万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

Like Trees, Walking
Like Trees, Walking
Howard, Ravi
¥88.56
Based on the true story of a modern-day lynching in America, Ravi Howard's widely acclaimed debut novel exposes one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the American South.On the morning of March 21, 1981, in Mobile, Alabama, nineteen-year-old Michael Donald was found dead, his body badly beaten and hanging from a tree on Herndon Avenue. Brothers Paul and Roy Deacon of the Deacon Memorial Funeral Home are called upon to bury their close friend and classmate, and the experience will leave them forever changed. Along with other residents of their hometown, the Deacon brothers must struggle to understand the circumstances surrounding Donald's murder—the city's first lynching in more than sixty years and a gruesome reminder of racial inequalities in the New South.
The Hummingbird
The Hummingbird
Kiernan, Stephen P.
¥88.56
Deborah Birch is a seasoned hospice nurse who never gives up—not with her patients, not in her life. But her skills and experience are fully tested by the condition her husband, Michael, is in when he returns from his third deployment to Iraq. Tormented by nightmares, anxiety, and rage, Michael has become cold and withdrawn. Still grateful that he is home at last, Deborah is determined to heal him and restore their loving, passionate marriage.But Michael is not her only challenge. Deborah's primary patient is Barclay Reed, a retired history professor and fierce curmudgeon. An expert on the Pacific Theater of World War II, Barclay is suffering from terminal kidney cancer and haunted by ghosts from his past, including the academic scandal that ended his career.Barclay's last wish is for Deborah to read to him from his final and unfinished book—a little-known story from World War II that may hold the key to helping Michael conquer his demons. Together, nurse, patient, and soldier embark on an unforgettable emotional journey that transforms them all, offering astonishing insights into life and death, suffering and finding peace.Told with piercing empathy and heartbreaking realism, The Hummingbird is a masterful story of marital commitment, service to country, the battles we fight for those we love, learning to let go, and finding absolution through wisdom and acceptance.
When the Moon Is Low
When the Moon Is Low
Hashimi, Nadia
¥88.56
By turns astonishing, frightening, and triumphant, When the Moon Is Low chronicles one brave Afghan woman's odyssey to save her familyIn Kabul, we meet Fereiba, a schoolteacher who puts her troubled childhood behind her when she finds love in an arranged marriage. But Fereiba's comfortable life implodes when the Taliban rises to power and her family becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime. Forced to flee with her three children, Fereiba has one hope for survival: to seek refuge with her sister's family in London.Traveling with forged papers and depending on the kindness of strangers, Fereiba and the children make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness, the start of a harrowing journey that reduces her from a respected wife and mother to a desperate refugee.Eventually they fall into the shadowy underground network of the undocumented who haunt the streets of Europe's cities. And then, in a busy market square in Athens, their fate takes a frightening turn when Fereiba's teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family. Without his mother, Saleem is forced, abruptly and unforgivingly, to come of age in a world of human trafficking and squalid refugee camps.Heartbroken, Fereiba has no choice but to continue on with only her daughter and baby. Mother and son cross border after perilous border, risking their lives in the hope of finding a place where they can be reunited.
