Best of
Modern

2000

Ragamuffin Angel


Rita Bradshaw - 2000
    Although she's little more than a child the events of her past have forged a driving determination to rise above her beginnings. But when she applies for a job as a nurse Connie's turned down: her mother was forced by poverty to work the streets and the Bell name is tainted. Bitterly hurt but undaunted, Connie's soon assistant housekeeper at the Grand Hotel and saving hard for her own business. When her path crosses Dan Stewart's, though, everything Connie's ever dreamed of is threatened. There's a dark and terrible history between the Bells and the Stewarts, and Dan's mother Edith will do anything to keep Dan and Connie apart.

Dawn Rochelle


Lurlene McDaniel - 2000
    She has just been diagnosed with cancer. The only way to deal with her leukaemia is to find the courage to face the treatments. While other kids are going to school, the mall, or dances, she can take nothing for granted.Dawn Rochelle’s first chemotherapy, her new close friendship with fellow cancer patient Sandy, and their passage together into remission are a moving story. But remission doesn’t last forever for either girl. First Dawn has to face the possibility of Sandy’s death. Then Dawn’s cancer returns as well. Her one hope is a bone marrow transplant from her brother, but even then she has only a fifty percent chance of survival. No matter what the outcome, Dawn is determined to live a normal life and use her own fight with cancer as a way to help others. Her journey, described in these four poignant interconnected novels, is sure to inspire readers.

The Long Way Home


Staci Stallings - 2000
    Yet he cannot stop thinking about the stubborn young woman and her struggle to keep her own family farm by turning it into a bed and breakfast. Each time he tries to draw closer to her, he makes the situation worse until a series of crises throws Jaxton and Ami together in unexpected ways. THE LONG WAY HOME is an adventure of love and reconciliation. Touching on themes of faith, family, and fortunes, it asks the characters and the reader "Who are you, and where do you want to be when you're eighty?" "Staci Stallings writes from a deep knowledge and love of the Flint Hills, and with a compassionate understanding of everyday people caught up in family and life struggles. Her characters and their story will reside in your heart long after you have finished the last chapter of THE LONG WAY HOME."

The Wrong Boy


Willy Russell - 2000
    Like a streetlamp without a bulb or a goose at the onset of Christmas time.Anyroad, I thought I'd pen a few lines to someone who'd understand...It's 1991. Raymond Marks is a normal boy, from a normal family, in a normal northern town. Only lately, he's been feeling dead down. His dad left home after falling in love with a five-string banjo. His fun-hating grandma believes she should have married Jean-Paul Sartre: 'I could never read his books, but y' could tell from his picture, there was nothing frivolous about John-Paul Sartre.' Felonious Uncle Jason and Appalling Aunty Paula are lusting after the satellite dish.And so he turns to the one person who'll understand what he's going through: Morrissey. Told through a series of heartfelt letters to the frontman of The Smiths, this is a laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly poignant tale from a character you can't help but love.'Big-hearted, wonderfully funny and engrossing' THE MIRROR'A warm, funny, poignant story. I loved The Wrong Boy - and so will you' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH'A comic masterpiece' BEL MOONEY, MAIL ON SUNDAY

E.


Matt Beaumont - 2000
    . . but before I go there are some things you should know . . . !!!! Set in a London ad agency desperate to land a coveted big account, e follows the bureaucratic bungling, cutthroat maneuvers, and outrageous sexual antics of a group of Miller-Shanks employees as they scheme, lie, lust, and claw their way up (and down) the company ladder.Written by a former advertising copywriter, this hilarious, dead-on-target novel marks the debut of a hip and exciting new voice in contemporary fiction. With the click of a mouse, Matt Beaumont brings the novel of letters into the twenty-first century, turning his merciless, unerring eye on today's Machiavellian corporate culture-with uproarious results. Rachel Stevenson, Personnel-1/5/00, 3:09 pm to: Chandra Kapoor cc: David Cruttonre: Urgent: Please delete Carla Browne's ID from e-mail with immediate effect. Thank you.

