us that everyone is trying their best, that joy can exist amid hardship, and that community is never far away. In a moment physical separation, I’m turning to books that evoke the goodness of humanity. Another post in our ongoing series, #StayHomeStaySafeReads, author John Glynn, whose memoir Out East comes out in paperback on May 5th, has three recommended reads. ![]() ![]() ![]() This isn’t the ideal comparison, because 007 was invented later, but “The Big Four” plays like lightweight James Bond. (Her interest in larger-scale crime is tipped in “The Secret Adversary,” but it’s more effectively in the background there.) Poirot as James Bond? “The Big Four” is strangely structured, with bizarre choices of emphasis as Christie shoehorns her strength – Poirot solves mini-mysteries, all of which feature The Big Four’s hand – into something she’d like to be good at (international intrigue), but isn’t quite. ![]() ![]() I know it’s less successful than her single-site mysteries because I wasn’t drawn back to each sitting with the book for the whodunit, but rather for the oddity value. Agatha Christie tries something new in “The Big Four” (1927), pitting Poirot against a global illuminati. ![]() ![]() Since its debut in 1974, D&D has only grown in popularity. He adds, “You have to start there, with very intelligent people, but people who also feel like they’re not part of the fabric and maybe aren’t going anywhere.” Working collaboratively over multiple sessions, they explore a fantasy world designed by the game’s all-knowing narrator, the dungeon master, who masterminds the various puzzles and battles the adventurers must face.īen Riggs, author of Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, says the game initially proved popular among players like Gygax, who felt they hadn’t yet found a place for themselves in society. ![]() In the tabletop simulation, players craft their own characters and backstories, becoming anyone from a barbarian to a sorcerer. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the fantasy role-playing game he co-created with Dave Arneson, became a national phenomenon. Little did Gygax know that his luck would soon change. ![]() But money was tight, and his children had to put cardboard in the bottoms of their shoes instead of buying new pairs. ![]() ![]() Living with his family in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, he started working as a cobbler as a replacement gig. In the early 1970s, Gary Gygax lost his job at an insurance company in Chicago. ![]() |