Playing Days
Playing Days
Markovits, Benjamin
¥88.56
“Excellent.” ?—The Times (London)Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother’s German citizenship.Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside Munich. It’s Ben’s first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it’s defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There’s Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author’s real life encounters with Dirk Nowitzki), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate’s child, and begins an affair that will change his life.“Markovits draws [himself] with exceptional delicacy. . . . This is the territory of the rites-of-passage novel, but it is territory that the author navigates with subtlety and poignancy.”—The Guardian (London)
Slim Down Now
Slim Down Now
Sass, Cynthia
¥88.56
Get ready to put aside all your calorie counting, appetite suppressing, no-pain-no-gain diets. Cynthia Sass, author of S.A.S.S. Yourself Slim and coauthor of Flat Belly Diet!, introduces the surprising superfood that is the secret to weight loss. Called “pulses,” this unique class of protein-rich carbs (including filling and satisfying lentils, beans, and chickpeas) actually boosts calorie- and fat-burning, whittles away belly fat, prevents snack attacks, and creates long-lasting energy. Plus, they’re gluten free, readily available, and affordable!In Slim Down Now, Cynthia Sass reveals the scientifi cally demonstrated power of pulses, which she has incorporated into a dynamic, fl exible weight-loss plan that focuses on how these supershredders can ultimately transform your body.The 30-day challenge asks you to put aside your usual weight-loss methods and adopt an entirely new approach to food, health, and weight management. You start with the four-day Rapid Pulse, where you make one simple recipe (a pudding!) daily for four days . . . but in those four days, you’ll lose up to 8 pounds! Then, you move on to the Daily Pulse, a 26-day program where you include one serving of pulse each day. Sass’s plan includes a simple DIY meal-building strategy you’ll love, as well as delicious, deprivation-free recipes, including a savory veggie quiche, garlicky shrimp scampi, and even oven-roasted potatoes. In fact, there is an entire chapter on desserts, including mouth-watering brownie bites and mini pumpkin spice muffi ns. The meal plan includes grocery lists and restaurant options and can be followed by gluten-free eaters, vegans, vegetarians, and omnivores alike.?In addition to this new approach to eating, Sass reveals that less exercise rather than more can actually be the key to successful weight loss. Forget feeling pressure to spend hours on an elliptical or at exhausting boot camp classes. With this program, exercise becomes a more organic part of your day, rather than that nagging item on your to-do list. Bonus: you’ll also learn a simple five minute technique that will boost your mood and overall happiness.?Sound too good to be trueWe promise it’s not. Get started today, and see the pounds melt away.
Church of Marvels
Church of Marvels
Parry, Leslie
¥88.56
A ravishing first novel set in vibrant, tumultuous turn-of-the-century New York City, where the lives of four outsiders become entwined, bringing irrevocable change to them allNew york, 1895. Sylvan Threadgill, a night-soiler cleaning out the privies behind the tenement houses, finds an abandoned newborn baby in the muck. An orphan himself, Sylvan rescues the child, determined to find where she belongs.Odile Church and her beautiful sister, Belle, were raised amid the applause and magical pageantry of the Church of Marvels, their mother's spectacular Coney Island sideshow. But the Church has burnt to the ground, their mother dead in its ashes. Now Belle, the family's star, has vanished into the bowels of Manhattan, leaving Odile alone and desperate to find her.A young woman named Alphie awakens to find herself trapped across the river in Blackwell's Lunatic Asylum–sure that her imprisonment is a ruse by her husband's vile, overbearing mother. On the ward she meets another young woman of ethereal beauty who does not speak, a girl with an extraordinary talent that might save them both.As these strangers' lives become increasingly connected, their stories and secrets unfold. Moving from the Coney Island seashore to the tenement-studded streets of the Lower East Side, a spectacular human circus to a brutal, terrifying asylum, Church of Marvels takes readers back to turn-of-the-century New York–a city of hardship and dreams, love and loneliness, hope and danger. In magnetic, luminous prose, Leslie Parry offers a richly atmospheric vision of the past in a narrative of astonishing beauty, full of wondrous enchantments, a marvelous debut that will leave readers breathless.
Queen of the Dark Things
Queen of the Dark Things
Cargill, C. Robert
¥88.56
Screenwriter and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill continues the story begun in his acclaimed debut Dreams and Shadows in this bold and brilliantly crafted tale involving fairies and humans, magic and monsters—a vivid phantasmagoria that combines the imaginative wonders of Neil Gaiman, the visual inventiveness of Guillermo del Toro, and the shocking miasma of William S. Burroughs.ix months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom, a realm of mystery and darkness beyond our own. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past—including one Colby considered a friend—have resurfaced to exact their revenge. As darkness gathers around the city and time runs out, Colby has to turn to forces even darker than those he once battled for aid.Following such masters as Lev Grossman, Erin Morgenstern, and Kim Harrison, C. Robert Cargill takes us deeper into an extraordinary universe of darkness and wonder, despair and hope to reveal the magic and monsters around us . . . and inside us.
