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Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami l Summary & Study Guide by BookRags
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Season of the Dragonflies
Sarah Creech - 2014
Hidden in the quiet rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, their perfumery guards unique and mysterious ingredients. A secret known only to a select clientele of movie stars, politicians, artists, and CEOs, the Lenores’ signature elixer is the key to success for the world’s most powerful women.Willow, the coolly elegant Lenore family matriarch, is the brains behind the company. Her gorgeous, golden-haired daughter, Mya is its heart. Like her foremothers, she can "read" scents and envision their power to influence events. But Willow's younger daughter, dark-haired, soulful Lucia, claims no magical touch, wanting no part of the family business, she has left the mountains to make her own way in New York City.When a divorce leaves Lucia at loose ends, she returns to the Blue Ridge Mountains for an uncomfortable family reunion and discovers trouble brewing. Willow is experiencing strange spells of forgetfulness. Mya is romancing a younger man and plotting to take the reins of the business. A client is threatening blackmail. And most ominously, the strange, magical plants that provide the perfume’s secret ingredient seem to be dying.With the Lenore empire at stake, the sister who can save their lucrative scent stands to inherit when Willow steps down. Though Mya schemes, Lucia has suddenly begun to show signs of possessing her own special abilities. And her return to the mountains—heralded by a swarm of blue dragonflies—may be the answer they all need.Capturing the essence of sisterhood with the sweetness of flowers, Season of the Dragonflies is a beguiling tale of practical magic, old secrets, and new love.
Warm Moonlight
Joseph Wurtenbaugh - 2012
It's a thrilling story of adventure and rescue, of escape and revenge, set in New England in the early days of Prohibition. Written in the great storytelling tradition, 'Warm Moonlight' has all the intensity of a got-to-hear-how-it-ends campfire yarn, but with a decidedly adult sophistication and sensibility. The ending is unique and satisfying, but leaves the audience, like one of the characters in the story, wondering - how much of it was true? How much invented? Can such things be? Maybe it's a ghost story or . . . . maybe it isn't.
The Bickford Fuse
Andrey Kurkov - 2011
And for a disparate, disconnected clutch of wanderers - many thousands of miles apart but linked by a common goal - four parallel journeys are just beginning.Gorych and his driver, rolling through water, sand and snow on an empty petrol tank; the occupant of a black airship, looking down benevolently as he floats above his Fatherland; young Andrey, who leaves his religious community in search of a new life; and Kharitonov, who trudges from the Sea of Japan to Leningrad, carrying a fuse that, when lit, could blow all and sundry to smithereens.Written in the final years of Communism, The Bickford Fuse is a satirical epic of the Soviet soul, exploring the origins and dead-ends of the Russian mentality from the end of World War Two to the Union's collapse. Blending allegory and fable with real events, and as deliriously absurd as anything Kurkov has written, it is both an elegy for lost years and a song of hope for a future not yet set in stone.
Season of Second Chances
Aimee Alexander - 2020
A novel of family, love, and learning to be kind to yourself by award-winning, bestselling Irish author, Aimee Alexander. Grace Sullivan flees Dublin with her two teenage children, Jack and Holly, returning to the sleepy West Cork village where she grew up. No one in Killrowan knows what Grace is running from - or that she's even running. She'd like to keep it that way. Taking over from her father, Des, as the village doctor offers a real chance for Grace to begin again. But will she and the family adapt to life in a small rural community? Will the villagers accept an outsider as their GP? Will Grace live up to the doctor that her father was? And will she find the inner strength to face the past when it comes calling? Season of Second Chances is a heart-warming story of friendship, love and finding the inner strength to face a future that may bring back the past. Perfect for fans of Call The Midwives, The Durrells, Doc Martin and All Creatures Great and Small. The villagers of Killrowan will steal into your heart and make you want to stay with them forever.
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
Karen Tei Yamashita - 1990
By the end of this hilarious tale, they each have risen to the heights of wealth and fame, before arriving at disasters - both personal and ecological - that destroy the rain forest and all the birds of Brazil.
