The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze

The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze

Simon Winchester

Nonfiction / History / Travel

Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, the Yangtze River, the symbolic heart of China pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Connecting China's heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. To travel those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China, and Simon Winchester takes us along with him as he encounters the essence of China--its history and politics, its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and its people in remote and almost inaccessible places. This is travel writing at its best: lively, informative, and thoroughly enchanting.
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The Cinema at Starlight Creek

The Cinema at Starlight Creek

Alli Sinclair

Romance / History / Travel

A heart-stirring novel of loss, love and new hope set against the glamorous backdrop of 1950s Hollywood and a small Australian country town. How far would you go to follow your dream? Queensland, 1994: When location manager Claire Montgomery arrives in rural Queensland to work on a TV mini-series, she's captivated by the beauty of Starlight Creek and the surrounding sugarcane fields. Working in a male-dominated industry is challenging, but Claire has never let that stop her pursuing her dreams-until now. She must gain permission to film at Australia's most historically significant art deco cinema, located at Starlight Creek. But there is trouble ahead. The community is fractured and the cinema's reclusive owner, Hattie Fitzpatrick, and her enigmatic great nephew, Luke Jackson, stand in her way, putting Claire's career-launching project-and her heart-at risk. Hollywood, 1950: Lena Lee has struggled to find the break that...
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The Way We Live Now

The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope

Fiction / Travel / History

One of the greatest and most relevant works of Victorian literature, The Way We Live Now is a powerful satire on avarice and other vices that have come to shape and blemish modern society. Featuring a variety of characters who resort to swindle and deceit all in the interest on monetary gain, The Way We Live Now is a moral rumination that is easily Trollope’s masterpiece.
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Falling for Provence

Falling for Provence

Alison Roberts

History / Travel

A dreamy, escapist romance from Alison RobertsShe came to Provence in the hope of a fresh start, she never expected she would fall in love and find herself along the way.Inheriting an old stone house in Provence, along with her sisters is the catalyst Ellie Gilchrist needs to put some distance between her and her grief. But when she arrives at the run down 'La Masionette' hidden amongst overgrown lavender and ivy, she wonders if she's made a mistake?That is until she meets her guarded neighbour Julien and his adorable little boy, and she's surprised by the flutters of excitement she never thought she'd feel again. Add in rescuing a stray dog and she has the much needed distraction she needs. Ellie decides to stay temporarily and work on bringing the little house back to life again. If only she can ignore the fireworks that explode every time she's around Julien. They both have hearts they want to protect, but a little temporary affaire can't be...
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The Arctic Challenge

The Arctic Challenge

Bear Grylls

Outdoors & Nature / Travel / Nonfiction

The eleventh in the fun 12-book collectible series for young readers from survival expert and Chief Scout BEAR GRYLLS.Joe gets on well with everyone, enjoys camp and all the activities and is always up for a challenge. But he has a big problem with remembering directions and following instructions. When he gets a mysterious compass from a friend, he sets off on an adventure with Bear Grylls in the freezing cold Arctic tundra, where knowing where you're going is crucial to survival...Each book in this fun new 12-book series from BEAR GRYLLS follows a different child on the outdoor activity camp. Once they are given the magical compass, they meet the inspirational adventurer in an amazing place and learn new skills and facts they can take with them back to their real life.
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Miss or Mrs.?

Miss or Mrs.?

Wilkie Collins

Fiction / Mystery / Travel

Persons possessed of sluggish livers and tender hearts find two serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of a cruise at sea. It is exceedingly difficult to get enough walking exercise; and it is next to impossible (where secrecy is an object) to make love without being found out. Reverting for the moment to the latter difficulty only, life within the narrow and populous limits of a vessel may be defined as essentially life in public. . . .
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Destiny

Destiny

Tim Parks

Literature & Fiction / Nonfiction / Travel

Three months after returning to England, Christopher Burton, receives a phone-call at the reception desk of the Rembrandt Hotel, Knightsbridge that informs him of his son's suicide. But why on receiving this terrible news, does Burton immediately decide that he must leave his Italian wife of thirty years standing? Why does he find it so difficult to focus on his grief for his son? Intensely dramatic, dark and, against all odds, hilariously funny, Destiny is a satisfying story and a profound meditation on marriage and identity. Parks gives us a frightening experience of what it means to tread the narrow line between sanity and psychosis.
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Just Like Mother

Just Like Mother

Anne Heltzel

Mystery & Thrillers / Young Adult / Travel

*A Best Books of May title by Bustle, CrimeReads, i09 and more!**A Most Anticipated title by LitReactor, Book Riot, The Line Up, Goodreads,Bloody Disgusting, and more!*Spine-chilling and sharp, Anne Heltzel's Just Like Mother is a modern gothic from a fresh new voice in horror, and "is set to be one of the year's most talked about books" (Andrea Bartz, New York Times bestselling author).The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in. For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything—and everyone—at a safe distance.When Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she's ever had. Soon she's spending more time at Andrea's remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn't even mind that her cousin's wealthy work friends clearly disapprove...
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Come Alive