Love Cemetery
Love Cemetery
Galland, China
¥88.56
By the eve of the Civil War, there were four million slaves in North America, and Harrison County was the largest slave-owning county in Texas. So when China Galland returned to research her family history there, it should not have surprised her to learn of unmarked cemeteries for slaves. "My daddy never let anybody plow this end of the field," a local matron told a startled Galland during a visit to her antebellum mansion. "The slaves are buried there." Galland's subsequent effort to help restore just one of these cemeteries Love Cemetery unearths a quintessential American story of prejudice, land theft, and environmental destruction, uncovering racial wounds that are slow to heal.Galland gathers an interracial group of local religious leaders and laypeople to work on restoring Love Cemetery, securing community access to it, and rededicating it to the memories of those buried there. In her attempt to help reconsecrate Love Cemetery, Galland unearths the ghosts of slavery that still haunt us today. Research into county historical records and interviews with local residents uncover two versions of history one black, one white. Galland unpacks these tangled narratives to reveal a history of shame of slavery and lynching, Jim Crow laws and land takings (the theft of land from African-Americans), and ongoing exploitation of the land surrounding the cemetery by oil and gas drilling. With dread she even discovers how her own ancestors benefited from the racial imbalance.She also encounters some remarkable, inspiring characters in local history. Surprisingly, the original deed for the cemetery's land was granted not by a white plantation owner, but by Della Love Walker, the niece of the famous African-American cowboy Deadwood Dick. Through another member of the Love Cemetery committee, Galland discovers a connection to Marshall's native son, James L. Farmer, a founder of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and organizer of the 1961 Freedom Riders. In researching local history, Galland also learns of the Colored Farmers' Alliance, a statewide group formed in the 19th century that took up issues ranging from low wages paid to cotton pickers to emigration to Liberia.By telling this one story of ultimate interracial and intergenerational cooperation, Galland provides a model of the kind of communal remembering and reconciliation that can begin to heal the deep racial scars of an entire nation.
Journal of the Dead
Journal of the Dead
Kersten, Jason
¥88.56
I killed and buried my best friend today ...When authorities found Raffi Kodikian -- barely alive -- four days after he and his friend David Coughlin became lost in Rattlesnake Canyon, they made a grim and shocking discovery. Kodikian freely admitted that he had stabbed Coughlin twice in the heart. Had there been a darker motive than mercyAnd how could anyone, under any circumstances, kill his best friend?Armed with the journal Kodikian and Coughlin carried into Rattle- snake Canyon, Jason Kersten re-creates in riveting detail those fateful days that led to the killing in an infamously unforgiving wilderness.
The Ghost in the House
The Ghost in the House
Thompson, Tracy
¥88.56
An award-winning reporter for the Washington Post, Tracy Thompson was thirty-four when she was hospitalized and put on suicide watch during a major depressive episode. This event, the culmination of more than twenty years of silent suffering, became the point of departure for an in-depth, groundbreaking book on depression and her struggle with the disease. The Beast shattered stereotypes and inspired countless readers to confront their own battles with mental illness. Having written that book, and having found the security of a happy marriage, Thompson assumed that she had learned to manage her illness. But when she took on one of the most emotionally demanding jobs of all being a mother depression returned with fresh vengeance.Very quickly Thompson realized that virtually everything she had learned up to then about dealing with depression was now either inadequate or useless. In fact, maternal depression was a different beast altogether. She tackled her problem head-on, meticulously investigating the latest scientific research and collecting the stories of nearly 400 mothers with depression. What she found was startling: a problem more widespread than she or any other mother struggling alone with this affliction could have imagined. Women make up nearly 12 million of the 19 million Americans affected by depression every year, experiencing episodes at nearly twice the rate that men do. Women suffer most frequently between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four not coincidentally, the primary childbearing years.The Ghost in the House, the result of Thompson's extensive studies, is the first book to address maternal depression as a lifelong illness that can have profound ramifications for mother and child. A striking blend of memoir and journalism, here is an invaluable resource for the millions of women who are white-knuckling their way through what should be the most satisfying years of their lives. Thompson offers her readers a concise summary of the cutting-edge research in this field, deftly written prose, and, above all, hope.
