万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

My Heart Laid Bare
My Heart Laid Bare
Oates, Joyce Carol
¥83.03
Finally returned to print in a beautiful paperback edition, a haunting gothic tale of a nineteenth-century immigrant family of confidence artists—a story of morality, duplicity, and retribution that explores the depths of human manipulation and vulnerabilityThe patriarch of the Licht family, Abraham has raised a brood of talented con artists, children molded in his image, and experts in The Game, his calling and philosophy of life. Traveling from one small town to the next across the continent, from the Northeast to the frontier West, they skillfully swindle unsuspecting victims, playing on their greed, lust, pride, and small-mindedness. Despite their success, Abraham cannot banish a past that haunts him: the ghost of his ancestor Sarah Licht, a former con woman who met with a gruesome fate.As Abraham involves his family in more and more complex and impressive schemes, he finds himself caught between the specter of Sarah and the growing terrors of his present. While his carefully crafted lies and schemes begin to fracture and disintegrate before his eyes, Abraham discovers that the bond of family is as tenuous and treacherous as the tricks he perpetrates upon unsuspecting strangers.
Vintage
Vintage
Gloss, Susan
¥83.03
At Hourglass Vintage in Madison, Wisconsin, every item in the boutique has a story to tell . . . and so do the women whose lives the store touches.Yellow Samsonite suitcase with ivory, quilted lining, 1950sA small-town girl with a flair for fashion, Violet Turner had always dreamed of owning a shop like Hourglass Vintage. But while she values the personal history behind each beautiful item she sells, Violet is running from her own past. Faced with the possibility of losing the store to an unscrupulous developer, she realizes that despite her usual self-reliance she cannot save it alone.Taffeta tea-length wedding gown with scooped neckline and cap sleeves, 1952Eighteen-year-old April Morgan is nearly five months along in an unplanned pregnancy when her hasty engagement is broken. When she returns the perfect vintage wedding dress to Violet's shop, she discovers a world of new possibilities, and an unexpected sisterhood with women who won't let her give up on her dreams. Orange silk sari with gold paisley design, 1968Betrayed by her husband, Amithi Singh begins selling off her vibrant Indian dresses, remnants of a life she's determined to leave behind her. After decades of housekeeping and parenting a daughter who rejects her traditional ways, she fears her best days are behind her . . . until she discovers an outlet for her creativity and skills with a needle and thread. An engaging story that beautifully captures the essence of friendship and style, Vintage is a charming tale of possibility, of finding renewal, love, and hope when we least expect it.
The Registry
The Registry
Stoker, Shannon
¥83.03
Welcome to a safe and secure new world, where beauty is bought and sold, and freedom is the ultimate crimeThe Registry saved the country from collapse, but stability has come at a price. In this patriotic new America, girls are raised to be brides, sold at auction to the highest bidder. Boys are raised to be soldiers, trained to fight and never question orders.Nearly eighteen, beautiful Mia Morrissey excitedly awaits the beginning of her auction year. But a warning from her married older sister raises dangerous questions. Now, instead of going up on the block, Mia is going to escape to Mexico—and the promise of freedom.All Mia wants is to control her own destiny—a brave and daring choice that will transform her into an enemy of the state, pursued by powerful government agents, ruthless bounty hunters, and a cunning man determined to own her . . . a man who will stop at nothing to get her back.
Green Girl
Green Girl
Zambreno, Kate
¥83.03
With the fierce emotional and intellectual power of such classics as Jean Rhys's Good Morning, Midnight, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star, Kate Zambreno's novel Green Girl is a provocative, sharply etched portrait of a young woman navigating the spectrum between anomie and epiphany.First published in 2011 in a small press edition, Green Girl was named one of the best books of the year by critics including Dennis Cooper and Roxane Gay. In Bookforum, James Greer called it "ambitious in a way few works of fiction are." This summer it is being republished in an all-new Harper Perennial trade paperback, significantly revised by the author, and including an extensive P.S. section including never before published outtakes, an interview with the author, and a new essay by Zambreno.Zambreno's heroine, Ruth, is a young American in London, kin to Jean Seberg gamines and contemporary celebutantes, by day spritzing perfume at the department store she calls Horrids, by night trying desperately to navigate a world colored by the unwanted gaze of others and the uncertainty of her own self-regard. Ruth, the green girl, joins the canon of young people existing in that important, frightening, and exhilarating period of drift and anxiety between youth and adulthood, and her story is told through the eyes of one of the most surprising and unforgettable narrators in recent fiction—a voice at once distanced and maternal, indulgent yet blackly funny. And the result is a piercing yet humane meditation on alienation, consumerism, the city, self-awareness, and desire, by a novelist who has been compared with Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and Elfriede Jelinek.
