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The Kural: Tiruvalluvar's Tirukkural by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma
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The Holiday Plan
Emma Lynden - 2022
Coming off a disastrous split with her ex, she’s struggling for inspiration to write her next book. And she’s lost without her favorite Aunt Theoni’s wisdom and guidance.Hoping for a fresh start and to avoid the holiday completely, she’s planned a Valentine’s detox: a luxurious trip alone to the historic Courtington Castle hotel, near the adorably quaint town of Camelot Creek, tucked into a picturesque valley in the Adirondacks.But escaping the heart-shaped balloons and red roses isn’t as easy as she thought.This won’t be the restful retreat she’d imagined. Instead, she’s just walked into one of the biggest matchmaking events of the year. Not to mention, the incredibly attractive single dad and dating coach Troy Turner is heading the whole thing up, and he’s on a mission to include Verona in the festivities.Troy is in the midst of a professional crisis of his own. After a bit of unfounded bad press, the very last thing he needs is a guest to cast doubt in the minds of his attendees.Will Troy change Verona’s mind about the most romantic day of the year? Just when sparks begin to fly, an unexpected visitor checks into the castle, stirring up the past. No matter what, for Verona, Valentine’s Day is the day where everything changes.A heartwarming, sweet romance that will whisk you away to a magical winter wonderland, and have you reaching for the hot cocoa and box of chocolates long after the holidays.
Einstein's Dreams
Alan Lightman - 1992
As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.
Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings
Diana Pavlac Glyer - 2016
Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings met each week to read and discuss each other's work-in-progress, offering both encouragement and blistering critique. How did these conversations shape the books they were writing? How does creative collaboration enhance individual talent? And what can we learn from their example?
Shocking Celebrity Murders: True Crime Cases of Famous People Who Were Brutally Killed
Jack Smith - 2021
Think of Me
Frances Liardet - 2022
Covered in dust, Yvette and James hold hands for the first time as bombs explode above them. As the war rages on, they will find their way back to each other time and again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, their happiness takes root in England and blossoms, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them. The way back to one another is uncharted territory that both must be brave enough to face. 1974. Ten years after his wife's death and with his son now at university, James craves change. He moves to the beautiful English village of Upton not thirty minutes from the city where he brought his bride Yvette, nearly twenty-five years ago. There he discovers a scarf that lights the dark edges of his memory. Could it be Yvette's? As James makes a new home for himself and gently presses into the feelings the scarf evokes, he begins to unlock new revelations about his past that change everything he believes. Revelations that just might give James a new reason to live and the possibility of new love at last, after ten years alone.
Red Milk
Sjón - 2019
In his possession, policemen find a map on which a swastika has been drawn with a red pen. Who was he, and where was he going?In a novel that reads as both biography and mystery, the internationally celebrated novelist Sjón tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, the founder of Iceland's anti-Semitic nationalist party, with ties to a burgeoning network of neo-Nazi groups across the globe. Told in a series of scenes and letters spanning Kampen's lifetime--from his childhood in Reyjavík during the Second World War, in a household strongly opposed to Hitler and his views, through his education, political radicalization, and his final clandestine mission to England--Red Milk urges readers to confront the international legacy of twentieth-century fascism and the often unknowable forces that drive some people to extremism.Based on one of the ringleaders of a little-known neo-Nazi group that operated in Reykjavík in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this taut and potent novel explores what shapes a young man and the enduring, disturbing allure of Nazi ideology.
The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon
Marcy McCreary - 2021
The glamorous and gregarious matriarch, Rachel. The cunning and successful businessman, Stan. Four beautiful children. A perfect family deserving of respect and loyalty. Or so it seemed.Fast forward forty years. The Roths have lost their clout. When skeletal remains are found on the side of the road, the disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a coffee shop waitress at the Cuttman in 1978, is reopened. Each member of the Roth family holds a clue to the case, but getting them to admit what they know will force Detective Susan Ford to face a family she’d hoped never to see again.
Coming Through Slaughter
Michael Ondaatje - 1976
Ondaatje's prose is at times startlingly lyrical, and as he chases Bolden through documents and scenes, the novel partakes of the very best sort of modern detective novel--one where the enigma is never resolved, but allowed to manifest in its fullness. Though more 'experimental' in form than either The English Patient or In the Skin of a Lion, it is a fitting addition to the renowned Ondaatje oeuvre.
