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万本电子书0元读

Notes from a Small Island
Notes from a Small Island
Bryson, Bill
¥90.51
Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes From a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey.
HarperCollins e-books
HarperCollins e-books
Duncan, David Ewing
¥90.51
James Watson, J. Craig Venter, Francis Collins, Cynthia Kenyon . . . you may not know them, but you should. They are the masterminds of genetics and biotechnology who want you to live to be 150 years old, to regenerate your heart and brain, to create synthetic life. For better or worse, they are about to alter life on earth forever.Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan tells the remarkable stories of cutting-edge bioscientists, revealing their quirky, uniquely fascinating, sometimes vaguely unsettling personas as a means to understand their science and the astonishing implications of their work. This book seamlessly combines myth, biography, scholarship, and wit that poses the all-important question: Can we actually trust these masterminds?
The Opposite Of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, And Smart Abou
The Opposite Of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, And Smart Abou
Lieber, Ron
¥90.51
We may not realize it, but children are hyperaware of money. They have scores of questions about its nuances that parents often don't answer, or know how to answer well. But for Ron Lieber, a personal finance columnist and father, good parenting means talking about money with our kids much more often. When parents avoid these conversations, they lose a tremendous opportunity not just to model important financial behaviors, but also to imprint lessons about what their family cares about most.Written in a warm, accessible voice, grounded in real-world stories from families with a range of incomes, The Opposite of Spoiled is a practical guidebook for parents that is rooted in timeless values. Lieber covers all the basics: the best ways to handle the tooth fairy, allowance, chores, charity, savings, birthdays, holidays, cell phones, splurging, clothing, cars, part-time jobs, and college tuition. But he also identifies a set of traits and virtues like modesty, patience, generosity, and perspective that parents hope their young adults will carry with them out into the world.In The Opposite of Spoiled, Ron Lieber delivers a taboo-shattering manifesto that will help every parent embrace the connection between money and values to help them raise young adults who are grounded, unmaterialistic, and financially wise beyond their years.
Paper
Paper
Sansom, Ian
¥90.51
Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear.Would anything be lost?Everything would be lost.aper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks and flypaper, photographs and playing cards, tickets and tea bags. We are paper people.But the age of paper is coming to an end. E-books regularly outsell physical books. E-tickets replace the paper variety. Archives are digitized. The world we know was made from paper, and yet everywhere we look, paper is beginning to disappear. As we enter a world beyond paper, Ian Sansom explores the paradoxes of the greatest of man-made materials and shows how some kinds of paper, and the ghosts and shadows of paper, will always be with us.Paper: An Elegy is a history of paper in all its forms and functions. Both a cultural study and a series of personal reflections on the meaning of paper, this book is a timely meditation on the very paper it is printed on.
The Dancing Girls of Lahore
The Dancing Girls of Lahore
Brown, Louise
¥90.51
The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it.Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
Don't Know Much About the Universe
Don't Know Much About the Universe
Davis, Kenneth C.
¥90.51
Who dug those canals on MarsWhat was the biblical Star of BethlehemWere the pyramids built by extraterrestrials?From the ancients who charted the heavens to Star Trek, The X-Files, and Apollo 13, outer space has intrigued people through the ages. Yet most of us look up at the night sky and feel totally in the dark when it comes to the basic facts about the universe.Kenneth C. Davis steps into that void with a lively and readable guide to the discoveries, theories, and real people who have shed light on the mysteries and wonders of the cosmos. Discover why Einstein was such a genius, the truth behind a blue moon or two, the amazing secrets of Stonehenge, and even how one great astronomer lost his nose.With the fun question-and-answer format that has appealed to the millions of readers of his bestselling Don't Much About? series, you'll be taking off on an exciting armchair exploration of the solar system, the Milky Way, and beyond.
Paris Without End
Paris Without End
Diliberto, Gioia
¥90.51
Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of an expatriate community boasting the likes of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and James and Nora Joyce. In this haunting account of the young Hemingways, Gioia Diliberto explores their passionate courtship, their family life in Paris with baby Bumby, and their thrilling, adventurous relationship a literary love story scarred by Hadley's loss of the only copy of Hemingway's first novel and ultimately destroyed by a devastating manage trois on the French Riviera.Compelling, illuminating, poignant, and deeply insightful, Paris Without End provides a rare, intimate glimpse of the writer who so fully captured the American imagination and the remarkable woman who inspired his passion and his art the only woman Hemingway never stopped loving.
Smoke
Smoke
Cady, Meili
¥90.51
Combining the excess of The Bling Ring with the intimacy of Blow, Smoke is the outrageous true story of an aspiring young actress's ill-fated friendship and unwitting alliance with a drug-smuggling con artistAspiring actress Meili Cady left small-town Washington State for the glamorous lure of Los Angeles. Young and alone, she was struggling to make her big break. Then she met Lisette Lee. Calling herself the "Korean Paris Hilton," Lisette claimed she was a model and a Korean pop star, lived in a $1.2-million-dollar apartment in West Hollywood, owned a fleet of luxury cars, and flitted from one red-carpet event to the next.The connection was instant. Meili was enchanted by her friend's extravagant lifestyle, while Lee claimed Meili was the real thing in a town full of phonies. Soon, the financially strapped Meili became her friend's personal assistant and found herself sucked into an audacious criminal enterprise. But when Meili finally realized what she was a part of it was too late she was in too deep, caught in a terrifying relationship with a manipulative and abrasive con artist smuggling millions of dollars worth of pot into the Midwest.Trapped in a precarious criminal world of money, drugs, and dangerous secrets, Meili struggled to understand the line between truth and lie, a once-naive girl who fell down the rabbit hole. Smoke is her story an electrifying tale of vice, corruption, hubris, and lost innocence.