John the Pupil
John the Pupil
Flusfeder, David
¥83.03
Set in thirteenth-century Europe, against the backdrop of a medieval world where beauty and violence, science and mysticism, carnality and faith, exist side by side, this is a masterful novel in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Barry Unsworth, and Michel Faber.Since he was a young boy, John has studied at the Franciscan monastery outside Oxford, under the tutelage of friar and magus Roger Bacon, an inventor, scientist, and polymath. In 1267 Bacon arranges for his young pupil to embark on a journey of penitence to Italy. But the pilgrimage is a guise to deliver scientific instruments and Bacon's great opus to His Holiness, Pope Clement IV. Two companions will accompany John, both Franciscan novices: the handsome, sweet-tempered Brother Andrew, with whom everyone falls in love; and the more brutish Brother Bernard, with his secret compulsion for drawing imaginary monsters. Neither knows the true purpose of their expedition.John the Pupil is a medieval road movie, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions. Modeling themselves after Saint Francis, the men trek by foot through Europe, preaching the gospel and begging for sustenance. In addition to fighting off ambushes from thieves hungry for the thing of power they are carrying, the holy trio are tried and tempted by all sorts of sins: ambition, pride, lust—and by the sheer hell and heaven of medieval life.Erudite and earthy, horrifying, comic, humane—David Flusfeder's extraordinary novel reveals to the reader a world very different from, and all too like, the one we live in now.
Migratory Animals
Migratory Animals
Specht, Mary Helen
¥83.03
When Flannery, a young scientist, is forced to return to Austin after five years of research in Nigeria, she becomes torn between her two homes. Having left behind her loving fiancé without knowing when she will return, Flannery learns that her sister, Molly, has begun to show signs of the genetic disease that slowly killed their mother.As their close-knit circle of friends struggles with Molly's diagnosis, Flannery must grapple with what her future will hold: love and the pursuit of scientific discovery in West Africa, or the pull of a life surrounded by old friends, the comfort of an old flame, family obligations, and the home she's always known. But she is not the only one wrestling with uncertainty. Since their college days, all of her friends have faced unexpected challenges that make them reevaluate the lives they'd always planned for themselves.A mesmerizing debut from an exciting young writer, Migratory Animals is a moving, thought-provoking novel, told from shifting viewpoints, about the meaning of home and what we owe each other—and ourselves.
Angel Killer
Angel Killer
Mayne, Andrew
¥83.03
FBI agent Jessica Blackwood believes she's left her complicated life as a gifted magician behind her . . . until a killer with seemingly supernatural powers puts her talents to the ultimate test.A hacker who identifies himself only as "Warlock" brings down the FBI's website and posts a code in its place that leads to a Michigan cemetery, where a dead girl is discovered rising from the ground . . . as if she tried to crawl out of her own grave.Born into a dynasty of illusionists, Jessica Blackwood is destined to become its next star—until she turns her back on her troubled family to begin a new life in law enforcement. But FBI consultant Dr. Jeffrey Ailes's discovery of an old magic magazine will turn Jessica's world upside down. Faced with a crime that appears beyond explanation, Ailes has nothing to lose—and everything to gain—by taking a chance on an agent raised in a world devoted to achieving the seemingly impossible.The body in the cemetery is only the first in the Warlock's series of dark miracles. Thrust into the media spotlight, with time ticking away until the next crime, can Jessica confront her past to stop a depraved killerIf she can't, she may become his next victim.
Tales of Accidental Genius
Tales of Accidental Genius
Van Booy, Simon
¥83.03
A master storyteller’s vision reawakens us to the human experience in this diverse, haunting, and unexpectedly humorous new collection of short fiction from Simon Van Booy—his first since Love Begins in Winter, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.“She believed it was a gift to never truly know the self. We are not who we think we are, nor how others see us. Long before death, we die a thousand times at the hands of a definition.”In his first book of short stories since Love Begins in Winter, for which he won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award), bestselling author Simon Van Booy offers a collection of stories highlighting how human genius can emerge through acts of compassion. Through characters including an eccentric film director, an aging Cockney bodyguard, the teenage child of Nigerian immigrants, a divorced amateur magician from New Jersey, and a Beijing street vendor who becomes an overnight billionaire, Tales of Accidental Genius contemplates individuals from different cultures, races—rich and poor, young and old—and reveals how faith and yearning for connection helps us all transcend darkness of fear and misfortune.