The Loveliest Woman in America
The Loveliest Woman in America
Gaston, Bibi
¥88.56
Her name was Rosamond Pinchot: hailed as "The Loveliest Woman in America," she was a niece of Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot; cousin to Edie Sedgwick; half sister of Mary Pinchot Meyer, JFK's lover; friend to Eleanor Roosevelt and Elizabeth Arden. At nineteen she was discovered aboard a cruise ship, at twenty-three she married the playboy scion of a political Boston family, but by thirty-three she was dead by her own hand. Seventy years later, her granddaughter, a noted landscape architect, received Rosamond's diaries and embarked on a search to discover the real Rosamond Pinchot.Unearthing what appeared to be a glamorous fairy-tale existence, Bibi Gaston discovers the roots of the ties that bind and break a family, and uncovers the legacy of two great American dynasties torn apart by her grandmother's untimely death. This is a tale of three lives and five generations, mothers and grandmothers, longing, holding on and letting go, men, beauty, diets, and letting beauty slip. This is the story of how we make the most of our brief, beautiful lives.
The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door
The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door
Bly, Robert
¥88.56
The great Persian poet Hafez is so beloved in Iran that almost every family there keeps his Divan close at hand. For some fifteen years, esteemed American poet and author Robert Bly has worked with the great Islamic scholar Leonard Lewisohn to produce this translation, which for the first time captures Hafez's nimbleness, his fierce humor, his astonishing range of thought, and his delight in love enabling English speakers to fully appreciate the true genius of this master of the ghazal form, one of the greatest inventions in the history of poetry.
This Life Is in Your Hands
This Life Is in Your Hands
Coleman, Melissa
¥88.56
Set on a rugged coastal homestead during the 1970s, This Life Is in Your Hands introduces a superb young writer driven by the need to uncover the truth of a childhood tragedy and connect anew with the beauty and vitality of the back-to-the-land ideal that shaped her early years.In the fall of 1968, Melissa Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue a handsome, idealistic young couple from well-to-do families pack a few essentials into their VW truck and abandon the complications of modern reality to carve a farm from the woods. They move to a remote peninsula on the coast of Maine and become disciples of Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of the homesteading bible Living the Good Life. On sixty acres of sandy, intractable land, Eliot and Sue begin to forge a new existence, subsisting on the crops they grow and building a home with their own hands.While they establish a happy family and achieve their visionary goals, the pursuit of a purer, simpler life comes at a price. Winters are long and lean, summers frenetic with the work of the harvest, and the distraction of the many young farm apprentices threatens the Colemans' marriage. Then, one summer day when Melissa is seven, her three-year-old sister, Heidi, wanders off and drowns in the pond where she liked to play. In the wake of the accident, ideals give way to human frailty, divorce, and a mother's breakdown and ultimately young Melissa is abandoned to the care of neighbors. What really happened, and who, if anyone, is to blame?This Life Is in Your Hands is the search to understand a complicated past; a true story, both tragic and redemptive, it tells of the quest to make a good life, the role of fate, and the power of forgiveness.