Come Alive

Karina Halle

Romance / Travel / Chick Lit

It’s one thing to bring the woman you love back into your life. It’s another to try and keep her there. For Dex Foray, con­vinc­ing Perry Palomino to open her­self to their bur­geon­ing rela­tion­ship has been more chal­leng­ing than hunt­ing ghosts, bat­tling demons and stalk­ing Sasquatch com­bined. Add in the fact that the only way they can keep their Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror show run­ning is to take on a third part­ner in the form of the mys­te­ri­ous Max­imus Jacobs — all while inves­ti­gat­ing a sin­is­ter voodoo sect in New Orleans — and you’ve got the per­fect South­ern storm and a recipe for dis­as­ter. Luck­ily, Dex has never been one to back down, even when his life –and heart — are on the line.
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What's to Become of the Boy?: Or, Something to Do With Books

What's to Become of the Boy?: Or, Something to Do With Books

Heinrich Böll

Literature & Fiction / Travel / Short Stories

A vivid account of growing up poor, rebellious, and anti-Fascist in Nazi Germany What’s to Become of the Boy? is a spirited, insightful, and wonderfully sympathetic memoir about life during wartime written with the characteristic brilliance by one of the 20th-century’s most celebrated authors. It is both an essential autobiography of the Nobel Prizewinning author and a compelling memoir of being young and idealistic during an age of hardship and war. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Nine O'Clock

Nine O'Clock

Wilkie Collins

Fiction / Mystery / Travel

Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright. Collins was also a lifelong friend of the legendary writer Charles Dickens with whom he worked with on some plays and other fictional works. In total Collins was the author of 30 novels, 14 plays and more than 60 short stories with his best known works being The Woman in White and The Moonstone. This edition of Collins’ Nine O’Clock includes a Table of Contents.
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Burr Junior

Burr Junior

George Manville Fenn

Travel / Outdoors & Nature

George Manville Fenn (1831-1909) was a British writer. He worked as a teacher in Lincolnshire, until he became printer, editor and publisher of various magazines. He had eight children with his wife Susanna Leake, whom he had married in 1855. Most of his works are adventure stories for young readers, featuring Explorers, Smugglers, young Adventurers and Seamen. His adult novels offer critical social commentary on Victorian England, especially reconsidering economic questions. His works include: Hollowdell Grange (1866), Featherland (1866), Christmas Penny Readings (1867), The Blue Dragoons (1875), A Little World (1877), Begumbagh (1879), Bunyip Land (1880), My Patients (1883), The Golden Magnet (1884), The Chaplain\'s Craze (1886), Quicksilver (1888), Lady Maude\'s Mania (1890), The Weathercock (1892), Real Gold (1894), The Queen\'s Scarlet (1895), The Black Tor (1896), A Woman Worth Winning (1898), Draw Swords! (1898), A Crimson Crime (1899), The King\'s Sons (1900), Fitz the Filibuster (1903) and others. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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The Madman and the Pirate

The Madman and the Pirate

R. M. Ballantyne

Fiction / Children's / Travel

A Classic Tale... A beautiful island lying like a gem on the breast of the great Pacific—a coral reef surrounding, and a calm lagoon within, on the glass-like surface of which rests a most piratical-looking schooner. Such is the scene to which we invite our reader’s attention for a little while. At the time of which we write it was an eminently peaceful scene. So still was the atmosphere, so unruffled the water, that the island and the piratical-looking schooner seemed to float in the centre of a duplex world, where every cloudlet in the blue above had its exact counterpart in the blue below. No sounds were heard save the dull roar of the breaker that fell, at long regular intervals, on the seaward side of the reef, and no motion was visible except the back-fin of a shark as it cut a line occasionally on the sea, or the stately sweep of an albatross, as it passed above the schooner’s masts and cast a look of solemn inquiry upon her deck. But that schooner was not a pirate. She was an honest trader—at least so it was said—though what she traded in we have no more notion than the albatross which gazed at her with such inquisitive sagacity. Her decks were not particularly clean, her sails by no means snow-white. She had, indeed, four goodly-sized carronades, but these were not an extraordinary part of a peaceful trader’s armament in those regions, where man was, and still is, unusually savage. The familiar Union Jack hung at her peak, and some of her men were sedate-looking Englishmen, though others were Lascars and Malays, of the cut-throat type, of whom any wickedness might be expected when occasion served.
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Last Night

Last Night

Jennifer Powell

Chick Lit / Travel / Contemporary

Deep in the wildwood a blue meadow appears, birthplace of spirits who wish to destroy the people nearby. Deyant and her sister Mrinda are among the few who can reach that meadow and kill the creature inside. But the sisters have grown apart and Mrinda has a secret she has not shared, one that could put them both in danger. Will Deyant’s anger and Mrinda’s secret bring disaster upon them both?Deep in the wildwood a shining blue meadow appears, the birthplace of forest spirits with varying forms, all determined to destroy the people who live nearby. Deyant and her sister Mrinda are among the few of their folk with the power to walk the hidden paths that lead to the meadows. They alone have the ability to twist the connection between the wildwood and its spawn, killing the creature before it can emerge.But Deyant and Mrinda have grown apart as Mrinda prepares for her wedding to Johnah. Mrinda has embraced her fiance’s faith, a faith that disapproves of the magical work that has been the focus of Deyant’s life. And Mrinda has another secret that she has not shared with her sister, a secret that could put them both in danger as they walk the paths that lead to the meadow where the forest spawn awaits its birth.Will the sisters come together to defeat their ancient enemy? Or will Deyant’s anger and Mrinda’s secret bring disaster upon them both? Find out when you read this new fantasy short story by Jennifer Powell, a Clary Books presentation. (4100 words)"a truly original and enjoyable piece."
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