The Girl in the Glass
The Girl in the Glass
Hayman, James
¥83.03
Two identical women. Two identical murders. Two lives brutally cut short 108 years apartJune 1904.Aimée Garnier Whitby, a beautiful French artist and wife of one of Maine's richest and most powerful men, is found near death on the Whitby family's private summer island, the letter "A" mysteriously carved into her chest.June 2012.Veronica Aimée Whitby, the eighteen-year-old descendant and virtual double of the first Aimée, becomes the victim of a near perfect copycat murder. With another beautiful, promising young Whitby woman slain, the media begin to swarm and pressure builds for Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage to bring the killer quickly to justice. But the key to solving Aimée's death just might have been buried with her beautiful ancestor.The latest McCabe and Savage thriller from USA Today bestselling author James Hayman is a crackling, twisty novel of suspense, perfect for fans of J.A. Jance and John Sandford.
Pinheads and Patriots
Pinheads and Patriots
O'Reilly, Bill
¥83.03
When Bill O'Reilly interviewed then-Senator Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential elections, the two had a lively debate about the nation's future. Since that time, America has changed rapidly some would even say seismically. And many believe these shifts are doing more than just rocking the political and social climate; they're rocking the American core.What are these changesWho, in addition to President Obama, have been the biggest forces behind themWhat exactly do they mean for you, the everyday American citizenHow are they affecting your money, health, safety, freedom, and standing in this nationWhich are Pinheaded moves and which are truly PatrioticIn his latest spirited book, O'Reilly prompts further debate with the President and the American people on the current state of the union. After five consecutive, no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is megabestsellers, you can count on Bill to offer blunt and constructive political commentary. And as he did in his popular memoir, he offers some introspection too, looking back at his own actions and those of past Pinheads and Patriots who have inspired a code of conduct for such taxing times.As always, O'Reilly is fair, balanced, and uncompromisingly tough when guarding the American way. Only Pinheads would fail to fight for what they love most about this country or to embrace some measure of change to make it better. The rest of us Patriots will read this book to discover the difference between the two.
Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?
Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?
Bertoldi, Concetta
¥83.03
Highly unorthodox questions and answers about life after life from America's most delightful medium Concetta Bertoldi has been communicating with the "Other Side" since childhood. In her previous book, the bestselling Do Dead People Watch You Shower?, she addressed questions about the afterlife that ranged from the poignant to the provocative. Now she returns with Do Dead People Walk Their Dogs?, a second volume of intriguing observations about our beloved deceased. Moving, funny, and fascinating, it will open your eyes to what really comes after life while offering intimate insights into Concetta's own astonishing life and what her gift has meant to her marriage, her friendships, and the path she was destined to take.
Paper Trails
Paper Trails
Dexter, Pete
¥83.03
In the 1970s and 1980s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here for the first time are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces with a new introduction by the author assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heart-breaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."
Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Prose, Francine
¥83.03
Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.Francine Prose presents the brief but tumultuous life of one of the greatest of all painters with passion and acute sensitivity.
The Universe Is Calling
The Universe Is Calling
Butterworth, Eric
¥83.03
The popular Unity minister who authored the acclaimed Discover the Power Within You offers a non-theological, non-ritualistic guide to prayer for contemporary seekers of oneness, guidance, and self-regulation.
To Know as We Are Known
To Know as We Are Known
Palmer, Parker J.
¥83.03
This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.
The Little Prisoner
The Little Prisoner
Elliott, Jane
¥83.03
When Jane Elliott was four years old, the nightmare began. She became the helpless victim of a sociopath bullied, dominated, and sexually abused by a man only fourteen years her senior: her stepfather. For nearly two decades she was held prisoner, both physically and emotionally. But at the age of twenty-one she escaped . . . and then she fought back.The Little Prisoner is the shocking, astonishing, and ultimately uplifting true story of one woman's shattering twenty-year ordeal and how she triumphed against an evil and violent human monster when honesty and bravery were her only weapons.
