![]() ![]() Desperate to save face in front of her friends, Stevie asks Iris to play along as her girlfriend. To get her mind off everything, Iris tries out for the lead role in a local play, a queer retelling of Much Ado About Nothing, but comes face-to-face with Stefania, whose real name turns out to be Stevie. Perfectly happy to ignore her problems as per usual, Iris goes to a bar in Portland and meets a sexy stranger, Stefania, and a night of dancing and making out turns into the worst one-night stand Iris has had in her life. ![]() There’s only one problem-Iris is a romance author facing an imminent deadline for her second book, and she’s completely out of ideas. Everyone wants to see her settled down, but she holds firmly to her no dating rule. ![]() She’ll stick to her commitment-free hookups, thanks very much, except no one in her life will just let her be. Iris doesn’t want any of that-dating, love, romance. Her best friends are all coupled up, her siblings have partners that are perfect for them, and her parents are still blissfully married. ![]() A fake relationship after a horrible one-night stand is anything but an act in this witty and heartfelt new romantic comedy by Ashley Herring Blake.Įveryone around Iris Kelly is in love. ![]()
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![]() But when they find Slappys diary and clues that could lead to gold, theyll have to find Slappys second diary while evading the evil dummy and other terrors. A night of horror ensues until the siblings put Slappy back into his case. Book Synopsis Reading someones diary is bad but Slappy is already evil, so how could anyone resist finding out all of this dummys terrifying secrets? What do Zoey and Billy Traister do when they find an abandoned ventriloquist dummy in an empty lot? They take him home, of course! As the pair tries to figure out why someone would throw out a perfectly good dummy, they accidentally bring Slappy to life. ![]() But when they find Slappys diary and clues that could lead to gold, theyll have to find Slappys second diary while evading the evil dummy and other terrors.-Provided by publisher. ![]() About the Book What do Maggie and Billy McGee do when they find an abandoned ventriloquist dummy in an empty lot? They take him home, of course! As the pair tries to figure out why someone would throw out a perfectly good dummy, they accidentally bring Slappy to life. ![]() ![]() I have the 1989 edition paperback which has to my mind the most eye catching of all the covers. Is thus the second in the Culture series and I first read it in the year it was released. The full list counts ten titles: Consider Phlebas, 1987 The Player of Games,1988 Use of Weapons, 1990 The State of the Art, 1991 Excession, 1996 Inversions, 1998 Look to Windward,2000 Matter,2008 Surface Detail, 2010 The Hydrogen Sonata, 2012. And though he never set put to write a Trilogy or a series, the universe he created was so popular he returned to it again and again. This is a Culture book, for those of you who may not be familiar with Iain M Banks, a Science Fiction author, he created a great civilisation called The Culture. It is true I have read and re-read Lord of the Rings, but the book I have read every year, and sometimes if feels like it is permanently on my bedside table is this one. ![]() Famously Christopher Lee liked to reread Lord of the Rings. ![]() The book most frequently quoted as being the one which is reread every year is the Lord of the Rings. Readers of SF&F nearly always have one book they reread every year. My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Science Fiction book I read every year. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Then it became a different head, with a flowing beard, covered with dirt belonging seemingly to a dead man who was coming back to life (13). A picture of a face in the newspaper reminds her of her dream the previous night since the face in her dream was the same face as in the newspaper, yet she can’t recall when she may have seen it (14), possibly in a previous newspaper? The face, or the head rather, was twisted off the man’s body. It seems Mark is preoccupied with his work at the college. She is somewhat of an intellectual and has been working on a doctorate thesis on Donne. ![]() There is much housework to do which she doesn’t find all that intellectually stimulating. She is recently married to Mark and struggling to adjust to married life. Jane Studdock is introduced in sentence one (page 11 – I always love it when a book starts on page 11 I start out feeling like I’m so far ahead) and will be the primary protagonist. ![]() ![]() ![]() The interview makes for a fascinating look at what has and has not changed in the years since Steinbeck made his journey. Earlier this year, The Mercury News chatted with high school English teacher Bryan Starchman, who traveled to all 50 states on a journey inspired by Steinbeck’s. Travels With Charley hasn’t just led people to savor the writing within the book, however - it’s also prompted some people to literally follow in Steinbeck’s footsteps. And while questions have persisted about the accuracy of some of the encounters described in the book, it remains one of Steinbeck’s most enduring works. His goal was to gain a better understanding of a changing nation the result was the book Travels With Charley: In Search of America, published in 1962. At the age of 58, John Steinbeck set off across the United States with his dog Charley in tow. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Which means appreciating them just the way they are. And so I practice turning people into trees. And you are constantly saying, “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you look at the tree and you allow it. