万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies
A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies
Murray, John
¥90.73
These vivid and compelling tales, many set in Africa and Asia, are about immigrants and others facing change and dislocation. The science is never pedantic; indeed the language of biology and natural history is used to great lyrical effect. The stories are accomplished and seasoned, remarkably so given that this is the author’s first book. Murray is adept at holding together a complex narrative and creating characters who reach out emotionally to the reader upon first meeting.Global in scope, classical in form, evocative of place, and deeply emotional, this collection marks the beginning of what promises to be an illustrious career.
Whatever You Want
Whatever You Want
Timms, Rachel
¥90.73
Welcome to the world of Whatever You Want, a novel that turns twentysomething London into a fantasyland of endless possibilities. Play the game as Barbarella -- alluring, flirtatious, and sharp as the lash from a bondage whip -- or as Barnaby, with his insatiable attraction to beautiful women and danger. Armed only with your quick wits and social expertise to navigate through the minefields of drunken gratification, easy conquests, and ruthless adversaries, you hold the fates of these vulnerable heroes in your hands.Should you dare to risk it all at an illicit casino or charm your way around a country estate where things could get up-close-and-very-personalWill you fight to win back your lost loves or choose instead to have the time of your life getting over themAnd when you've had all the fun you possibly can, do you have what it takes to make it to The Perfect EndingGetting what you want takes more than a little agile thinking and social cunning ... Because life was never meant to be a spectator sport.
Last One In
Last One In
Kulish, Nicholas
¥90.73
Jimmy Stephens makes the worst mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife. With lawsuits pending, Jimmy's imperious new editor blackmails him into taking the place of the paper's injured front-line war correspondent. Shipped off to the desert and embedded with a group of foulmouthed but fraternal Marines, Jimmy provides a bewildered but unfiltered view of the invasion of Iraq that is alternately hair-raising, hilarious, and heartbreaking.
Men Giving Money, Women Yelling
Men Giving Money, Women Yelling
Mattison, Alice
¥90.73
Men Giving Money, Women Yelling is Alice Mattisons latest collection in which the characters lives are told in tales that overlap or echo one another. At the center of the stories is Denny Ring, a young man nobody quite knows. Other characters include John Corey, a contractor who renovates old houses in New Haven, Connecticut; his younger brother Eugene, a volunteer at a soup kitchen; and his older brother Cameron, who is a lawyer specializing in obnoxious law. Johns assistant, Tom, is in love with his former English teacher, Ida Feldman, and Charlotte LoPresti, a social worker who interviews the Corey brothers and their aged father, is friends with Pam Shepherd, a social worker whos in charge of the house for psychiatric patients that John and Tom are renovating.
Lives of the Circus Animals
Lives of the Circus Animals
Bram, Christopher
¥90.73
Lives of the Circus Animals is a brilliant new comedy about New York theater people: actors, writers, personal assistants, and a drama critic for the New York Times. They are male, female, straight, gay, in love with their work or in love with each other, and one of them, British star Henry Lewse, "the Hamlet of his generation," is famous.Award-winning novelist Christopher Bram gives us ten days and nights in this small-town world in the heart of a big city, an engaging novel that is also a satiric celebration of the quest for sanity in the face of those two impostors, success and failure.
The Scandal Plan
The Scandal Plan
Folman, Bill
¥90.73
A presidential candidate behind in the polls concocts an outrageous scandal to improve his chances in this hilarious political satire in the spirit of Primary ColorsSenator Ben Phillips is the perfect man for the presidency. If only he weren't such a straight arrow. He's getting battered in the polls, and with only a few months until Election Day, his staff is growing desperate. Enter Thomas Campman, political guru. On a sudden inspiration, the eccentric Campman is convinced he can revitalize the candidate's image by creating a fake sex scandal for him. Nothing too over-the-top—just a little scandal to make Phillips seem more human. Maybe even cool.Though it takes some convincing, Phillips gives Campman the green light. The plan is set in motion, and, right on schedule, a phony former mistress steps forward to accuse the senator of infidelity. But scandals—even the premeditated kind—rarely go as planned. Before long, Campman's scheme snowballs into a three-ring circus complete with a linguistically challenged Mexican chauffeur who thinks he's James Bond, a highly sexed middle-aged woman who's convinced she'll never land one of the really good guys, and a political cub reporter for TeenVibe magazine who's sure he's on the trail of the biggest story since Watergate.For those too well acquainted with politics-as-usual, The Scandal Plan is the perfect antidote. It's a witty political farce in the tradition of Jon Stewart and Dave Barry that will have readers—and even candidates—laughing all the way to the polls.