Grand Illusion
Grand Illusion
Barrett, Wayne
¥83.03
Rudy Giuliani emerged from the smoke of 9/11 as the unquestioned hero of the day: America's Mayor, the father figure we could all rely on to be tough, to be wise, to do the right thing. In that uncertain time, it was a comfort to know that he was on the scene and in control, making the best of a dire situation.But was he really?Grand Illusion is the definitive report on Rudy Giuliani's role in 9/11 the true story of what happened that day and the first clear-eyed evaluation of Giuliani's role before, during, and after the disaster.While the pictures of a soot-covered Giuliani making his way through the streets became very much a part of his personal mythology, they were also a symbol of one of his greatest failures. The mayor's performance, though marked by personal courage and grace under fire, followed two terms in office pursuing an utterly wrongheaded approach to the city's security against terrorism. Turning the mythology on its head, Grand Illusion reveals how Giuliani has revised his own history, casting himself as prescient terror hawk when in fact he ran his administration as if terrorist threats simply did not exist, too distracted by pet projects and turf wars to attend to vital precautions.Authors Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins also provide the first authoritative view of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, recounting the triumphs and missteps of the city's efforts to heal itself. With surprising new reporting about the victims, the villains, and the heroes, this is an eye-opening reassessment of one of the pivotal events and politicians of our time.
Write Away
Write Away
George, Elizabeth
¥83.03
Bestselling author Elizabeth George has spent years teaching writing, and in Write Away she shares her knowledge of the creative process. George combines clear, intelligent, and functional advice on fiction writing with anecdotes from her own life, the story of her journey to publication, and inside information on how she meticulously researches and writes her novels. George's solid understanding of craft is conveyed in the enticing manner of a true storyteller, making Write Away not only a marvelous, interesting, and informative book but also a glimpse inside the world of a beloved writer.
The Scent of Desire
The Scent of Desire
Herz, Rachel
¥83.03
Shakespeare wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But if you cannot smell, does the rose lose its sweetnessThe first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, The Scent of Desire traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world at large. Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical, even sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells. Why do some people like a certain smell and others hate itIs smell personal or culturalHow does smell affect our choices and our daily livesRachel Herz explores these questions and examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our physical and emotional well-being. Herz investigates how our sense of smell functions, examines what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. Herz illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of research. The wonders of our sense of smell are all explored in a compelling and engaging manner, from emotions and memory to aromatherapy and pheromones. For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.
Beyond the Body Farm
Beyond the Body Farm
Bass, Bill
¥83.03
There is no scientist in the world like Dr. Bill Bass. A pioneer in forensic anthropology, Bass created the world's first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition three acres of land on a hillside in Tennessee where human bodies are left to the elements. His research at "the Body Farm" has revolutionized forensic science, helping police crack cold cases and pinpoint time of death. But during a forensics career that spans half a century, Bass and his work have ranged far beyond the gates of the Body Farm. In this riveting book, the bone sleuth explores the rise of modern forensic science, using fascinating cases from his career to take readers into the real world of C.S.I. Some of Bill Bass's cases rely on the simplest of tools and techniques, such as reassembling from battered torsos and a stack of severed limbs eleven people hurled skyward by an explosion at an illegal fireworks factory. Other cases hinge on sophisticated techniques Bass could not have imagined when he began his career: harnessing scanning electron microscopy to detect trace elements in knife wounds; and extracting DNA from a long-buried corpse, only to find that the female murder victim may have been mistakenly identified a quarter-century before.In Beyond the Body Farm, readers will follow Bass as he explores the depths of an East Tennessee lake with a twenty-first-century sonar system, in a quest for an airplane that disappeared with two people on board thirty-five years ago; see Bass exhume fifties pop star "the Big Bopper" to determine what injuries he suffered in the plane crash that killed three rock and roll legends on "the day the music died"; and join Bass as he works to decipher an ancient Persian death scene nearly three thousand years old. Witty and engaging, Bass dissects the methods used by homicide investigators every day, leading readers on an extraordinary journey into the high-tech science that it takes to crack a case.
High Strung
High Strung
Tignor, Stephen
¥83.03
The golden age of tennis came crashing down suddenly at the 1981 U.S. Open when the stoical Swede, Bj?rn Borg, lost to his brash young rival, John McEnroe, in the final at Flushing Meadows. Through the lens of that era's final tournament, and the play of the other semifinalists, Jimmy Connors and Vitas Gerulaitis, High Strung chronicles the lives and careers of the men who made those Wild West days of tennis so memorable: "Ice Borg," who secretly harbored an inner madman; McEnroe, the tortured, bratty genius; Connors, the game's beloved blue-collar anti-hero; Ilie Nastase, the Romanian clown; Gerulaitis, the New York charmer; and Ivan Lendl, who became a harbinger of tennis's high-powered future. The struggles these men shared were as compelling off the court as they were on.