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. Part of it is observing oneself more impersonally… When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. ![]() Answering a question about how we can judge ourselves less harshly, he writes: Ram DassĪ century after Whitman, Ram Dass (April 6, 1931–December 22, 2019) drew on the human-tree analogy in a soulful invitation to treat ourselves - and each other - with the same nonjudgmental spaciousness with which we regard trees. Remembering his most beloved friend, he wrote that she was “true, honest beautiful as a tree is tall, leafy, rich, full, free - is a tree.” I too consider the people I most love my human trees - people firmly rooted in a foundation of moral beauty, relentlessly reaching for the light, bent into their particular beloved shape by the demands and traumas of their particular lives. Walt Whitman cherished them as paragons of authenticity amid a world of mere appearances. Hermann Hesse believed that trees are our greatest spiritual teachers. ![]() ![]() ![]() Half a world away, James Reece is recovering from brain surgery in the Montana wilderness, slowly putting his life back together with the help of investigative journalist Katie Buranek and his longtime friend and SEAL teammate Raife Hastings. ![]() In this third high-octane thriller in the “seriously good” (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Terminal List series, former Navy SEAL James Reece must infiltrate the Russian mafia and turn the hunters into the hunted.ĭeep in the wilds of Siberia, a woman is on the run, pursued by a man harboring secrets-a man intent on killing her.Ī traitorous CIA officer has found refuge with the Russian mafia with designs on ensuring a certain former Navy SEAL sniper is put in the ground. “A rare gut-punch writer, full of grit and insight, who we will be happily reading for years to come.” -Gregg Hurwitz, New York Times bestselling author of the Orphan X series? ![]() Get ready!”-Chris Pratt, star of the #1 Amazon Prime series The Terminal List “Take my word for it, James Reece is one rowdy motherf***er. ![]() ![]() This conceit offers a cornucopia of genre set-pieces. In the face of this disintegration, humanity relies on time-traveling Chronmen like James Griffin-Mars to raid the past for technology, fuel and food, providing stopgap salvage until someone, somehow, can figure out how to rebuild the world permanently. ![]() Humanity is out of energy, food and resources everything is slowly crumbling into “an enroaching plague of shit”. It is a run-down, dingy, far-future civilization reminiscent of many of Philip K Dick’s schlubby dystopias. In part, this is a function of the fact that Time Salvagers’ world is, even by its own lights, a mess. The world of Time Salvager is not vividly imagined or distinctive instead it’s slapped together from old, banged-up genre tropes and narratives. The ship passes quickly out of the story, but the clichés stand their ground. ![]() The spaceship captain of the High Marker stands on his bridge and receives status reports in standard sci-fi gobbledygook: “Shield arms down!” “Mobility thrusters offline!” “Aft hull breached!” “Get me one damn shield arm and I can deflect the blast!” Captain Kirk and Han Solo wander around somewhere off to the side, half-visible ghosts of sci-fi space opera past. ![]() Wesley Chu’s Time Salvager opens on a familiar scene. ![]() ![]() ![]() However, she’s always been intrigued by Christian, the enigmatic and seemingly untouchable consigliere to the Romano family. As the daughter of a powerful mob boss, she grew up surrounded by the dark and violent world of mafia. Gianna Castellano, known as Gigi, is a strong, independent woman who is determined to make her own way in life. He watches Gianna from a distance, never daring to act on his feelings. ![]() ![]() Plagued by his dark past and tormented by desires he deems unattainable. Despite his cold and calculating demeanor, Christian has a secret obsession with Gianna Castellano, a woman he believes he can never have. ![]() That’s because Corrupt was the first book in this Devil’s Night book series while Hideaway is 2nd.īelow is the detailed yet quick summary of the book:Ĭhristian Allister is a skilled and ruthless strategist, handling the most delicate matters for the Romano family. In case you haven’t read the summary or book The Sweetest Oblivion, it is advised to go through that. This book follows the story of Christian Allister, the cold and calculating consigliere to the Romano mafia family, and Gianna “Gigi” Castellano, the daughter of a powerful mob boss. It delves deeper into the world of organized crime and forbidden love. The Maddest Obsession by Danielle Lori is the second book in the Made series. ![]() ![]() ![]() The Caliban story flips the narrative and changes how we see not just Caliban, but Ariel, as well as their mother. There’s folklore and storytelling traditions here that are a new experience, and take me places I haven’t been. ![]() What sets this collection apart, aside from the fact that Hopkinson is just a really excellent writer, is that she writes from her own Afro-Caribbean heritage, giving us stories that are new, and bringing an entirely different perspective to stories grounded in more familiar material. ![]() There’s a reworking of the story of Caliban, and a new Bordertown story. Along with the horror, there’s dark fantasy, lighter, happier fantasy, and even a couple of stories that can fairly be called science fiction. This is a wonderful collection of short stories, and Nalo Hopkinson kept me reading stories that were just straight up horror that I would ordinarily just skip right over. ![]() |