Author: Graeme Macqueen
Publisher: Tulika Books
ISBN: 9788181461452
Category : Historical fiction, Indic (English)
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Get Book Here
Book Description
Princess Mati awakens from a troubled sleep to find that her life has changed overnight � enemies have invaded the Land of Gold and abducted her parents, the King and Queen. Fourteen-year-old Mati and her twelve-year-old brother, Satya, are secretly spirited away by the loyal Jaya Prabhasa, the most accomplished warrior in the land. As they journey through a world they have never known in all their sheltered existence, and are put to the test by an eccentric flying sadhu, Mati and Satya acquire some extraordinary skills to survive mysterious forests and perilous swamps. But are these sufficient to help the three companions evade marauding armies and rescue their parents? This adventure fantasy set in ancient India, long before the region acquired the name, is written in the engaging style of a historical thriller. Its heroes must discover how to deal with injustice without descending to the level of their violent persecutors. Through contemplative poetic incantation and robust uncluttered prose, it also weaves into its fabric issues such as the status of women and care for the environment.
Author: Daniel Black
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429989939
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Get Book Here
Book Description
A novel of self-discovery, family bonds and the healing of one small southern town Twelve Gates to the City is the much-anticipated sequel to Black's acclaimed debut, They Tell Me of a Home. In this novel, Sister assumes the voice of the narrator, speaking from the spirit realm, telling her brother TL things he could have never known about their family. She constructs the story as a series of spiritual revelations, exposing to readers both who she was in the years of TL's absence and how every event in his life was an orchestration for his return. TL in the meantime is back in Swamp Creek, to stay this time, but he's still haunted by his sister's death. His decision to become the Schoolmaster is the only thing he's sure about, and his impact upon the students becomes palpable. But he still doesn't know what happened to Sister. As he searches for ultimate truth, he discovers the secrets and beauty of Swamp Creek. Twelve Gates to the City is a novel about spiritual revelation, and communal healing, ushered in by one who finally realizes that his gifts were bestowed upon him, not for his own glory, but for the transformation of his people.
Author: Neal Stephenson
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062190415
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.
Author: Graeme MacQueen
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 098607313X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164
Get Book Here
Book Description
The 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the United States killed five people and wounded dozens. They were widely blamed on extremist Muslims and their backers and used to support the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. They were also used to justify and hasten the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was being presented to Congress just as the first anthrax victim grew ill. In October 2001, one of the hypotheses that gained ground was that of the Double Perpetrator, the claim that al-Qaeda was carrying out the attacks with the support of Iraq. Much evidence was put forth to support this Double Perpetrator hypothesis but independent scientists soon discovered that the anthrax spores came from a domestic lab in the US serving the military and intelligence communities, not from al-Qaeda or Iraq. The FBI then quickly claimed that an individual was responsible for the attacks and began noisily looking for this “lone wolf.” In 2008 the Bureau named Dr. Bruce Ivins of the US Army Medical Institute of Infectious Disease as the “anthrax killer.” Although the FBI remains committed to the Ivins hypothesis, the case has been disintegrating for the last three years. Currently, it is justly held in contempt not merely by scientists who worked with Ivins but by many journalists as well as several US senators. But this raises the question: if Ivins did not commit this crime, who did? This book presents evidence to support the following points: (a) The anthrax attacks were carried out by a group of perpetrators, not by a “lone wolf.” The attacks were, therefore, the result of a conspiracy— by definition a plan by two or more people, made in secret and resulting in an immoral or illegal act. (b) The group that carried out this crime consisted, in whole or in part, of insiders deep within the US state apparatus. (c) These insiders were the same people who planned the 9/11 attacks (d) The anthrax attacks were meant to facilitate a seizure of power by the executive branch of government through intimidation of Congress and US civil society. They were also designed to achieve public acquiescence to and support for the redefinition of US foreign policy, replacing the Cold War with a new and aggressive global conflict framework, the Global War on Terror.
Author: Francis Weller
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583949763
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Get Book Here
Book Description
The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them. As seen on All There Is with Anderson Cooper Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it. The Wild Edge of Sorrow explains that grief has always been communal and illustrates how we need the healing touch of others, an atmosphere of compassion, and the comfort of ritual in order to fully metabolize our grief. Weller describes how we often hide our pain from the world, wrapping it in a secret mantle of shame. This causes sorrow to linger unexpressed in our bodies, weighing us down and pulling us into the territory of depression and death. We have come to fear grief and feel too alone to face an encounter with the powerful energies of sorrow. Those who work with people in grief, who have experienced the loss of a loved one, who mourn the ongoing destruction of our planet, or who suffer the accumulated traumas of a lifetime will appreciate the discussion of obstacles to successful grief work such as privatized pain, lack of communal rituals, a pervasive feeling of fear, and a culturally restrictive range of emotion. Weller highlights the intimate bond between grief and gratitude, sorrow and intimacy. In addition to showing us that the greatest gifts are often hidden in the things we avoid, he offers powerful tools and rituals and a list of resources to help us transform grief into a force that allows us to live and love more fully.
Author: Margaret Weis
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0307486362
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498
Get Book Here
Book Description
From his army of the undead, Xar, Lord of the Nexus, learns of the existence of the mysterious Seventh Gate. It is said that this gate grants whoever enters it the power to create worlds—or destroy them. Only Haplo knows its location—but he doesn't know he knows it. Now an ex-lover has been sent to betray Haplo and bring back his corpse. Meanwhile, the assassin Hugh the Hand is also after Haplo, wielding the Accursed Blade. With his old companion Alfred, Haplo must seek sanctuary in the Labyrinth—a deadly prison maze whose inhabitants are condemned to death. Millennia ago a battle raged between the Sartan and the Patryn, and the Sartan sundered the world into four realms—air, fire, stone, and water—and then vanished. But now the two races have rediscovered each other through the magic of the Death Gate—and war is about to erupt anew.
