Other books that might interest you

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  The Islands - Stories

  Dionne Irving

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  The Islands follows the lives of Jamaican women—immigrants or the descendants of immigrants—who have relocated all over the world to escape the ghosts of colonialism on what they call the Island. Set in the United States, Jamaica, and Europe, these international stories examine the lives of an uncertain and unsettled cast of characters. In one story, a woman and her husband impulsively leave San Francisco and move to Florida with wild dreams of American reinvention only to unearth the cracks in their marriage. In another, the only Jamaican mother—who is also a touring comedienne—at a prep school feels pressure to volunteer in the school's International Day. Meanwhile, in a third story, a travel writer finally connects with the mother who once abandoned her.Set in locations and times ranging from 1950s London to 1960s Panama to modern-day New Jersey, Dionne Irving reveals the intricacies of immigration and assimilation in this debut, establishing a new and unforgettable voice in Caribbean-American literature. Restless, displaced, and disconnected, these characters try to ground themselves—to grow where they find themselves planted—in a world in which the tension between what's said and unsaid can bend the soul.

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  Baker Street Irregulars -...

  Jonathan Maberry, Michael A....

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  Sherlock Holmes is reimagined in this anthology of 13 new stories by contemporary authors including Gail Z. Martin and Jonathan Maberry.   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal character Sherlock Holmes has been captivating mystery lovers since his first appearance on Baker Street in 1887. Now contemporary authors take the brilliant detective far beyond his usual stomping grounds in thirteen wildly imaginative stories.   In Ryk Spoor’s thrilling "The Adventures of a Reluctant Detective,” Sherlock is a re-creation in a holodeck. In Hildy Silverman’s mesmerizing "A Scandal in the Bloodline,” Sherlock is a vampire. Heidi McLaughlin sends Sherlock back to college, while Beth Patterson, in the charming "Code Cracker,” turns him into a parrot.   The settings range from near-future Russia to a reality show, a dystopian world, and an orchestra. Without losing the very qualities that make Sherlock so beloved, these authors spin their own singular riff on one of fiction’s truly singular characters.

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  Stick Out Your Tongue

  Ma Jian

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  Tibet is a land lost in the glare of politics and romanticism, and Ma Jian set out to discover its truths. Stick Out Your Tongue is a revelation: a startlingly vivid portrait of Tibet, both enchanting and horrifying, beautiful and violent, seductive and perverse.In this profound work of fiction, a Chinese writer whose marriage has fallen apart travels to Tibet. As he wanders through the countryside, he witnesses the sky burial of a Tibetan woman who died during childbirth, shares a tent with a nomad who is walking to a sacred mountain to seek forgiveness for sleeping with his daughter, meets a silversmith who has hung the wind-dried corpse of his lover on the wall of his cave, and hears the story of a young female incarnate lama who died during a Buddhist initiation rite. In the thin air of the high plateau, the divide between dream and reality becomes confused.When this book was published in Chinese in 1997, the government accused Ma Jian of "harming the fraternal solidarity of the national minorities," and a blanket ban was placed on his future work. With its publication in English, including a new afterword by the author that sets the book in its personal and political context, readers get a rare glimpse of Tibet through Chinese eyes—and a window on the imagination of one of China's foremost writers.

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  Mark Twain: The Short Stories

  Mark Twain

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  Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835 and is far better known by his pen name; Mark Twain.  An American author and humorist of the first order he is perhaps most famous for his novels, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, written in 1876, and its sequel, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, written in 1885 and often described with that mythic line - "the Great American Novel."  
   
  Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the backdrop for these great novels. Apprenticed to a printer he also worked as a typesetter but eventually became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Later, heading west with his brother, Orion to make his fortune he failed at gold mining and instead turned to journalism and found his true calling as a writer of humorous stories.  It on these shorter stories that this volume dwells. 
   
  His wit and humour sparkle from every page, his craft evident with every phase and punctured target.   Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and predicted that he would "go out with it" as well. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return in 1910. These stories are read for you by Stuart Milligan.

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  Gazing at the Moon - 1500 years...

  Lucian of Samosata, Francis...

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  Collected here are six tales that span nearly two thousand years, from a Roman citizen writing a satire of the ‘historical’ literature of his time in 182 AD to Edgar Allan Poe exploring the idea of a scientific ascent to the moon in 1835. Humanity changed vastly across that time, and yet the moon never lost its allure, its promise of mystery and magic. By the late nineteenth century, it was clear that the moon’s surface was barren, and a wave of moon-based stories inaugurated the expansion into space of fiction. 
  Before we breached the atmosphere and sent men to our planet’s satellite, humanity spent countless millennia gazing up at the moon and wondering what might be there, telling stories by firelight of the mystery and magic of our constant and changing night-time companion.

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  The Great Adventure

  Geo Mihalache

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  From the series "Stories for Vlad": 
  The Great Adventure - the tomcats go to the forest and return hungry and scared at home after a series of adventures;

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