After You'd Gone


Maggie O'Farrell - 2000
    A few hours later, Alice is lying in a coma after an accident that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. Alice's family gathers at her bedside and as they wait, argue, and remember, long-buried tensions emerge. The more they talk, the more they seem to conceal. Alice, meanwhile, slides between varying levels of consciousness, recalling her past and a love affair that recently ended. A riveting story that skips through time and interweaves multiple points of view, After You'd Gone is a novel of stunning psychological depth and marks the debut of a major literary talent.

The Zane Grey Frontier Trilogy: Betty Zane, The Last Trail, The Spirit of the Border


Zane Grey - 2000
    In The Last Trail, a woman is kidnapped from Fort Henry by a band of renegades and hostile Ohio Valley Indians, and Lewis Wetzel and Jonathan Zane set out in pursuit, with little hope of survival. Finally, in The Spirit of the Border, Lewis Wetzel must single-handedly save Fort Henry, armed only with his long rifle and knife.

Resurrectionists


Kim Wilkins - 2000
    Faking a wrist injury, she takes time off to return to England, her mother's home country, to search for her own roots and to find out more about her grandmother, a 'white witch' who settled in a bleak village on the North Yorkshire coast. Maisie's mother is set against her going, and refuses to tell her daughter anything about the woman, other than that - even dead - she is dangerous. On her arrival in Solgreve, she receives a hostile welcome from her new neighbours and begins to find clues to her grandmother's mysterious death. Amongst the clutter in her grandmother's house is a diary written by a young French woman who eloped with a penniless English poet and settled in the village. Through this diary, Maisie discovers the existence of an unnatural presence which still preys on the lives of the people of the village, past and present. This book will appeal to the huge Anne Rice market: a gothic, romantic horror story with a credible, strong and extremely likeable heroine at the heart of it, backed by atmospheric descriptions of Yorkshire and a convincing setting in the music world.

The Fat Lady Sings


Jacqueline Roy - 2000
    Locked in a psychiatric unit because her public singing brought her to the attention of the police, Gloria meets another British woman of Jamaican descent with whom she can share her past, giving them both hope for the future.

Rough Music


Patrick Gale - 2000
    Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface. Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.From the Hardcover edition.

Glottal Stop


Paul Celan - 2000
    A collection of poetry by the German poet whose parents were murdered in Nazi concentration camps and who eventually committed suicide features essays on Jewish heritage and alienation.

Stay Awake


Poppy Z. Brite - 2000
    It had a limited printing of 607 copies, 600 numbered and signed copies and 7 hardback copies, lettered and signed.Hard to find, this chapbook answers the question of whether Steve Finn and Ghost (from Brite's amazingly popular novel Lost Souls) were ever more than "just friends."

Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess


Barbara McClintock - 2000
    Then a sudden misfortune turns her life upside down, and Sara is banished to the school's dreary attic and must work for her living. It takes all of Sara's imagination and a little bit of magic to turn her misfortune around and prove she is, at heart, a little princess.Frances Hodgson Burnett's story of how Sara Crewe survives hardship and finds happiness again was originally published in 1905 and has won the hearts of children the world over. Now Barbara McClintock has captured the very essence of this unforgettable story in her lovingly detailed adaptation,

Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuluko


Patrick Neate - 2000
    President Adini, dictator and eunuch, clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. All in all, Zambawi is not the ideal location for student teacher Jim Tulloh to indulge in a spot of character building. Yet with the help of Musa, the local witchdoctor, some flatulent weed and headmaster, PK, Jim's days look set to be mellow in the extreme; until that is Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. But it is when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko that Jim's fate takes a really unexpected turn . . .

Advanced Biology


Michael Kent - 2000
    It provides complete coverage of the new A- and AS-level core specifications being taught from September 2000 onwards and presents concepts in separate, easily accessible double-page spreads. Each spread starts with learning objectives and ends with questions, to check understanding, making the book particularly suitable for self-study.

Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature


Andrew M. Butler - 2000
    Every new book becomes a best-seller, and every book gains him more fans. Despite this — or perhaps because of it — he has not been taken seriously by critics, even though some reviewers have, as he has said, "accused him of literature". This collection of studies covers the whole range of Pratchett's writings, from The Carpet People to The Fifth Elephant, and includes essays by critics such as John Clute and Andy Sawyer, and children's author Cherith Baldry. Introduction by David Langford.