The Captive Mind
Czesław Miłosz - 1953
The second chapter considers the way in which the West was seen at the time by residents of Central and Eastern Europe, while the third outlines the practice of Ketman, the act of paying lip service to authority while concealing personal opposition, describing seven forms applied in the people's democracies of mid-20th century Europe.The four chapters at the heart of the book then follow, each a portrayal of a gifted Polish man who capitulated, in some fashion, to the demands of the Communist state. They are identified only as Alpha, the Moralist; Beta, The Disappointed Lover; Gamma, the Slave of History; and Delta, the Troubadour. However, each of the four portraits were easily identifiable: Alpha is Jerzy Andrzejewski, Beta is Tadeusz Borowski, Gamma is Jerzy Putrament and Delta is Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński.The book moves toward its climax with an elaboration of "enslavement through consciousness" in the penultimate chapter and closes with a pained and personal assessment of the fate of the Baltic nations in particular.
The Rivered Earth
Vikram Seth - 2011
Entitled Songs in Time of War, Shared Ground, The Traveller and Seven Elements, the libretti take us all over the world - from Chinese and Indian poetry, to the beauty and quietness of the Wiltshire rectory where English poet George Herbert lived and died.Spanning centuries of creativity and humanity, the poems that form these libretti pulse with life, energy and inspired brilliance.They are accompanied by four pieces of calligraphy by the author.
Rhapsody
Mitchell James Kaplan - 2021
The piece: Rhapsody in Blue. The composer: a brilliant, elusive young musical genius named George Gershwin. Kay is transfixed, helpless to resist the magnetic pull of George’s talent, charm, and swagger. Their ten-year love affair, complicated by her conflicted loyalty to her husband and the twists and turns of her own musical career, ends only with George’s death from a brain tumor at the age of thirty-eight. Set in Jazz Age New York City, this stunning work of fiction, for fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, explores the timeless bond between two brilliant, strong-willed artists. George Gershwin left behind not just a body of work unmatched in popular musical history, but a woman who loved him with all her heart, knowing all the while that he belonged not to her, but to the world.
Battleship Leviathan
Craig MartelleCraig Martelle - 2021
A small team of humans fighting for all humanity.Built for a time when the races were just finding their way to the stars, finding that they could dominate others. The galactic conquests created the arms race and the ancients, the Progenitors had to protect their own. They built a ship to drive the others away.It worked. And it didn’t. The Progenitors abandoned the galaxy to the newcomers, leaving relics behind as monuments to their failure.Humanity spread to the stars and ran headlong into the established races. A new war begins, and no one conducts war better than humanity except for the Blaze Collective.The two go head-to-head while humanity frantically searches for something to give them an advantage. Ancient technology. The derelicts scattered across the galaxy. Gutted and useless.Except for one, hidden in plain sight, close to Earth. Major Declan Payne takes his team aboard to find that the ship is no derelict, and it needs him as much as humanity needs it.Battleship: Leviathan. A Doomsday Weapon whose only goal is peace.
The Rig Veda
Wendy Doniger
A work of intricate beauty, it provides a unique insight into early Indian mythology, religion and culture. This selection of 18 of the hymns, chosen for their eloquence and wisdom, focuses on the enduring themes of creation, sacrifice, death, women, the sacred plant soma and the gods. Inspirational and profound, it provides a fascinating introduction to one of the founding texts of Hindu scripture, an awesome and venerable ancient work of Vedic ritual, prayer, philosophy, legend and faith.
Just One Look
Lindsay CameronLindsay Cameron - 2021
Eyes aren't the windows to the soul. Emails are.Cassie Woodson is adrift. After suffering an epic tumble down the corporate ladder, Cassie finds the only way she can pay her bills is to take a thankless temp job reviewing correspondence for a large-scale fraud suit. The daily drudgery amplifies all that her life is lacking--love, friends, stability--and leaves her with too much time on her hands, which she spends fixating on the mistakes that brought her to this point.While sorting through a relentless deluge of emails, something catches her eye: the tender (and totally private) exchanges between a partner at the firm, Forest Watts, and his enchanting wife, Annabelle. Cassie knows she shouldn't read them. But it's just one look. And once that door opens, she finds she can't look away.Every day, twenty floors below Forest's corner office, Cassie dissects their emails from her dingy workstation. A few clicks of her mouse and she can see every adoring word they write to each other. By peeking into their apparently perfect life, Cassie finds renewed purpose and happiness, reveling in their penchant for vintage wines, morning juice presses, and lavish dinner parties thrown in their stately Westchester home. There are no secrets from her. Or so she thinks.Her admiration quickly escalates into all-out mimicry, because she wants this life more than anything. Maybe if she plays make-believe long enough, it will become real for her. But when Cassie orchestrates a "chance" meeting with Forest in the real world and sees something that throws the state of his marriage into question, the fantasy she's been carefully cultivating shatters. Suddenly, she doesn't simply admire Annabelle--she wants to take her place. And she's armed with the tools to make that happen.