I Had a Hammer
I Had a Hammer
Aaron, Hank
¥88.56
The man who shattered Babe Ruth's lifetime home run record, Henry "Hammering Hank" Aaron left his indelible mark on professional baseball and the world. But the world also left its mark on him.I Had a Hammer is much more than the intimate autobiography of one of the greatest names in pro sports it is a fascinating social history of twentieth-century America. With courage and candor, Aaron recalls his struggles and triumphs in an atmosphere of virulent racism. He relives the breathtaking moment when, in the heat of hatred and controversy, he hit his 715th home run to break Ruth's cherished record an accomplishment for which Aaron received more than 900,000 letters, many of them vicious and racially charged. And his story continues through the remainder of his milestone-setting, barrier-smashing career as a player and, later, Atlanta Braves executive offering an eye-opening and unforgettable portrait of an incomparable athlete, his sport, his epoch, and his world.
Shifting
Shifting
Jones, Charisse
¥88.56
Based on the African American Women's Voices Project, Shifting reveals that a large number of African American women feel pressure to com-promise their true selves as they navigate America's racial and gender bigotry. Black women "shift" by altering the expectations they have for themselves or their outer appearance. They modify their speech. They shift "White" as they head to work in the morning and "Black" as they come back home each night. They shift inward, internalizing the searing pain of the negative stereotypes that they encounter daily. And sometimes they shift by fighting back.With deeply moving interviews, poignantly revealed on each page, Shifting is a much-needed, clear, and comprehensive portrait of the reality of African American women's lives today.
Dresden
Dresden
Taylor, Frederick
¥88.56
For decades it has been assumed that the Allied bombing of Dresden -- a cultured city famous for its china, chocolate, and fine watches -- was militarily unjustifiable, an act of retribution for Germany's ceaseless bombing of London and other parts of England.Now, Frederick Taylor's groundbreaking research offers a completely new examination of the facts and reveals that Dresden was a highly militarized city actively involved in the production of military armaments and communications. Incorporating first-hand accounts, contemporaneous press material and memoirs, and never-before-seen government records, Taylor proves unequivocally the very real military threat Dresden posed -- and how a legacy of propaganda shrouded the truth for sixty years.
Auguries of Innocence
Auguries of Innocence
Smith, Patti
¥88.56
Auguries of Innocence is the first book of poetry from Patti Smith in more than a decade. It marks a major accomplishment from a poet and performer who has inscribed her vision of our world in powerful anthems, ballads, and lyrics. In this intimate and searing collection of poems, Smith joins in that great tradition of troubadours, journeymen, wordsmiths, and artists who respond to the world around them in fresh and original language. Her influences are eclectic and striking: Blake, Rimbaud, Picasso, Arbus, and Johnny Appleseed. Smith is an American original; her poems are oracles for our times.
In Search of Sisterhood
In Search of Sisterhood
Giddings, Paula J.
¥88.56
This history of the largest block women's organization in the United States is not only the story of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (DST), but also tells of the increasing involvement of black women in the political, social, and economic affairs of America. Founded at a time when liberal arts education was widely seen as either futile, dangerous, or impractical for blacks, especially women, DST is, in Giddings's words, a "compelling reflection of block women's aspirations for themselves and for society." Giddings notes that unlike other organizations with racial goals, Delta Sigma Theta was created to change and benefit individuals rather than society. As a sorority, it was formed to bring women together as sisters, but at the some time to address the divisive, often class-related issues confronting black women in our society. There is, in Giddings's eyes, a tension between these goals that makes Delta Sigma Theta a fascinating microcosm of the struggles of black women and their organizations. DST members have included Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, Margaret Murray Washington, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, and, on the cultural side, Leontyne Price, Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Judith Jamison, and Roberta Flack. In Search of Sisterhood is full of compelling, fascinating anecdotes told by the Deltas themselves, and illustrated with rare early photographs of the Delta women.