Without Charity


Michelle Paver - 2000
    How could this mansion have anything to do with her family, and in particular with her grandmother Charity? But as she became immersed in the story of the house, it became vital that she uncovered the truth.

Zamiatin's We (Critical Studies in Russian Literature)


Robert Russell - 2000
    Set one thousand years in the future, it is a witty yet terrifying picture of a future society in which reason is all-conquering and mankind has been enslaved by a dictator called 'the benefactor'. This new study presents both a synthesis of existing criticism and a new reading of the novel. The first section deals with "We" in the context of the Russian Civil War, showing how Zamiatin's contemporaries interpreted it as a satire on life in Soviet Russia. The major trends in the diverse body of modern criticism are then surveyed. The longer second part of the study consists of a detailed reading of the novel based on close textual analysis of the forty 'entries' of its narrator's diary.

Ten Million Steps: Nimblewill Nomad's Epic 10-Month Trek from the Florida Keys to Québec


M.J. Eberhart - 2000
    J. Eberhart, aka the Nimblewill Nomad, was a 60-year-old retired doctor in January 1998 when he set off on a foot journey that carried him 4,400 miles (twice the length of the Appalachian Trail) from the Florida Keys to the far north of Quebec. Written in a vivid journal style, the author unabashedly recounts the good (friendships with other hikers he met), the bad (sore legs, cutting winds and rain), and the godawful (those dispiriting doubts) aspects of his days of walking along what has since become known as the Eastern Continental Trail (ECT). An amazing tale of self-discovery and insight into the magic that reverberates from intense physical exertion and a high goal, Eberhart’s is the only written account of a thru-hike along the ECT. Covering 16 states and 2 Canadian provinces, Ten Million Steps deftly mixes practical considerations of an almost unimaginable undertaking with the author’s trademark humor and philosophical musings.

Everything is not Enough: A touching saga of the strength of love and hope


Bernardine Kennedy - 2000
    Her best friend's home is a sanctuary - until her step-father hurts her so deeply she vows to escape from her past. She reinvents herself as Angie Kavanagh and discovers a talent for journalism, becoming a top celebrity interviewer. Years later, she writes about spoilt supermodel and It-girl Rebekah Alari. Angie sees that, despite all her advantages, Rebekah's life is not as glamorous as she pretends. She, too, hides a secret about her past. Angie herself seems at last to have found happiness, but her life is littered with emotional obstacles and she finds it impossible to leave the past behind...

The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos


Mario Livio - 2000
    It is rich storytelling and, above all, a celebration of the human mind in its quest for beauty in all things."--Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams"This is a wonderfully lucid account of the extraordinary discoveries that have made the last years a golden period for observational cosmology. But Mario Livio has not only given the reader one clear explanation after another of what astronomers are up to, he has used them to construct a provocative argument for the importance of aesthetics in the development of science and for the inseparability of science, art, and culture."--Lee Smolin, author of "The Life of the Cosmos""What a pleasure to read! An exciting, simple account of the universe revealed by modern astronomy. Beautifully written, clearly presented, informed by scientific and philosophical insights."--John Bahcall, Institute for Advanced Study"A book with charm, beauty, elegance, and importance. As authoritative a journey as can be taken through modern cosmology."--Allan Sandage, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington

The Reed Reader


Ishmael Reed - 2000
    Included are excerpts from such celebrated novels as The Free-Lance Pallbearers, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Mumbo Jumbo, and Japanese by Spring (among others) and two of his plays, Hubba City and The Preacher and the Rapper. In addition, a wide selection of his poems and essays are collected here, including "Airing Dirty Laundry" and "Shrovetide in New Orleans." The Reed Reader is the cumulative representation of an astonishingly rich and accomplished career, a powerful testament to Reed's many and enormous literary gifts.

Inside the Hindenburg


Mireille Majoor - 2000
    This oversized book promises to be the same sort of success as its predecessor, Inside the Titanic. plus 8-page gatefold.

What Nietzsche Really Said


Robert C. Solomon - 2000
    More people than ever are reading and discussing his writings. But Nietzsche's ideas are often overshadowed by the myths and rumors that surround his sex life, his politics, and his sanity. In this lively and comprehensive analysis, Nietzsche scholars Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins get to the heart of Nietzsche's philosophy, from his ideas on "the will to power" to his attack on religion and morality and his infamous Übermensch (superman).What Nietzsche Really Said offers both guidelines and insights for reading and understanding this controversial thinker. Written with sophistication and wit, this book provides an excellent summary of the life and work of one of history's most provocative philosophers.