Author: Steven Pressfield
Publisher: Black Irish Entertainment LLC
ISBN: 1936891298
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Get Book Here
Book Description
"A brilliant look into the psyche of combat. Where he once took us into the Spartan line of battle at Thermopylae, Steven Pressfield now takes us into the sands of the Sinai, the alleys of Old Jerusalem, and into the hearts and souls of soldiers winning a spectacularly improbable victory against daunting odds.” —General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army, ret.; author of My Share of the Task June 5, 1967. The nineteen-year-old state of Israel is surrounded by enemies who want nothing less than her utter extinction. The Soviet-equipped Egyptian Army has massed a thousand tanks on the nation’s southern border. Syrian heavy guns are shelling her from the north. To the east, Jordan and Iraq are moving mechanized brigades and fighter squadrons into position to attack. Egypt’s President Nasser has declared that the Arab force’s objective is “the destruction of Israel.” The rest of the world turns a blind eye to the new nation’s desperate peril. June 10, 1967. The Arab armies have been routed, ground divisions wiped out, air forces totally destroyed. Israel’s citizen-soldiers have seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. The land under Israeli control has tripled. Her charismatic defense minister, Moshe Dayan, has entered the Lion’s Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem to stand with the paratroopers who have liberated Judaism’s holiest site—the Western Wall, part of the ruins of Solomon’s temple, which has not been in Jewish hands for nineteen hundred years. It is one of the most unlikely and astonishing military victories in history. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with veterans of the war—fighter and helicopter pilots, tank commanders and Recon soldiers, paratroopers, as well as women soldiers, wives, and others—bestselling author Steven Pressfield tells the story of the Six Day War as you’ve never experienced it before: in the voices of the young men and women who battled not only for their lives but for the survival of a Jewish state, and for the dreams of their ancestors. By turns inspiring, thrilling, and heartbreaking, The Lion’s Gate is both a true tale of military courage under fire and a journey into the heart of what it means to fight for one’s people.
Author: John Boyne
Publisher: Hogarth
ISBN: 0593230167
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 480
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the bestselling author of A Ladder to the Sky—“a darkly funny novel that races like a beating heart” (People)—comes a new novel that plays out across all of human history: a story as precise as it is unlimited. This story starts with a family. For now, it is a father and a mother with two sons, one with his father’s violence in his blood, one with his mother’s artistry. One leaves. One stays. They will be joined by others whose deeds will determine their fate. It is a beginning. Their stories will intertwine and evolve over the course of two thousand years. They will meet again and again at different times and in different places. From Palestine at the dawn of the first millennium and journeying across fifty countries to a life among the stars in the third, the world will change around them, but their destinies remain the same. It must play out as foretold. From the award-winning author of The Heart’s Invisible Furies comes A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom, an epic tale of humanity. The story of all of us, stretching across two millennia. Imaginative, unique, heartbreaking, this is John Boyne at his most creative and compelling.
Author: Jane Hirshfield
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060929480
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Gate Enables passage between what is inside and what is outside, and the connection poetry forges between inner and outer lives is the fundamental theme of these nine essays. Nine Gates begins with a close examination of the roots of poetic craft in "the mind of concentration" and concludes by exploring the writer's role in creating a sense of community that is open, inclusive and able to bind the individual and the whole in a way that allows each full self-expression. in between, Nine Gates illumines the nature of originality, translation, the various strategies by which meaning unfolds itself in language, poetry's roots in oral memory and the importance of the shadow to good art. A person who enters completely into the experience of a poem is initiated into a deeper intimacy with life. Delving into the nature of poetry, Jane Hirshfield also writes on the nature of the human mind, perception and experience. Nine Gates is about the underpinnings of poetic craft, but it is also about a way of being alive in the world -- alertly, musically, intelligently, passionately, permeably. In part a primer for the general reader, Nine Gates is also a manual for the working writer, with each "gate" exploring particular strategies of language and thought that allow a poem to convey meaning and emotion with clarity and force. Above all, Nine Gates is an insightful guide to the way the mind of poetry awakens our fundamental consciousness of what can be known when a person is most fully alive.
Author: Mark Vanhoenacker
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473572150
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Get Book Here
Book Description
A pilot's love letter to the world's greatest cities from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Skyfaring 'A journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energised, open to new experiences and ready to return more hopefully to our lives' ALAIN DE BOTTON Growing up in his small hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spun the illuminated globe in his bedroom and dreamt of elsewhere - of distant, real cities, and a perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. Now, as a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent more than two decades crossing the skies of our planet and touching down in the cities he'd always longed to see. Imagine a City celebrates the metropolises he has come to know and love through the lens of the hometown his heart has never left. From the sweeping roads of Los Angeles and the old gates of Jeddah to the intricate, dream-inspired plan of Brasília, he shows us with warmth and fresh eyes the extraordinary places that billions of us call home. 'Vanhoenacker... has a near-bottomless appetite for fresh sights and guidebook curiosities... Intimate and thoughtful' PICO IYER, AIR MAIL 'A love letter to the cities he's returned to again and again... Vanhoenacker captivates when describing the silent beauty of a world glimpsed from above' Washington Post 'Eloquent... A love song to cities the world over' Wall Street Journal
