Barnaby’s Home for the Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten, and Lost, an orphanage that sinks further into the swampland of New Jersey with each passing year. His aptitude tests predict that he will spend a long, unhappy career as a toilet brush cleaner. His only chance at escape comes through the comic books donated years ago to the orphanage that he secretly reads in the dark corners of the library. Everything changes one icy gray morning when Jack receives two visitors that alter his life forever. The first is a deadly robot straight out of one of his comic books that tries its best to blow him up. The second is an emissary from a secret country called the Imagine Nation, an astonishing place where all the fantastic and unbelievable things in our world originate — including Jack. Jack soon discovers that he has an amazing ability — one that could make him the savior of the Imagine Nation and the world beyond, or the biggest threat they've ever faced.

    His wife of ten years, Esther, is a war correspondent who has disappeared along with a friend, Mikhail, who may or may not be her lover.Was Esther kidnapped, murdered, or did she simply escape a marriage that left her unfulfilled? The narrator doesn’t have any answers, but he has plenty of questions of his own. Then one day Mikhail finds the narrator and promises to reunite him with his wife. In his attempt to recapture a lost love, the narrator discovers something unexpected about himself.

    Their outrageous scheme provokes a series of crises involving the White House, the CIA, and a strangely sympathetic and vulnerable Chinese president, with both countries veering perilously towards war.Buckley has drawn his most convincing and outrageous characters to date: Bird, failed novelist of amusingly awful Clancy-esque thrillers; Angel, combination Anne Coulter and Ayn Rand; Bird's demanding, equestrian wife, Myndi; Bewks, his feckless but endearing Civil War re-enactor brother; the mild-mannered Chinese President Fa and his devoted aide Gang, maneuvering desperately against sinister Politburo hard-liners Minister Lo and General Han.Blending the skewering genius of Thank You for Smoking with Dr. Strangelove 's dark comedy, They Eat Puppies, Don't They? has something to offend — and amuse — everyone.

    Told from multiple points of view and crisscrossing narratives, combining everything from superhero comics to Nigerian mythology to tie together a story about a city consuming itself. ‘There was no time to flee. No time to turn. No time to shriek. And there was no pain. It was like being thrown into the stars.’

    Despite having spent his entire life with the elves, he has never really been accepted and lives the life of an outcast.As his thirtieth birthday approaches, Flare makes a momentous decision. He decides to travel to the Southern city of Telur to join the Guardians. The Guardians are the elite part of the Telurian army, and anyone can join; even foreigners.The elves are outraged, and Flare is forced to flee the elven forest and travel alone to the human city of Telur, where he joins the Guardians and begins his military training.Flare is assigned to the western Fort of Mul-Dune, where he continues traveling the path of prophecy. Unknowingly, Flare has began down the path of an ancient and cryptic prophecy. A prophecy that the church of Adel will do anything to keep from being fulfilled. Anything, including murder.

    Beautifully rendered, this is a world and a time never before dealt with in fiction-a period when powerful colonizers took over the lands of Hottentot tribes, exposing aborigines for the first time to Western eyes and Western ways. Through the life stories of seven men-all involved with and defined in one way or another by Pieternella, the beautiful daughter of the first mixed marriage of the new colony-we gain an understanding of the vast historical forces at work.Teeming with characters, rich with lived experience, gripping in its unexpected turns, Islands is a story of greed, power, war, courage, and international intrigue, at once a meticulously researched portrait of the age, and a great adventure story.

    Malik has been secretly in love with Rose Mbikwa, a woman who leads the weekly bird walks sponsored by the East African Ornithological Society. Just as Malik is getting up the nerve to invite Rose to the Nairobi Hunt Club Ball (the premier social occasion of the Kenyan calendar), Harry Khan, a nemesis from his school days, arrives in town.Khan has also become enraptured with Rose and announces his intent to invite her to the Ball. Rather than force Rose to choose between the two men, a clever solution is proposed. Whoever can identify the most species of birds in one week’s time gets the privilege of asking Ms. Mbikwa to the ball.

    G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants.Through a 'leaking' of time, the West African jungle starts to crystallize. Trees are metamorphosed into enormous jewels. Crocodiles encased in second glittering skins lurch down the river. Pythons with huge blind gemstone eyes rear in heraldic poses.Fearing this transformation as a herald of the apocalypse, most flee the area in terror, afraid to face a catastrophe they cannot understand. But some, dazzled and strangely entranced, remain to drift through this dreamworld forest. Travelling through this gilded land, the doctor tries to resist its strange allure, while a tribe of lepers search for Paradise…