Ugly Man
Ugly Man
Cooper, Dennis
¥90.73
A short story from the collection Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper.
The Mathematics of Love
The Mathematics of Love
Darwin, Emma
¥90.73
The Mathematics of Love is a poignant chronicle of two people, separated by centuries, whose lives—amazingly, impossibly—become interwoven in a brilliant tapestry of tragedy, memory, and time. Following alternate but intimately connected stories—of a curious, promiscuous teenager in her season of exile and awakening in the English countryside in 1976, and a nineteenth-century soldier damaged on the fields of Waterloo, struggling to find his way back to life with the help of a compassionate, extraordinary woman—Emma Darwin's breathtaking narrative brilliantly evokes the horrors of war, the pain of loss, the heat of passion, and the enduring power of love.
This Year's Model
This Year's Model
Alt, Carol
¥90.73
Supermodel Carol Alt takes us on a wild ride through the glamorous, cutthroat world of fashion and fame—in a biting, witty, and absolutely authentic novel that rocks the world of high-end modeling!Tall, beautiful, practical Melody Ann Croft of Morristown, New Jersey, is busting her behind as a waitress and wishing there was an easier way to earn money for college. When a customer claiming to be a fashion photographer insists she could become a model, Melody is skeptical—and totally shocked when dropping his name actually opens agency doors. Signed up before her head has even stopped spinning, she's got a new name—Mac—and is off to her first shoot. Could this be that "easier way" at last?But in modeling, nothing's easy. Mac faces demanding diva photographers with their body-torturing, day-long sessions, and jealous rivals whose flawless beauty hides sharp claws. There are rumors and lies, lecherous model-collecting playboys, rock stars and drugs, and the most perilous pitfall of them all . . .straight male models! Temptation is everywhere, and even a level-headed Jersey girl may have trouble keeping her footing on the long, hard climb up.
You Don't Love This Man
You Don't Love This Man
DeWeese, Dan
¥90.73
A novel about fatherhood, marriage . . . and bank robbery.On the morning of his daughter Miranda's wedding, Paul learns that the bank he manages has been robbed—apparently by the same man who robbed it twenty-five years before. As if that weren't enough, Miranda, who is set to marry Paul's former best friend—a man twice her age—seems to have gone missing.Struggling to reconcile his little girl with the grown woman he's about to walk down the aisle (if he can find her), to accept his onetime peer as his future son-in-law, and to comprehend the strange coincidence of being robbed by the same man two decades apart, Paul takes stock of everything leading up to this moment—as he attempts to navigate the day's many surprises while questioning the motives and choices of those around him.
The Gentleman Poet
The Gentleman Poet
Johnson, Kathryn
¥90.73
En route to the Americas in 1609, Elizabeth Persons, a young servant girl, sees her blinding headache as an ominous sign. Sure enough, a hurricane during the final leg of their journey tosses the ill-fated Sea Venture and its one hundred and fifty passengers and crew onto the dreaded shores of the Bermudas, the rumored home of evil spirits and dangerous natives. In the months that pass—time marked by grave hardship, mutiny, adventure, danger . . . and a blossoming love between Elizabeth and the wrecked ship's young cook—she despairs of their ever being rescued. But she finds hope and strength in a remarkable new friendship, forming a fast bond with the Sea Venture's historian, a poet traveling under the name of William Strachey. But Will is more than he seems. To many back home in England, he is known by a different name: Shakespeare. And he sees in their great shared travails the makings of a magical, truly transcendent work of theater.
A Devil to Play
A Devil to Play
Rees, Jasper
¥90.73
In the days before his fortieth birthday, London-based journalist Jasper Rees trades his pen for a French horn that has been gathering dust in the attic for more than twenty-two years, and, on a lark, plays it at the annual festival of the British Horn Society. Despite an embarrassingly poor performance, the experience inspires Rees to embark on a daunting, bizarre, and ultimately winning journey: to return to the festival in one year's time and play a Mozart concerto solo to a large paying audience.A Devil to Play is the true story of an unlikely midlife crisis spent conquering sixteen feet of wrapped brass tubing widely regarded as the most difficult instrument to master, as well as the most treacherous to play in public. It is the history of man's first musical instrument, a compelling journey that moves from the walls of Jericho to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, from the hunting fields of France to the heart of Hollywood. And it is the account of one man's mounting musical obsession, told with pitch-perfect wit and an undeniable charm an endearing, inspiring tale of perseverance and achievement, relayed masterfully, one side-splittingly off-key note at a time.
