Search:

Results 221 to 230 of 256 | « previous |

Endling : a novel / by Reva, Maria,author.;
"In the absurdist literary tradition of George Saunders comes the debut novel of a writer who is "bang-on brilliant" (Miriam Toews) and "bright, funny, satirical, relevant" (Margaret Atwood), chronicling the exploits of three Ukrainian women and one very endangered snail through the travails of foreign invasion, unlikely romance, capitalist exploitation, and nail-biting survival. Ukraine, 2022. Nastia and her sister, Solimaya, are entangled in the booming bridal industry, getting paid to entertain Western men who've come to Ukraine on "Romance Tours" to find their dream woman. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who's tried, and failed, to breed specimens from the region's dwindling snail population in her mobile lab. Nastia's obsession with finding her absent mother--a flamboyant protester who disappeared after years of public opposition to the romance tours--leads her to embark on the journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles along with three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a rare snail with one last shot at perpetuating his species. This journey, and these dreams, come to a screeching halt as Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances the comedic stakes set in motion by the plot while drawing on Reva's personal experiences as a Ukrainian expat, forced to witness the hostilities from afar while tracking her family's delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and real life combine on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What is it like to leave behind one's home and possessions? Conversely, what is it like to stay and continue with the mundanities of life and work under military occupation? For those of us witnessing from overseas: how does our sense of reality change? Can normalcy and security be restored, or have they always been an illusion? Endling is a tour de force from an author on the cutting edge of fiction, telling a story of love, loss, humour, and devastation that only she could tell."--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Satirical fiction.; Novels.; Mail order brides; Russian Invasion of Ukraine, 2022; Sisters; Women biologists;

Before the lights go out : a season inside a game worth saving / by Fitz-Gerald, Sean,author.;
" A love letter to a sport that's losing itself, from one of Canada's best sports writers. Canadian hockey is approaching a state of crisis. It's become more expensive, more exclusive, and effectively off-limits to huge swaths of the potential sports-loving population. Youth registration numbers are stagnant; efforts to appeal to new Canadians are often grim at best; the game, increasingly, does not resemble the country of which it's for so long been an integral part. These signs worried Sean Fitz-Gerald. As a lifelong hockey fan and father of a young mixed-race son falling headlong in love with the game, he wanted to get to the roots of these issues. His entry point: a season with the Peterborough Petes, a storied OHL team far from its former glory in a once-emblematic Canadian city that is finding itself on the wrong side of the country's changing demographics. Fitz-Gerald profiles the players, coaches and front office staff, a mix of world-class talents with NHL aspirations and Peterborough natives happy with more modest dreams. Through their experiences, their widely varied motivations and expectations, we get a rich, colourful understanding of who ends up playing hockey in Canada and why. Fitz-Gerald interweaves the action of the season with portraits of public figures who've shaped and been shaped by the game: authors who captured its spirit, politicians who exploited it, and broadcasters who try to embody and sell it. He finds his way into community meetings full of angry season ticket holders, as well as into sterile boardrooms full of the sport's institutional brain trust, unable to break away from the inertia of tradition and hopelessly at war with itself. Before the Lights Go Out is a moving, funny, yet unsettling picture of a sport at a crossroads. Fitz-Gerald's warm but rigorous journalistic approach reads, in the end, like a letter to a troubled friend: it's not too late to save hockey in this country, but who has the will to do it?"-- Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Peterborough Petes (Junior hockey team); Hockey teams; Hockey;

Mégantic : a deadly mix of oil, rail, and avarice / by Saint-Cerny, Anne-Marie,1954-author.; translation of:Saint-Cerny, Anne-Marie,1954-Mégantic.English.; Wilson, W. Donald,1938-translator.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Lac-Mégantic, Québec, Canada--July 6, 2013. During a hot summer night, a driverless, out-of-control train, firing explosive crude-oil bombs, descends the slope that leads to the scenic town below, pulverizing the downtown area, charring forty-seven trapped victims. The devastation leaves the people dazed ... but is quickly the object of an intentional and tortuous cover-up. Who are the tragedy's real culprits? How did the accident lead to the brutal death of forty-seven people, the suicides of several others, and the devastation of a whole community? Who took control of the crime scene? Who carried out the reconstruction, and for whose good? In this fascinating piece of investigative journalism, written like a thriller, Saint-Cerny reveals the inner workings of the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster. She reveals how the tragedy, far from being just the "error of a faulty system," was knowingly caused by powerful people and institutions distant from the town itself. Iconic in more ways than one, Lac-Mégantic is a perfect capitalist tale. Conceived in the offices of Wall Street hedge funders, of Dakota black-gold cowboy magnates, of oil conglomerates, and set up by a political class entirely devoted to the interests of the rail industry, the disaster hit a population which, while still in shock, found itself at the mercy of local predators--the perfect illustration of Naomi Klein's shock doctrine. Despite everything, the transport of crude oil and dangerous products today has increased so much that it constitutes the rail industry's main source of profit. But the Government of Canada stubbornly refuses to shed light on the 2013 tragedy and identify its causes. The fruit of five years of work and interviews with nearly a hundred people from various backgrounds, including victims and their relatives, Mégantic: A Tragedy in Waiting, tells the story of the disaster in three acts--before, during, and after--in an investigation whose ultimate goal is to prevent the preventable."--
Subjects: Disaster victims; Lac-Mégantic Derailment, Lac-Mégantic, Québec, 2013.; Railroad accidents;

