Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast.

    . . To Steph, working as a bar hostess in Japan sounds too good to be true. Friends say she can earn a fortune simply by flirting with drunk businessmen, and there's no sex involved - honest. Old friends, Julia and Annabel, are earning piles of cash in Tokyo and say hostessing is perfectly safe. But once in Japan, Steph realises Julia is a shadow of her former self and Annabel has disappeared. No one cares that Annabel's gone - least of all a troubled and secretive Julia. As Steph searches for her missing friend, she is lured into gritty, glamorous Roppongi - an exotic world of sex, modern-day geishas and easy money. There she meets Mama San, a charismatic and powerful hostess club owner, who has worked in the shadowy Japanese sex industry all her life and knows everything about pleasing men. But the longer Steph stays in Tokyo's sex district, the less finding Annabel seems to matter. Steph soon realises she must discover what's happened to Annabel, or risk selling a part of herself she'll never get back.

    The action-packed storylines retain all the impact of the authors' own words; photos and narrative illustrations help readers to absorb the full flavor of the original novels. Fact-filled boxes examine the books' themes, characters, and each author's life and times. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea includes a map of the journey and explores marine life and oceanography in Jules Verne's time. A specially researched map of Crusoe's exotic island gives facts on its flora and fauna.

    Included are also links to free audiobook verions of the novels.Edith Wharton was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930.Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt. Novels included: •The Touchstone, 1900•The Valley of Decision, 1902•Sanctuary, 1903•The House of Mirth, 1905•Madame de Treymes, 1907•The Fruit of the Tree, 1907•Ethan Frome, 1911•The Reef, 1912•The Custom of the Country, 1913•Bunner Sisters, 1916•Summer, 1917•The Marne, 1918•The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)•The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922 Free audiobooks available for: •The Touchstone, 1900•The Valley of Decision, 1902 - not available as audiobook at this time•Sanctuary, 1903•The House of Mirth, 1905•Madame de Treymes, 1907•The Fruit of the Tree, 1907•Ethan Frome, 1911•The Reef, 1912•The Custom of the Country, 1913•Bunner Sisters, 1916•Summer, 1917 - not available as audiobook at this time•The Marne, 1918•The Age of Innocence, 1920 (Pulitzer Prize winner)•The Glimpses of the Moon, 1922Enjoy!

    

    Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination.Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers.Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by "the Monster with 21 Faces", Lady Joker has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.

    He is grieving for the loss of his wife when the tunnel collapses and traps the bus inside. In the darkness that follows, he manages to fumble out of the bus with the only other survivor, an astute and gentle woman who reminds him of his late wife. Without any light to guide them and with only each other to depend on, they try to escape the stifling darkness and along the way find themselves confronted by their pasts and given their last chance at intimacy, and ultimately, absolution.A realist story that plays with surreal elements, the tale poses a simple question: what is the meaning of hope?

    These journeys were part of his religious training as a Buddhist monk as well as literary inspiration for his memorable and often painfully moving poems. The works he wrote during this time comprise a record of his quest for spiritual enlightenment.Although Santoka was master of conventional-style haiku, which he wrote in his youth, the vast majority of his works, and those for which he is most admired, are in free-verse form. He also left a number of diaries in which he frequently recorded the circumstances that had led to the composition of a particular poem or group of poems. In "For All My Walking, " master translator Burton Watson makes Santoka's life story and literary journeys available to English-speaking readers and students of haiku and Zen Buddhism. He allows us to meet Santoka directly, not by withholding his own opinions but by leaving room for us to form our own. Watson's translations bring across not only the poetry but also the emotional force at the core of the poems.This volume includes 245 of Santoka's poems and of excerpts from his prose diary, along with a chronology of his life and a compelling introduction that provides historical and biographical context to Taneda Santoka's work.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    That quixotic quest for understanding has drawn much of the world’s population eastward ever since Buddha first assumed the lotus position, and writer Mara Altman needed to know why. So she flew around the world in search of an answer not only to that mystery, but also to the deeper questions that plague all who yearn to define the meaning of life. What Altman found in her wild, comic 18-day reporting trek across India – a journey that took her on a laborious, 37-hour cross-country train trip, onto a mystical flat rock by the ocean in Pondicherry, and eventually into the emergency room of a cut-rate Bangalore hospital – will make you laugh, learn and ponder. By the end of her epic odyssey, it will also take you unexpectedly and thrillingly close to the pulsing heart of human existence. After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Mara Altman worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm, which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. She has published seven bestselling Kindle Singles, including the #1 bestseller Bearded Lady, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. Cover design by Adil Dara

    

    The title of his most famous work, Ab Urbe Condita ("From the Founding of the City"), expresses the scope and magnitude of Livy's undertaking. He wrote in a mixture of annual chronology and narrative. Livy claims that lack of historical data prior to the sacking of Rome in 387 BC by the Gauls made his task more difficult. He wrote the majority of his works during the reign of Augustus. However, he is often identified with an attachment to the Roman Republic and a desire for its restoration. His writing style was poetic and archaic in contrast to Caesar's and Cicero's styles. Also, he often wrote from the Romans' opponent's point of view in order to accent the Romans' virtues in their conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean.

    These stories are told with the freshness and directness one has come to expect of Michael Anthony.

    This among others is a fundamental reason why a thorough and truthful study and retelling of this history is needed. The study of Hindu history is also a study of values and inspiration and a profound spiritual yearning that subconsciously continues to guide Hindus. It is also what makes India a unique and distinctive country which is not primarily defined by its politics but by its philosophy and spirituality. The essays in this work both tangentially and explicitly bring out these aspects. "10 Lessons from Hindu History in 10 Episodes" is envisaged as a popular narrative without overlooking or taking liberties with historical accuracy.

    His action-packed stories dealt with eternal themes: honor, deceit, passion, betrayal, loyalty, courage, love. His settings were historically accurate, his prose riveting, and his characters colorful: good guys, bad guys, tough, roughs, sidekicks, and saints. TRAIL MIX II gathers four popular Louis L'Amour stories, performed by Willie Nelson: "Mistakes Can Kill You," "The Nester and the Piute," "Trail to Pie Town," and "Big Medicine."