Churchill Defiant
Churchill Defiant
Leaming, Barbara
¥90.73
Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality in this tumultuous political drama of his last ten years of public life. Here is Churchill at his most outrageous, maddening, and devious but also at his most human, courageous, and defiant. "I am an obstinate pig." This was how Winston Churchill described himself.At the end of July 1945, Winston Churchill was a defeated man hurled from power by the British people at the end of the war in which he had just saved his country.Churchill Defiant is the story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill fought his way back over the next six years to the center of great events the only place he ever wanted to be. In 1951, at last prime minister once more, he was ready to begin his dash to win "the last prize I seek": the enduring peace that had eluded the world after Hitler's defeat.But Churchill's battles were just beginning. He would have to wage war with both his closest colleagues and his most indispensable allies, the Americans, to get where none of them wanted him to go: the negotiating table with the Soviets.Barbara Leaming has written a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare-knuckle politics, of life-and-death decisions, of old grudges and fresh blame. It is the story of how, between 1945 and 1955, Churchill simultaneously fought to prevent a third world war and to defy his own mortality as the clock ticked away and time threatened to run out for him.This is Winston Churchill in close-up a compelling, vivid, and deeply poignant portrait of the great man at a time when almost no one wanted him to remain on the public stage and when he was willing to do absolutely anything to stay there.
Between Gods
Between Gods
Pick, Alison
¥90.73
Profound, honest, and masterfully written Between Gods forces us to reexamine our beliefs and the extent to which they define us.Growing up in a tight-knit Christian family, Alison Pick went to church regularly. But as a teenager, she discovered a remarkable family secret: her paternal grandparents fled from the Czech Republic at the start of WWII because they were Jewish. Tragically, other family members who hesitated to emigrate were sent to Auschwitz.Haunted by the Holocaust, Alison's grandparents established themselves in their new lives as Christians. Not even Alison's father knew of his parents' past until he visited the Jewish cemetery in Prague as an adult. This atmosphere of shame and secrecy haunted Alison's journey into adulthood.Drowning in a sense of emptiness, she eventually came to realize that her true path forward lay in reclaiming her history and identity as a Jew, and she began attending conversion classes. But the process was far from easy as old wounds were opened, and all of her relationships were tested.
Me and My Dad
Me and My Dad
O'Neill, Paul
¥90.73
Paul O'Neill was the undisputed heart and soul of the four-time World Series-winning New York Yankees from 1993 to 2001. O'Neill epitomized the team's motto of hard work and good sportsmanship, traits instilled in him by his friend, confidant, lifelong model, and biggest fan: his dad, Chick O'Neill.In Me and My Dad, O'Neill writes from the heart about the man who inspired in him a love for the game and a determination to always play his best. O'Neill remembers the highlights of his own amazing career: the Cincinnati Reds calling him up to the majors, his first World Series, being traded to the Yankees -- and taking part in their recent championship wins. He also reflects on his father's untimely death during the 1999 World Series and on the farewell tribute his fans gave him during his last game in Yankee Stadium.
Shelf Discovery
Shelf Discovery
Skurnick, Lizzie
¥90.73
Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst?
A Stay Against Confusion
A Stay Against Confusion
Hansen, Ron
¥90.73
In the tradition of Flannery O'Connor and Andre Dubus, A Stay Against Confusion explores the role that religious belief and literature play in one writer's life. All creative writing is, in the words of Robert Frost, a stay against confusion.It tries to find a harmony and order that we only fleetingly detect beneath the chaos of everyday life, and to point out motivations and causalities in what seem to be random and often meaningless acts. Religion has also functioned in this way for Ron Hansen, and it shares with literature both a reverence for mystery and the use of metaphor to communicate another order that we will never fully perceive or comprehend.In this rich and deeply felt collection of essays, Hansen talks about his novels, his childhood and family, and about such mentors as John Gardner. He explores prayer, stigmata, twentieth-century martyrs, and the Eucharist. A profile of his grandfather, a tough-as-nails, brook-no-guff Colorado rancher, finds a place alongside a wonderfully informative portrait of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. A brilliant reading of a story by Leo Tolstoy follows an appreciation of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. A surprisingly intimate book, A Stay Against Confusion brings together the literary and religious impulses that inform the life of one of our most gifted fiction writers.
