The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and the desire to die."Cyril Wong continues to explore the nuances of relationships, in language that is lyrical, beautifully crafted, and erotically charged. There are several fine love poems that reach out to embrace a common humanity. Wong swims into the undercurrents of family tensions, hidden desires, and the meaning of a self... as well as questioning our understanding of both life and death."- Rebecca Edwards, author of Scar Country and Holiday Coast Medusa"Reading Cyril Wong is always to encounter risk, the painful suturing of art and life, trials of faith and baptisms of fire. I have only the deepest respect for someone who has razed the walls between the private and the public, and in doing so, carved more space for all of us."- Alfian Sa'at, author of One Fierce Hour and A History of Amnesia

    Asian American Studies. Is there a relationship between the population density of Tokyo and the pinkest part of a hamburger? Can one touch the inside of a noun to learn the difference between one bicycle and a field of bicycles? How close is yellow to need? How far are human fears from the fears of insects? Through a sequence of prose investigations, directions, theoretical performances, and character sketches, Sawako Nakayasu's TEXTURE NOTES presses itself against everything. Here is a book of liminal cartography, where textures are percolated by thought and propelled by feeling, where intellectual frottage meets sunlight, moonlight, the pain of seeing something beautiful and an entire town enamored by a simple rock. Once again, Nakayasu's writing explodes with genre-bending fury and fine-tuned improvisation, leaving in its wake a largess of feeling for the things of the world.

    But when she starts working for the sexy and mysterious Noah Cutler, Charlotte can’t help but dream about the gorgeous billionaire, even though she knows it’s just a fantasy. Men like Noah – gorgeous, dark, and driven-- usually aren’t interested in women like her. Noah Cutler is a man who doesn’t take no for an answer. His drive to go after exactly what he wants has made him one of the most powerful men in the city. And while he could have his pick of any woman, his sights are set on Charlotte. And he won’t stop until he’s taken control of every inch of her deliciously curvy body… HIS TWISTED GAME (BOOKS 1-4) One family with devastating secrets… Avery Buchanan has always hated her older stepbrother, Cole. With his piercing blue eyes and ripped body, Cole has gotten everything handed to him, floating through school and life effortlessly. One girl who will never forget… But when Cole leaves Avery and their dysfunctional family behind and heads to New York City to create Buchanan Enterprises, one of the most successful tech firms in the world, Avery vows never to forgive him. One man who won’t take no for an answer… After getting kicked out of the house by her mentally ill mother, Avery has no choice but to ask her stepbrother for help. Cole agrees to let her stay with him, under one condition – that she follow his rules, whatever they are, no questions asked. Cole is used to getting what he wants – and what he wants is Avery, no matter how wrong it is.... OBSESSED WITH HIM (BOOKS 1-3) Some promises are meant to be broken… Twenty-year-old Olivia Reilly has promised herself to one man and one man only – her best friend and soulmate, Declan Keene. And she’s kept that promise, through countless foster homes and moves across state. She’s never even kissed a boy – all because of a vow she made to Declan years ago. There’s only one problem. She doesn’t know where Declan is. Enter Colt Cannon. When Olivia starts working for the sexy and dangerous bad boy, she asks him to help her find Declan. Surely someone with Colt’s money and power will be able to track him down. Colt agrees, but he also demands something of Olivia in return. Something dark, sexual, and dangerous that will test her will and push her self-control to its limits...

    The tragedy sets in motion a dangerous quest for truth that pulls Tusker into a sinister plot spanning 75 years, from World War II Ceylon to modern day Sri Lanka. Along the way, he matches wits with a psychopathic mercenary, discovers a long lost ship with an explosive secret, and falls for a beautiful marine biologist who is at least as strong as he is. In the end, Tusker finds that the truth may lie at the bottom of the sea, with only one way back to the surface. Depth Charge is an old school thriller in the tradition of Fleming, Maclean, and Cussler, with an eye for detail, cunning villains, and narrow escapes. The story is full of wartime secrets, the intersection of religion and politics, and the arcane world of deep technical diving. It takes readers from the smoky halls of 1940s London to the volatile, seductive heat of Sri Lanka and sixty fathoms under the Indian Ocean.

    It's an earnest attempt to celebrate youth, their life, aspirations, confusions and their love stories..The novel is set in Jaipur. The plot of the story revolves around two central characters- Anurag and Neha. Anurag narrates the story. He is a middle class boy who comes to Jaipur to fulfill his father's dream (Mere Bete Ka Bhi Bada Package Hoga). He meets Neha. A series of exciting incidents and meetings later, Anurag and Neha to realize they are becoming more than just friends. But as fate would have it, the blooming love story sees a twist in tale when Anurag meets Komal, a family friend's daughter.Meanwhile, Prateek and Bhupi who are roommates with Anurag are facing an emotional turmoil in their personal lives. This affects Anurag's love life. How will Anurag get out of it? Will he be able to resolve his friends' problems? Whom will he say, I love you? Will he fulfill his father's dream? In a nutshell, Kulfi and Cappuccino" is definitely readable. You will love to keep it for a second read too.