    While most people get excited about legends of spirits and genies (Jinn) and pass it on as the listen to it with awe and horror (after adding their own spices to it); here comes Hawjan. The young Jinni who is in his early nineties to redefine our understanding of the Jinn world that resembles ours in so many ways, still it is a parallel dimension to ours. He shares his tale so that we can live it through a “human” perspective regardless of the differences between our two worlds.As human populations expand Hawjan found himself surrounded by humans who had built a housing complex in the area surrounding his village forcing him, his mother and grandfather to live in one of these villas that is now haunted by humans. Hawjan’s efforts to avoid interacting with the human family had failed, finding himself madly in love with Sawsan the human, Sawsan was a medical student, gentle and brilliant, barely a quarter of his age. Hawjan was unable to let her know about his feelings until he learned how to communicate with Sawsan through the Ouija board. He found out about her brain cancer that she had hidden from everyone including her family. As Sawsan’s suffering increased and her health deteriorated her father was easy prey for a sorcerer who tricked him into believing that Sawsan’s illness was a result of the devils who had haunted their new home, an so a deadly battle between Hawjan and the devils and sorcerer who had tried extort money from Sawsan’s father. With the help of Eyad (Sawsan’s colleague) who had agreed to Hawjan possessing him so that they would both risk their lives to save Sawsan and her father.

    Not marriage, not a brood of squalling brats, and certainly not love, thank you very much!But freedom is a rare commodity in 19th-century London, where girls are expected to spend their lives sitting at home, fully occupied with looking pretty. Lilly is at her wits’ end—until a chance encounter with a dark, dangerous and powerful stranger changes her life forever...Enter the world of Mr Rikkard Ambrose, where the only rule is: Knowledge is power is time is money!

    At either end of the twentieth century, two women fall in love with men outside their familiar worlds. In 1901, Anna Winterbourne, recently widowed, leaves England for Egypt, an outpost of the Empire roiling with nationalist sentiment. Far from the comfort of the British colony, she finds herself enraptured by the real Egypt and in love with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Nearly a hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, a divorced American journalist and descendant of Anna and Sharif has fallen in love with Omar al-Ghamrawi, a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American conductor with his own passionate politics. In an attempt to understand her conflicting emotions and to discover the truth behind her heritage, Isabel, too, travels to Egypt, and enlists Omar's sister's help in unravelling the story of Anna and Sharif's love.Joining the romance and intricate storytelling of A.S. Byatt's Possession and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Ahdaf Soueif has once again created a mesmerizing tale of genuine eloquence and lasting importance.

    Through this book of fiction, the author has made an attempt to answer several questions which we tend to place in front of others and which the world places in front of us. He has explicitly placed the phrases like "World says: Love can never be one sided, Where as some says: There is nothing called Love, But to the author: Love sees no side. It happens, to be the only Law of Life. And is the most Powerful thing one can possess". This romantic story whirls around a young boy who loved his dream girl in his thoughts and wanted to wait for her till his last breath. He was surrounded by many feelings but not the one that touched his heart and soul. He was heart broken and totally isolated. This was the moment when his lady love enters his life with with promises of eternity and endless love. His past experiences have made some unseen wounds on his heart and mind and before he could understand the selfless love of his Love, it was again too late. A beautiful piece encircled with love, hatred, frustration, depression and promises. This fiction book will let you know what love exactly is ? A truly romantic, heartwarming story for today's younger generation.

    After a rape and unwanted pregnancy leave her exiled from her family in Kano, thwarting her plans to go to university, she is sent to her aunt's in Lagos and pressured into a marriage with an older man. When their whirlwind romance descends into abuse and indignity, Ogadinma is forced to channel her independence and resourcefulness to escape a fate that appears all but inevitable. Ogadinma, the UK debut by Ukamaka Olisakwe, introduces a heroine for whom it is impossible not to root, and announces the author as a gifted chronicler of the patriarchal experience.‘An intimate and dazzling exploration of the life and times of a young Nigerian woman whose move to the capital city of Lagos leads to a series of encounters, which are by turns disorienting, revelatory and tragic.’ Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood‘Written in vivid, engaging prose, this is the story of one woman’s journey to independence.’ Chinelo Okparanta, author of Under the Udala Trees and Happiness, Like Water: Stories

    Zed is still obsessed with the betrayals of his own past but must fill in the blanks of this victim's life. Who tortured and killed Smit, and who was Smit in the first place? Not the man whose papers he carries, that much is certain. Zed can never be sure of the loyalties of the people with whom he is dealing--his own past reputation ensures that--and he soon finds himself uncovering secrets that the security services of many countries would like left alone.

    Taiyo and Resian both become aware of the conflict between their personal dreams and their duty to the Nasila tradition and culture. H. R. Ole Kulet addresses the elusive concerns of female gential mutilation and early marriages among the Maa community of the Massai and captures the reader's imagination as he traces the girls' excruciatinly painful steps to victory. Worldreader presents this e-book in a new series showcasing fiction from Sub-Saharan Africa. Are you a worldreader? Read more about this not-for-profit social enterprise at worldreader.org.