Will's Choice
Will's Choice
Griffith, Gail
¥90.73
On March 11, 2001, seventeen-year-old Will ingested a near-fatal dose of his antidepressant medication, an event that would forever change his life and the lives of his family. In Will's Choice, his mother, Gail Griffith, tells the story of her family's struggle to renew Will's interest in life and to regain their equilibrium in the aftermath.Griffith intersperses her own finely wrought prose with dozens of letters and journal entries from family and friends, including many from Will himself. A memoir with a social conscience, Will's Choice lays bare the social and political challenges that American families face in combating this most mysterious and stigmatized of illnesses. In Gail Griffith, depressed teens have found themselves a formidable advocate, and in the evocative and fiercely compelling narrative of Will's Choice, we all discover the promise of a second chance.
A Short History of the American Revolution
A Short History of the American Revolution
Stokesbury, James L.
¥90.73
The first one-volume survey of the American Revolution that is both objective and comprehensive, this outstanding narrative history traces the growth of a conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence. Offering a spirited chronicle of the war itself -- the campaigns and strategies, the leaders on both sides, the problems of fielding and sustaining an army, and of maintaining morale -- Stokesbury also brings the reader to the Peace of Paris in 1783 and into the miltarily exhausted, financially ruined yet victorious United States as it emerged to create a workable national system.
Long Past Stopping
Long Past Stopping
Canfield, Oran
¥90.73
It looked like any other medical chart, with different boxes filled in with my blood pressure and heart rate, but at the bottom, next to Diagnosis, the doctor simply wrote, Terminal Assholism. Juggled between an endless succession of friends, relatives, anarchist boarding schools, libertarian commune dwellers, socialist rebels, and born-again circus clowns, Oran Canfield grew up viewing the inconsistencies of the world with a wary eye. The son of Jack Canfield the motivational speaker and creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul Oran is intensely self-conscious and reserved, but his life won't seem to leave him alone. Whether he's teaching two hundred eager self-help disciples to juggle (among them a woman with stumps for hands), dodging a series of wacky near-death experiences, delivering newspapers in satin pants on a unicycle, or experimenting with drugs in the back of a Mexican cop car at age thirteen, one thing's for sure: Oran's life is much stranger than fiction.Eventually he finds some fleeting comfort in heroin, but the world proves dizzying whether he's stoned or sober. Playing drums in fringe bands and bouncing between rehab centers, he encounters a host of weird characters along the way: a devotee of obscure noise music who makes his own sunglasses out of cardboard, hooligan hockey players left in charge of group therapy, and the unassuming chess nerd who might be in the mob. Feeding a dope addiction that becomes more harrowing by the day, Oran sells off every possession and burns every bridge on the road to recovery. With humor and wit, Long Past Stopping grapples with the paradoxes of a mad world and shows that feel-good nostrums go only so far. Sometimes the only way out is the hard one.
Heavy Rotation
Heavy Rotation
Terzian, Peter
¥90.73
Colm Tóibín on Joni Mitchell James Wood on The Who Stacey D'Erasmo on Kate Bush Daniel Handler on Eurythmics Lisa Dierbeck on the Pretenders Clifford Chase on the B-52s . . . and other writers on the soundtracks of their lives In Heavy Rotation, twenty of our most acclaimed contemporary writers pay homage to the record albums that inspired them. Benjamin Kunkel remembers how the Smiths' Queen Is Dead transformed him into an adolescent Anglophile. Pankaj Mishra describes how a bootleg cassette of ABBA's Super Trouper evoked a world far from his small Indian village. Kate Christensen relives her years as an aspiring novelist in Brooklyn listening to Rickie Lee Jones's Flying Cowboys. And Ferris recalls his head-banging passion for Pearl Jam's Ten. Exploring music from the Talking Heads to the Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack, this extraordinary anthology is a moving, funny, uplifting, and unforgettable celebration of the unique and essential relationship between life and music.