    "While the new sentence--the prose wing of Language writing--strips narrative down to pointed sets of shifting referents, Lu, in her debut, knowingly resuscitates it, creating a precise and humorous elegy to the self, and to its self-subversions. This quasi-bildungsroman charts the emergence of an 'I' (not 'P' and not 'Pamela, ' though the three characters do appear together) into a 20-something Bay Area, with memories of a suburban childhood close on her heels.... This is a book of extraordinary philosophical subtlety and clarity, one that manages to tell a beautiful story in spite of itself"--Publishers Weekly.

    Her work as a translator draws her into an underworld of family-controlled drug cartels operating out of South America, and she falls in love with a son in one such family. Pregnant, she is kidnapped to an island off the coast of Colombia and slowly tricked into a dependence on cocaine. Her narrative - violent and bizarre, but also riveting, erotic and filled with the heady flamboyance of orchids - runs parallel to her account of life in "Death Clinic," as Death Row is called at the Heaven Valley Facility for Women. It is a moving story of friendship amongst three female inmates - portrayed with devastating wit - who share only the fact that they each have a date with the executioner.Cargo of Orchids swings through comedy and tragedy to shed a gradual, eerie light on the questions of guilt and innocence and moral ambiguity that lie at its heart.Excerpt from Cargo of Orchids:"Despite the freight of anger she carries, Rainy seems so frail it is hard to imagine her giving birth to anything heavier than tears. Rainy gave birth to twins and six months later left them on the railway tracks. She claims it prejudiced the jury. If she'd smothered them or driven them off a pier, it would have been more socially acceptable.-- But abandoning your kids on the tracks wasn't in fashion. She wishes now she'd gone out drinking for the evening instead, but she didn't have enough money to hire a babysitter and pay for the beer."

    Obejas has been the model of a writer for me in every way--a master in her aesthetics, an inspiration in her politics, fearless and vital in every page. The Tower of the Antilles is another brilliant collection, a story of many Cubas, intensely personal and political, erotic and cerebral. I found myself holding my breath as I devoured this book, as I navigated the various avenues of the body, the blood, and all those seemingly impossible roads that lead to a place we try to call home."--Porochista Khakpour, author of The Last Illusion"These stories are like a long dream of many parts, mixed desire, love, longing, anger—Obejas is a master of the human, able to conjure her characters’ heartbeats right under your fingertips, their breaths in your ears."--Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night "Achy Obejas's new story collection begins and ends with a question: What is your name? The answer is an abounding one. Counterrevolutionaries, the witnesses to the arrival of Columbus's caravels, poets, Supermán--the characters in these stories, in all their riveting variety, name themselves as Cuban, and are bound in complex ways by the geography of their hearts, if not the geography beneath their feet. An audacious and remarkable read!"--Chantel Acevedo, author of The Distant MarvelsPraise for Achy Obejas:"Obejas writes like an angel, which is to say: gloriously...one of Cuba's most important writers."--Junot DíazThe Cubans in Achy Obejas's story collection The Tower of the Antilles are haunted by an island: the island they fled, the island they've created, the island they were taken to or forced from, the island they long for, the island they return to, and the island that can never be home again.In "Supermán," several possible story lines emerge about a 1950s Havana sex-show superstar who disappeared as soon as the revolution triumphed. "North/South" portrays a migrant family trying to cope with separation, lives on different hemispheres, and the eventual disintegration of blood ties. "The Cola of Oblivion" follows the path of a young woman who returns to Cuba, and who inadvertently uncorks a history of accommodation and betrayal among the family members who stayed behind during the revolution. In the title story, "The Tower of the Antilles," an interrogation reveals a series of fantasies about escape and a history of futility.With language that is both generous and sensual, Obejas writes about lives beset by events beyond individual control, and poignantly captures how history and fate intrude on even the most ordinary of lives.

    His daughter, Stella, is on the verge of moving away to college; his lover, Jared, is pressing him for commitment; and his favorite watering hole—a ramshackle dive presided over by Bob the Bartender—is transforming into a karaoke hotspot. The story is set in a neighborhood that is also changing, gentrification inciting the ire of the established community. Upon the unexpected death of one of the bar’s regulars, Juan is sent reeling, and a series of upheavals follow as he both seeks and spurns intimacy, pondering the legacy of distant parents and a failed marriage and grappling with his sexuality—all the while cycling and dating, drinking at Nicks Lounge, and parenting a determined and defiant child-become-woman. When his incarcerated father dies and Stella reveals she’s pregnant, Juan is forced to examine the emotional bonds that both hold and hinder him, to reassess his ideas of commitment, of friendship, of love. His encounters with various characters—his mother, his ex-wife, a middle-aged punker, an aspiring acupuncturist, a dapper veteran—lead Juan to the realization that he himself must change to thrive. This is a story of making family and making mistakes, of rending and of mending. As a Latinx queer father with a mixed-race daughter, Juan exemplifies the ways identity connects and divides us. With wit, insight, and tenderness, Big Familia explores the complexities of desire, devotion, and the mysteries of the heart.