Mommy's Choice
Scott Curtis - 2007
According to Stephanie, her last name is Tanner. According to everyone else, it’s not. According to Stephanie, her 22 year old son just simply vanished. According to everyone else, he did a little more than “vanish.” Has Stephanie lost touch with reality? Why can’t she figure out what happened between her and Jonathan? Perhaps returning to her old job (a job she apparently never had) and talking to her old friend Dave (who apparently never met her) could help uncover the clues necessary to answer her nagging question – What happened to her son & best friend Jonathan? It will keep you guessing up until the final page! This updated version of the original novel simply brings the story to more recent times, making it easier to relate to. For the most part, all the years in the timeline have changed, with minor changes throughout to keep the story properly connected. Scott McElhaney is the winner of the 2008 Christian Choice Book Award for his debut suspense novel "Mommy's Choice." With over 250,000 books downloaded worldwide, he is making nearly all of his novels available to Kindle readers at the very accessible price of only 99 cents. Scott is a veteran of the US Navy, a father of two teenage boys, and he has been happily married for more than 20 years. EDITORIAL REVIEWS: "McElhaney's story telling is deft, well-paced, and with an ear for conversation" ~ Beacon Journal Book Review "The author does a good job of sucking you into the moment and feeling as if you are the main character. The technology and scenarios are realistic enough for this sci fi fan and, if you like a good storyteller Mr. McElhaney knows how to do it." ~Top 50 Amazon Reviewer and Vine Voice Michael Gallagher
The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova - 2005
The letters are all addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," and they plunge her into a world she never dreamed of, a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an inconceivable evil hidden in the depths of history.The letters provide links to one of the darkest powers that humanity has ever known and to a centuries-long quest to find the source of that darkness and wipe it out. It is a quest for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the legend of Dracula. Generations of historians have risked their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives to learn the truth about Vlad the Impaler and Dracula. Now one young woman must decide whether to take up this quest herself--to follow her father in a hunt that nearly brought him to ruin years ago, when he was a vibrant young scholar and her mother was still alive. What does the legend of Vlad the Impaler have to do with the modern world? Is it possible that the Dracula of myth truly existed and that he has lived on, century after century, pursuing his own unknowable ends? The answers to these questions cross time and borders, as first the father and then the daughter search for clues, from dusty Ivy League libraries to Istanbul, Budapest, and the depths of Eastern Europe. In city after city, in monasteries and archives, in letters and in secret conversations, the horrible truth emerges about Vlad the Impaler's dark reign and about a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive down through the ages.
Temporary
Hilary Leichter - 2020
She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
Bidhar
Bhalchandra Nemade - 1975
Haunted by illness and obsessed with death, he moves to Mumbai from his village Udali, breaking away from his feudal roots. He encounters young men frustrated by the system but refuses to become one of them. Suddenly, he takes a fancy to education and pursues masters in Arts, without his family knowing about it.Bidhar is the story of a pessimist who struggles to move on in life.
Americanah: by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Top 50 Facts Coutndown: Reach the #1 Fact
Top 50 Facts - 2015
• Rules are simple: no peeking, no skipping. • Do you agree? • Don't miss out! About Us Top 50 Facts is an unofficial collection of facts for fans and readers alike, looking to conveniently discover more about the books they love.
The Japanese Lover
Isabel Allende - 2015
There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family's Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family, like thousands of other Japanese Americans are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco's charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.
Women's Intuition
Lisa Samson - 2002
All she wants is to live out her angst-riddled life in her blue-collar Baltimore neighborhood, punctuated by weekly trips to her local parish, where Lark is organist, and telephone conversations with desperate souls who dial her hotline at 1-777-IPRAY4U. Then one night, Lark’s home is destroyed by a fire, forcing her out of her comfortable nest and back to the childhood home she has avoided for years. At Stoneleigh House, Lark is surrounded by three very different women: her grown daughter, Flannery; her barely tolerable socialite mother, Leslie; and Prisma Percy, housekeeper and family confidante, all of whom believe Lark was widowed years before. In this circle of women, Lark’s carefully constructed existence begins to unravel, even as the promise of a new one unfolds. But when her contrite ex-husband shows up, longing to assume his role as Flannery’s father, twenty years after his desertion, Lark finds that she must face her own lies–and her past–before a new life can unfold.
The Earthquake Bird
Susanna Jones - 2001
Like Lucy, Lily has also fled an unhappy life in Yorkshire, but as Lily insinuates herself into Lucy's life, Lucy finds that she has gained a friend but lost her sometime lover, Teiji. "I had been in possession of a lover and a friend. Now I had neither. They had stolen themselves from each other and me." When Lily disappears and her body is found dismembered in Tokyo Bay, Lucy becomes the chief suspect and the focus of an intense police interrogation, through which she narrates her life story. From her unwelcome birth through her painful Yorkshire childhood, Lucy illuminates her growing fascination with music and language, both of which helped provide her means of escape.But Lucy now must struggle to prove her innocence in the murder of Lily. Alas, the first person she must convince is herself. "The defendant must decide how to plead. And here is my plea. Not guilty, but not not guilty.... I, of all people, should not be too hasty to judge." As she probes ever deeper into the enigmatic mind of Lucy Fly, Susanna Jones creates a brilliantly rendered drama of psychological suspense in which the ghostly vestiges of guilt, the thin line between love and obsession, and the seeming clarity of language combine to cloud the judgment of both character and reader alike.