Severely injured, he does not know if he will survive the night. Reflecting on the evening's dreadful events, wondering if he could have done anything to alter them, his thoughts begin to drift. He begins to contemplate his remarkable life, his dysfunctional family, and the unfortunate prospect that he may have to soon answer for his life to God. While vividly recalling the most amusing, distressing, bizarre, and disturbing events of his life, he soon comes to realize "the monster you know is far easier to deal with than the monster you don't!" Will he get the miracle he needs to make it through the night? If so, will he finally find peace? Author's Note: This book deals with sensitive topics, and is intended for mature audiences only.

    A brilliant tale of ineptitude, self-righteousness, and human folly, it combines the mordant wit of W. Somerset Maugham with a sense of humor reminiscent of P.G. Wodehouse.When Dr. Sydney Prout is named the head of the United Nations mission to Elephant Island, he believes he is more than ready to meet the challenge of guiding its primitive inhabitants into the post-Colonial era, and eventually, full independence. But neither his many academic credentials nor the Journal of Race Relations have prepared Dr. Prout to reckon with the unrepentant bloody-mindedness of the natives, or anticipate the inventive ways their tribal philosophers will incorporate the most unlikely aspects of modern civilization into their religious lore and traditional way of life.Author Owen Stanley is an Australian explorer, a philosopher, and a poet who speaks seven languages. He is at much at home in the remote jungles of the South Pacific as flying his Staudacher aerobatic plane, deep-sea diving, or translating the complete works of Charles Darwin into Tok Pisin.

    First US publication for the Scottish Spence.Neil McGraw is a lad in Glasgow, an only child, the son of a dour undertaker permanently embittered by his wife's death during childbirth. Whenever the boy misbehaves, he's locked in the basement among the coffins, so it's not surprising he asks every body: What happens when you die? Against his will, he finds himself learning the trade. This is less gloomy than it sounds. The story moves at a good clip as the resilient Neil experiments with drinking and dating.The crisis comes when his dad finds him and his girl making out in a coffin. Soon, it's Neil's turn to lock his old man, dead drunk, into the basement, before hightailing it to the London of the Swinging '60s. A friendly queer, Abe Morris, offers him a crash pad, no strings attached, where Neil finds drugs, straight sex, and Zen. The party ends when Abe, stoned, is killed in traffic and Spence abandons conventional narrative to send Neil hopscotching around the world before depositing him, 15 years later, beside the funeral pyres of the Ganges. Here, he gets very sick but is rescued by a vision in a sari: Lila, a Londoner, back home for her father's funeral. The two fall in love and marry, lickety-split, before Neil is summoned back to Glasgow. His father has died, leaving him the business, which Neil gives a hippie twist, producing brightly painted coffins in unusual shapes, with Lila a business partner.The mood is light and buoyant, but novelistic concerns (what makes Lila tick? why do the couple decide not to have kids?) are shelved in favor of a scrapbook of original last rites, seasoned with Eastern mysticism. There's an appealing freshness to Spence's writing; too bad he gives up on credible plotting and characterization.

    Elias is a Christian Arab living on the eastern side of the newly divided city, and Lila is a Jew living on the western side. A growing conflict between their cultures casts a heavy shadow over the region and their burgeoning relationship. Between them lie not only a wall of stone and barbed wire but also the bitter enmity of two nations at war.Told in the voice of Elias as he looks back upon the long years of his life, About the Night is a timely story of how hope can nourish us, loss can devastate us, and love can carry us beyond the boundaries that hold human beings apart.

    She and her rebellious brother, Hemantha, grow up in Araliya Gardens, a tropical paradise full of orchids, araliyas and mango trees. Their neighbours Bala and Violet are Christian Tamils whose gentle, handsome son Niranjan is Hemantha's best friend. When Priyanthi is older, the two families spend a holiday together by the sea. Priyanthi and Niranjan's eyes are opened up to a strange world outside their protected existence. While Hemantha smokes cigarettes and chases girls, they meet Sena, a toddy tapper who swings through the coconut trees to collect sap, and surprises them with his quiet wisdom. Their friendship with him marks their lives indelibly. When Priyanthi and Niranjan return home they have fallen in love. But it is an unthinkable match to both their families, and to a society riven with ethnic divisions. On a hot July day that year the streets of Colombo explode into frenzied violence as mobs begin to hunt and murder Tamils and burn and loot their property. The dark secret Priyanthi and Niranjan have been hiding leads to betrayal and tragedy, as an inferno of hatred from which none of them will escape unscathed, overcomes their peaceful neighbourhood. This is a deeply moving, disturbing novel about families and lovers wrenched apart by deep racial and political divides.

    54 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more – everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Shantaram: A Novel. This detailed literature summary also contains Topics for Discussion on Shantaram: A Novel by Gregory David Roberts.