    Included are such favorites as "My father moved through dooms of love" and "anyone lived in a pretty how town," along with the usual Cummings dazzle of satirical epigrams, love poems, and syntactical anagrams.This edition is published in a uniform format with Is 5, Tulips & Chimneys, ViVa, XAIPE, and No Thanks.

    . .Delilah Monroe has done everything in her power to keep her three daughters strong since the death of her husband. And a big part of that connection is their singing group, Delilah's Daughters. Veronica, Roxanne, and Alisha each have their own unique sense of self, but they all share the dream of Delilah's Daughters hitting the Billboard charts.Now, just as they enter the final round of a national talent show, a record producer approaches Veronica with the promise of fame . . . if she goes solo. Then the man Delilah has always leaned on wants more from her than just friendship, and someone from her past comes calling with a shocking secret. Will Delilah be able to hold her family together?

    There is no mains water, no petrol and no news. Towns and cities are chaotic and dangerous. Who will survive the months ahead without electricity? But out in the country, Sandra is determined to keep going. Can she keep her family healthy through the long, wet winter? And can they all adapt to life without power?

     Leutnant Hausser, a young experienced infantry officer with the 76th Infantry Division is assigned with a handful of men to the south of Stalingrad. As the fighting heightens in the city, the officer and his men are sent to bolster the defences of their allies, the Romanians. The front is relatively quiet, most believe the Russian Army is finished. The end of the bitter war in the east may only be days away. Thinking of loved ones and home, they await the conclusion of the battle, comforted by promises that the victorious outcome will decide the war…that it will soon be all over. It may only be a matter of time before they see their families again. Daily life has become more relaxed, in warm bunkers and well dug defences, they write letters and socialise with their allies. It may soon be time to go home. As the German Sixth Army discovers just how vicious the fighting in Stalingrad can become, they take troops from their flanks in final attempts to take the city before the onset of 'another bitter Russian winter.' One last push will finish the Russians once and for all. The German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, has virtually driven the Red Air Force from the skies. The Russian high command, STAVKA, are secretly planning to turn the tide of the war in the southern sector of the front as they see the weaker German allies occupy defensive positions either side of the city that holds Stalin's name. As the Russian offensive engulfs the flanks around Stalingrad, the young officer and his men desperately begin a battle for survival against bitter temperatures and time, oblivious to what the overall picture may be…and what their future holds. Not everything is as it seems in the deepest cold of winter as a small group of men combat nature and a vicious and cunning enemy motivated by revenge to survive and escape. With temperatures dropping to minus 25 to 35 degrees Celsius and a vicious struggle for survival against both nature and the cruelties of war, the portrayal of individual human reaction to fate and historical events is a gripping insight into the soldier on the frontline, thousands of miles from the decisions that will forge their individual destinies. Having spent thirty years studying World War 2 and in particular, the Russian Front, these offerings are based on historical fact. The characters are fictitious, attempting to portray a realistic account of what the battle would have been like for individual soldiers. All units and actions are in accordance with actual events, including propaganda, deployment and individual division engagements. Bloody Iced Bullet is available as an E-Book on Kindle, paperback in US book stores and via mail order across the world. The author aims to provide a thoroughly enjoyable and imaginative reading experience at an affordable price for the reader. All three works from the author's World War 2 Series concentrating on Stalingrad have achieved Best Seller status on Amazon in the UK and many more stories are outlined. Imagination is personal, free and to be cherished.

    a lovely blend of humour, sexual comedy and pathos' Daily Express 'A rollicking tale of a Welsh sailor with a girl in every port, but only one true love at home...Thomas has a rare gift for words...This is his best book and a celebration of his robust talents, which combine flesh with imagination. He always had a narrative verve, and this saga develops it into a turn of the wheel of life. Revolving Jones comes back at last to his eternal miss, and hopefully, Leslie Thomas will achieve a revolution in his reputation' The Times 'This exciting adventure story is also one man's pilgrimage, a lifetime's odyssey, a ritually layered tale of the quest for humour and love' Daily Mail 'He inhabits that "bestseller author" territory that includes the likes of Jeffrey Archer, Jack Higgins and Ken Follett, but he is a far better writer than any of them' Marcel Berlins, Sunday Times