Excess Baggage


Judy Astley - 2000
    But as a penniless and partnerless house-painter with an expired lease on her flat and a twelve-year-old daughter, she could hardly turn down her parents' offer to take them on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Caribbean. She'd just have to put up with her sister Theresa (making no secret of preferring Tuscany as a holiday destination) and brother Simon (worrying that there might be some sinister agenda behind their parents' wish to take them all away) with their various spouses, teenagers, young children and au pair. In a luxury hotel, with bright sunshine, swimming, diving, glorious food and friendly locals, any family tensions should have melted away in the fabulous heat. The children should have been angelic, the teenagers cheerful, the adults relaxed and happy. But...some problems just refuse to be left at home.

France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society


Charles Sowerwine - 2000
    The book ends with President Mitterand's retirement, an epochal event that marked the severing of France's last link with the Vichy government and the Fourth Republic.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China


Michael David Kwan - 2000
    His father serves the Japanese while secretly working for the Resistance. After the war, with his father imprisoned, he leaves the country at the age of twelve, unsure that they will ever be reunited. This memoir was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for Nonfiction.

Intimate Secrets


B.J. Daniels - 2000
    What her dad didn't know was the Josie has been with the one man he'd respected above all others. Clay Jackson.He'd never guessed he fathered her child...Two years ago Josie left Texas in a hurry for the solitude of Montana. Now Clay knew why. But it boiled his blood that she'd had anybody's baby but his. It burned him even more that a thief led Clay to her doorstep. So what was Josie hiding besides a child? And what would Clay's investigation reveal about the toddler's father...and the woman he'd never stopped loving?

Dear Tom


Tom Courtenay - 2000
    When he left home for university, his mother, Annie, wrote to him every week and when her letters became more searching and more intimate in response to Tom's unhappiness he kept every one, not knowing that after her early death they were to become his most treasured possession.Tom has selected the best of them to go in this book and interwoven with them a portrait of what was going on in his life at the time, in the heady days of the early Sixties when successful young working-class actors were coming to the fore for the first time. Annie's letters are astonishing - wise, funny, with a natural instinct for words, but also deeply painful. She knows she's worthy of a better, more creative life, but she hasn't been given the chance.Partly a memoir of a working-class way of life that has gone for ever, partly a powerfully moving record of the love between mother and son, partly a portrait of the artist as a young actor, Dear Tom is sure to excite admiration and delight in equal measure.

Wildlife Films


Derek Bouse - 2000
    The television fare offered nightly by national and cable networks such as PBS and the Discovery Channel provides millions of viewers with their only experience of the wilderness and its inhabitants.The very films that so many viewers take as accurate portrayals of wildlife, however, have evolved primarily as a form of entertainment, following the established codes and conventions of narrative exposition. The result has been not the representation of nature, but its wholesale reconstruction and reconfiguration according to film and television conventions, audience expectations, and the demands of competition in the media marketplace.Wildlife Films traces the genealogy of the nature film, from its origins as the animal locomotion studies that mark the very beginnings of motion pictures themselves, to the founding of the Animal Planet cable channel that boasts all animals, all the time. The narrative and thematic elements that unite wildlife films as a genre have their roots not in the documentary film tradition, but in the older traditions of oral and written animal fables as reflections of human society. Derek Bous� contends that classic wildlife films often portray animal protagonists living in families modeled on an ideal of the human nuclear family and working in communities that resemble an ideal of bucolic human society. In these stories--presented as documentaries--animals are motivated by human emotions and conduct relationships according to human customs. This imposition of culturally satisfying narrative patterns upon the lives of animals has not only led to the misrepresentation of the natural world; it has promoted the notion that our values, our moral vision, our models of society and family structure derive from nature, rather than being cultural formations.

The Law of Averages: New and Selected Stories


Frederick Barthelme - 2000
    It has become a feature of the designer's job to define the problems that exist in his network, choose and analyse several optimization parameters during the analysis process, and then prioritize and evaluate these parameters in the architecture and design of the system.