Admiral / by Stockwin, Julian,author.;
1814: Ashore on leave, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd learns of a dismal harvest and general hardship among the population. In Germany, Napoleon Bonaparte is celebrating victories that once again make his name feared throughout Europe. An armistice is signed and while the Allies lick their wounds Bonaparte sets to preparing for a grand advance. And, in a fragile peace, and saddled with huge war debts, the government has no choice but to place HMS Thunderer, along with many other Royal Navy ships, in reserve, until the Navy can decide what to do with their great fleets. Meanwhile, Kydd is offered an admiral's flag but this is the West Africa station and the anti-slavery operations set in fever-ridden swamps. Despite the obvious dangers and hardships, Kydd sees this as the realisation of his life's ambition and readies for sea in his beloved Thunderer as his flagship. In a turn of the tide Bonaparte is defeated by the Allies and exiled to the tiny island of Elba. Then electrifying news breaks out -- the tyrant has escaped and is marching on Paris, the citizens flocking to join him. The British government as well is rocked by a realisation that Napoleon's invasion fleet is still in being and if the French navy declares for him they can sail from the ports now free of blockade and make the invasion of England a reality. The Channel Fleet has been stood down, its ships in various stages of repair, its commander on leave in the country. There's one man in active service who happens to be on the spot -- Admiral Sir Thomas Kydd. With frantic haste he's appointed temporary commander-in-chief to sail with all the men-o'-war that can be scraped together to stand athwart the French. Kydd knows this will probably mean the sacrifice of not only his ships but himself and his men. He calls on subterfuge and daring to flaunt defiance and resolution until the Battle of Waterloo settles the matter. Then, he has the satisfaction of seeing Napoleon Bonaparte carried off to St Helena, from whence he can never return.
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Novels.; Sea fiction.; War fiction.; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821; Admirals; Battleships; Kydd, Thomas (Fictitious character); Seafaring life;

Hell's half-acre : the untold story of the Benders, a serial killer family on the American frontier / by Jonusas, Susan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In 1873 the people of Labette County in Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried on a homestead seven miles south of the town of Cherryvale, in a bloodied cellar and under frost-covered soil, were countless bodies in varying states of decay. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for over two decades, and the land on which the crimes took place became known as 'Hells Half-Acre.' When it emerged that a family of four known as the Benders had been accused of the slayings, the case was catapulted to infamy. The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders--one among thousands who were relocating further west looking for land and opportunity after the Civil War--were capable of operating 'a human slaughter pen' appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree, and what became of them when they fled from the law is a mystery that has remains unsolved to this day--not that there aren't some convincing theories. Part gothic western, part literary whodunnit, and part immersive study of postbellum America, Hell's Half-Acre sheds new light on one of the most notorious cases in our nation's history while holding a torch to a society under the strain of rapid change and moral disarray. Susan Jonasus draws on extensive original archival material, and introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, including the despairing families of the victims as well as the fugitives that helped the murderers escape. Hell's Half-Acre is not simply a book about a mass murder. It is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and wearily building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact, and an entire family of criminals can slip right through a community's fingers, only to reappear at the most unexpected of times"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Bender family.; Frontier and pioneer life.; Serial murderers;