Seldom Disappointed
Seldom Disappointed
Hillerman, Tony
¥88.56
When Tony Hillerman looks back at seventy-six years spent getting from hardtimes farm boy to bestselling author, he sees lots of evidence that Providence was poking him along. For example, when an absentminded Army clerk left him off the hospital ship taking the wounded home from France, the mishap put him on a collision course with a curing ceremony held for two Navajo Marines, thereby providing the grist for a writing career that now sees his books published in sixteen languages around the world and often on bestseller lists. Or, for example, when his agent told him his first novel was so bad that it would hurt both of their reputations, he nonetheless sent it to an editor, and that editor happened to like the Navajo stuff. In this wry and whimsical memoir, Hillerman offers frequent backward glances at where he found ideas for plots of his books and the characters that inhabit them. He takes us with him to death row, where he interviews a man about to die in the gas chamber and details how this murderer became Colton Wolf in one of his novels. He relates how flushing a solitary heron from a sandbar caused him to convert Joe Leaphorn from husband to widower, and how his self-confessed bias against the social elite solved the key plot problem in A Thief of Time. No child abuse stories here: The worst Hillerman can recall is being sent off to first grade (in a boarding school for Indian girls) clad in cute blue coveralls instead of the manly overalls his farm-boy peers all wore. Instead we get a good-natured trip through hard times in college; an infantry career in which he "rose twice to Private First Class" and also won a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart; and, afterward, work as a truck driver, chain dragger, journalist, professor, and "doer of undignified deeds" for two university presidents. All this is colored by a love affair (now in its fifty-fourth year) with Marie, which involved raising six children, most of them adopted. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, seventy-six-year-old Tony Hillerman draws a brilliant portrait not just of his life but of the world around him.
The Oysters of Locmariaquer
The Oysters of Locmariaquer
Clark, Eleanor
¥88.56
On the northwest coast of France, just around the corner from the English Channel, is the little town of Locmariaquer (pronounced "loc-maria-care"). The inhabitants of this town have a special relationship to the world, for it is their efforts that maintain the supply of the famous Belon oysters, called les plates ("the flat ones"). A vivid account of the cultivation of Belon oysters and an excursion into the myths, legends, and rich, vibrant history of Brittany and its extraordinary people, The Oysters of Locmariaquer is also an unforgettable journey to the heart of a fascinating culture and the enthralling, accumulating drama of a unique devotion.
Sharp
Sharp
Fitzpatrick, David
¥88.56
"Endorphins sped through me. I spun around, growing dizzy, frantic, and silly. I wasn't drunk, but I felt a nice stoned feeling, sans paranoia, and I thought, 'I believe I've found my new pharmaceutical deep inside.' I giggled fearlessly, manically at this and looked down at myself; hands, arms, chest, and belly covered in crimson . . . "Sharp is the story of a young man who began his life with a loving family and great promise for the future. But in his early twenties, David Fitzpatrick became so consumed by mental illness it sent him into a frenzy of cutting himself with razor blades. In this shocking and often moving book, he vividly describes the rush this act gave him, the fleeting euphoric high that seemed to fill the spaces in the rest of his life. It started a difficult battle from which he would later emerge triumphant and spiritually renewed.Fitzpatrick's youth seemed ideal. He was athletic, handsome, and intelligent. However, he lived in fear of an older brother who taunted and belittled him; and in college, his roommates teased and humiliated him, further damaging what sense of self-esteem he still carried with him. As he shares these experiences, Fitzpatrick also recounts the lessons learned from the broken people he encountered during his journey knowledge that led to his own emotional resurrection. Sharp also demonstrates the awakening of a writer's instinctive voice. With prose that is tough and gritty, profound and insightful, Fitzpatrick takes us inside his head while he manically cuts himself, but these episodes are presented with a dignity and insight that has never been seen before. His writing also possesses a lightness of touch that brings humor to a subject that doesn't naturally provide it. Above all else, Sharp is a tale of hope, a soul-baring quest of a lost man who returns to himself, overcomes his demons, and reclaims his life. It is destined to become a classic memoir.