    It was Saturday and a half-holiday; it was that one day of all the year when the seasons change places when winter is visibly worsted and summer with warmth and relaxation bathing and tennis and motor trips in the moonlight becomes again a reality.

    Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.

    Marcus wants nothing more than to indulge in drink, drugs and women.But when he meets the plot-holders on the Butterfly Lane allotments--Sophia, a charming, but troubled, woman in the midst of a spiritual crisis; Alex, his fiery, Greek neighbour, who covets both Marcus’s plot and a mysterious book that belonged to his grandfather; and Benjamin, a shadowy recluse--the reason for his inheritance becomes clear.

    She spends her childhood and adolescence traveling constantly and changing identities. In adulthood, she finds it impossible to stop. Haunted by an inability to remember her early childhood, she moves restlessly from city to city, abandoning lovers along with way, possibly still followed by a private detective who has pursued her for years. Then her latest lover follows her from New York to Montreal, determined to learn her secrets and make sure she s safe. Last Night in Montreal is a story of love, amnesia, compulsive travel, the depths and the limits of family bonds, and the nature of obsession. In this extraordinary debut, Emily St. John Mandel casts a powerful spell that captures the reader in a gritty, youthful world charged with an atmosphere of mystery, promise and foreboding where small revelations continuously change our understanding of the truth and lead to desperate consequences. Mandel's characters will resonate with you long after the final page is turned.

    An escaped prisoner encounters horrendous struggles - a traumatised woman over turns his life completely - will he ever prove his innocence or is he in fact guilty? Astonishing revelations are unveiled about who he is! Ironically, the injustices the pair suffer conclude in the same dramatic final twist!

     The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected.

    Hold your breath. Justin wants a sex life, not a sex death. Rebecca has breasts but doesn't understand them. She needs to talk to Dostoevsky about erections, hairy armpits and firing squads. Life is difficult. Steve wants cash so he can enjoy his trendy body. He wants Carly too, but she just wants a never-ending orgasm. Johnny wants to be touched and, if possible, he'd like to seem happy. Colin wants to know why tits make his fists clench.This is their story. They try their best. They drag their feet through the fashions, the foul, the famous and the drunk of twenty-first century Britain. They're looking for happiness. What they find is friction.

    To which I say something like: ‘People are infinitely complex.’ But I say it in such a way—so pregnant with misanthropy—that it’s obvious I hate her.​Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular – the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week – a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.Initially bonded by their wit and sharp eye for the colleges’ mix of material wealth and moral poverty, Michaela and Eve soon discover how fragile friendship is, and how capable of betrayal they both are.​Written with a strikingly contemporary voice that is both wickedly clever and incisive, issues of consent, class and institutional privilege, and feminism become provocations for enduring philosophical questions we face today.

    But when a quiet tragedy and an unwelcome letter interrupt Toby's sedate existence, he needs his housemates to find some direction in their lives. Leah Pilgrim has watched the tenants of the house over the road for several years, and when the owner of 31 Silversmith Road asks her for advice, he opens the door not only to the eccentric building across the street - but to five lives in various stages of turmoil. Can Toby and Leah help these misfits to grow up, move on and move out? And in doing so, can they make their own dreams come true? Hidden : A trail of blood winding through a squalid flat in Margate leads DCI Dave Gosworth to the body of Jacqui Jennings, her skull smashed with a chisel. For Dave it is just the start of a long and puzzling case...Forty miles away in South London a young single mother named Melanie Stenning is blissfully unaware of Jacqui's life and death. But that trail of blood will one day lead straight to her door - with terrifying repercussions. For Melanie is about to fall in love with a stranger...Fourteen months later, Melanie has a new husband, a new baby and a new home on the isolated Kent coast. But when her seven-year-old daughter Poppy disappears, she is forced to question everything in her new life, including the man she loves. Because DCI Dave Goswrth has come knocking - with some chilling questions... The Two Mrs Robinsons: Anna lives with Oliver Robinson and their 3-year-old son Charlie. They met when she worked as a waitress at his restaurant; he had recently separated and she was a shoulder to cry on. But friendship turned to love. Now she juggles motherhood with part-time work and she couldn't be happier. Or perhaps she could? Oliver has never divorced his first wife Eve who is everything Anna is not. Eve insists on making herself part of their lives and her demands soak up much of their time and income. Anna understands that Oliver needs to support his two teenage children, but why should they keep Eve too? The situation looks set to grumble on indefinitely unless someone or something shakes it up. And something does - it's called Fate. Oliver is killed in a car crash, leaving both women shattered. How will they react to this appalling tragedy? Will it drive them further apart, or force them to cut their losses and pull together for the sake of their children and their futures?