Mother daughter traitor spy : a novel / by MacNeal, Susan Elia,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 313-315)."From the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series comes a tantalizing standalone novel about a mother and daughter who stumble upon an underground Nazi cell in Los Angeles during the early days of World War II-and find the courage to go undercover. June 1940. France has fallen to the Nazis, Britain is next-but to many Americans, the war is still something happening "over there." Veronica Grace has just graduated from college; she and her mother, Violet, the widow of a Navy commander, are looking for a fresh start in Los Angeles, where the sun always shines and the opportunities feel riper. Having taken a misstep that cost her a prestigious career opportunity back in New York, Veronica is relieved to take a temporary typing job-only torealize that she's working for one of L.A.'s most vicious anti-Semitic propagandists. Overnight, Veronica is exposed to the dark underbelly of the place she now calls home, where German Nazis are recruiting new American members and building a bunker in the Pacific Palisades for Hitler's anticipated visit to the West Coast. After the FBI dismisses their concerns for "lack of evidence," Veronica and Violet decide to call on an old friend of Violet's late husband-who introduces them to Ari Lewis, L.A.'s anti-Nazi spymaster. At once, the two blonde-haired, blue-eyed German American women go undercover and infiltrate the heart of Nazism in Los Angeles. Risking their lives, Veronica and Violet aim to gather enough information about the California Reich to taketo the authorities. But as the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor ripples through the Nazi population in Southern California, and President Roosevelt declares war, the Grace women realize that the plots they're investigating are far more sinister than they feared-and even a single misstep could cost them everything. Inspired by real events, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a powerful portrait of family, duty, and deception that raises timeless questions about America-and what it means to have courage in theface of terror"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Spy fiction.; Novels.; Anti-Nazi movement; Mothers and daughters; Undercover operations; World War, 1939-1945;

Letters / by Sacks, Oliver,1933-2015,author.; Edgar, Kate(Editor),editor.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."The letters of one of the greatest observers of the human species, revealing his intimate thoughts on life and work, friendship and art, medicine and society, and the richness of his relationships with friends, family and scientists over the decades. A prolific correspondent, Dr. Oliver Sacks -- who describes himself variously in these pages as "a philosophical physician," "an astronomer of the inward," a "neuropathological Talmudist," and "a consummate observer" with "a pure love for phenomena" -- wrote letters throughout his life to his parents, his beloved Aunt Lennie, to friends and colleagues from London, Oxford, California, and around the world. The pages begin with his arrival in America as a young man, eager to establish himself away from the confines of postwar England, and carry us through his bumpy early career in medicine and the discovery of his writer's voice and métier; his weightlifting, motorcycle-riding years and his explosive seasons of discovery with the patients who populate his book Awakenings; his growing interest in matters of sight and the musical brain; his many friendships and exchanges with fellow writers, artists and scientists (to say nothing of astronauts, botanists, and mathematicians), and his deep gratitude for all these relationships at the end of his life. From Francis Crick and Jane Goodall to W. H. Auden and Susan Sontag, from lovers to patients, and ordinary folk who wrote to him with their odd symptoms and questions, all are treated equally to Sacks's lyrical, ferocious, penetrating and at times hilarious observations. His musings often contain the first detailed sketches of an essay forming in his mind. Sensitively introduced and edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks's longtime assistant (and one of his correspondents), the letters deliver a complete portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind. We see, through his eyes, the beginnings of modern neuroscience as it unlocks many secrets of how the human brain defines us. We experience the arc of a remarkable personal evolution, closely following the thought processes of one of the twentieth century's great intellectuals, whose life was long and productive and whose words, as evidenced in these pages, were unfailingly shaped with generosity and wonder toward other people"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal correspondence.; Personal narratives.; Sacks, Oliver, 1933-2015; Sacks, Oliver, 1933-2015; Neurologists;

The knowledge : how to rebuild our world from scratch / by Dartnell, Lewis.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible-a guide for rebooting the world? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest-or even the most basic-technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, accurately tell time, weave fibers into clothing, or even how to produce food for yourself? Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can't hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn't just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all-the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. This would allow survivors to learn technological advances not explicitly explored in The Knowledge as well as things we have yet to discover. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself"--Provided by publisher.
Subjects: Discoveries in science; Knowledge, Theory of; Survival; Technology;

Conscience of a conservative / by Flake, Jeff,1962-;
Includes bibliographical references.Preface: To stand alone -- The crisis we face -- On bad information and the threat to democracy -- Conscience of a conservative -- On free trade, not-so-free trade, populism, nationalism, and the collapse of what we believe in -- How did this happen? (Our Faustian bargain) -- Note to selves: Country before party -- Dear world: Bear with us -- Toward a new conservatism.LSC
Subjects: Trump, Donald, 1946-; Conservatism.;

Wicked Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West [electronic resource] : by Maguire, Gregory.aut; cloudLibrary;
The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination.  Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens. But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.  Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch. 
Subjects: Electronic books.; Romantic; Literary; Contemporary; Media Tie-In; Epic; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; Horror;
© 2009., HarperCollins,

Results 221 to 230 of 256 | « previous |