Brutal
Brutal
Weeks, Kevin
¥90.51
I grew up in the Old Colony housing project in South Boston and became partners with James "Whitey" Bulger, who I always called Jimmy.Jimmy and I, we were unstoppable. We took what we wanted. And we made people disappear permanently. We made millions. And if someone ratted us out, we killed him. We were not nice guys.I found out that Jimmy had been an FBI informant in 1999, and my life was never the same. When the feds finally got me, I was faced with something Jimmy would have killed me for cooperating with the authorities. I pled guilty to twenty-nine counts, including five murders. I went away for five and a half years.I was brutally honest on the witness stand, and this book is brutally honest, too; the brutal truth that was never before told. How could itOnly three people could tell the true story. With one on the run and one in jail for life, it falls on me.
The Match
The Match
Schoenfeld, Bruce
¥90.51
With the help of friends who recognized her extraordinary talent, Althea Gibson rose from a childhood of playing stickball on Harlem streets to claim victory at Wimbledon. It is widely recognized that her sacrifices along the way paved the road for the successes of Venus and Serena Williams. But Althea's was a victory hard fought and painfully won.She had no idea the turn her life would take when she met Angela Buxton at the French Indoor Championships. Despite her athletic prowess, Althea was shunned by the other female players. Her failing was her skin color. Angela, the granddaughter of Russian Jews, was also shunned. Her failing was her religion. Finding themselves without doubles partners, the pair decided to join forces, and together they triumphed, going on to win the 1956 championship at Wimbledon. The two women would become lifelong friends, and Angela would prove to be among Althea's greatest supports during her darkest times.Gibson died in 2003, but her life and her contributions to tennis and race relations in the United States are well preserved in this valuable book. Bruce Schoenfeld delivers not only the true story of Gibson's life but also an inspiring account of two underdogs who refused to let bigotry win -- both on and off the courts.
Their Finest
Their Finest
Lissa Evans,Evans, Lissa
¥90.51
From the author of the acclaimed Crooked Heart comes another smart, funny, ingenious, revealing tale of London life during the Second World War The Independent longlisted for the Orange Prize upon its original publication in England.It is 1940. France has fallen, and only a narrow strip of sea lies between Great Britain and invasion. The war could go either way and everyone must do their bit. Young copy writer Catrin Cole is drafted into the Ministry of Information to help write women into propaganda films something that the men aren't very good at.She is quickly seconded to the Ministry's latest endeavor: a heart-warming tale of bravery and rescue at Dunkirk. It's all completely fabricated, of course, but what does that matter when the nation's morale is at stake? Since call-up has stripped the industry of its brightest and best, it is the callow, the jaded and the utterly unsuitable who must make up the numbers: Ambrose Hilliard, third most popular British film-star of 1924; Edith Beadmore, Madame Tussauds wardrobe assistant turned costumier; and Arthur Frith, whose peacetime job as a catering manager has not really prepared him for his sudden, unexpected elevation to Special Military Advisor.Now in a serious world, in a nation under siege, they must all swallow their mutual distaste, ill-will, and mistrust to unite for the common good, for King and Country, and in one case for better or worse....Evans displays a fine eye for detail and for the absurdities involved in filming. She also brilliantly evokes the disruption and dangers of wartime London. This funny, heart-warming and beautifully crafted novel is a must-read.
1492
1492
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe
¥90.51
The world would end in 1492 so the prophets, soothsayers, and stargazers said. They were right. Their world did end. Ours began. In this extraordinary, sweeping history, Felipe Fernendez-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single, fateful year. Everything changed in 1492: the way power and wealth were distributed around the globe, the way major religions and civilizations divided the world, and the increasing interconnectedness of separate economies that we now call globalization. Events that began in 1492 transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Our individualism and the very sense we share of inhabiting one world, as partakers in a common humanity, took shape and became visible in 1492.In search of the origins of modernity, 1492 takes readers on a journey around the globe of the time, in the company of real-life travelers, drawing together the threads that came to bind the planet. The tour starts in Granada, where the last Islamic kingdom in Europe collapsed, then moves to Timbuktu, where a new Muslim empire triumphed. With Portuguese explorers, we visit the court of the first Christian king in the southern hemisphere. We join Jews expelled from Spain as they cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, Italy, and Istanbul. We see the flowering of the Renaissance in the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent and go to the corrupt Rome of Alexander Borgia. We see the frozen frontiers of the dynamic, bloody Russia of Ivan the Great and hear mystical poets sing on the shores of the Indian Ocean. We sail the Atlantic with Columbus. In the depths of an old volcanic crater in the Canary Islands, we witness the start of the first European overseas empire. We observe the Aztecs and Incas laying the foundations of a New World in the Americas. Wars and witchcraft, plagues and persecutions, poetry and prophecy, science and magic, art and faith all the glories and follies of the time are in this book. Everywhere, new departures marked the start of a new configuration for humankind, revealing how and why the modern world is different from the worlds of antiquity and the Middle Ages.History seems a patternless labyrinth but a good guide can trace our paths through it back to the moment when some of the most striking features of today's world began.
Carrying Albert Home
Carrying Albert Home
Hickam, Homer
¥90.51
The long-awaited prequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Rocket Boys—the basis for the movie October SkyElsie Lavender and Homer Hickam Sr.—the future parents of Homer Hickam Jr.—were high school classmates in the West Virginia coalfields, graduating just as the Great Depression began. When Homer asked for her hand, Elsie instead headed to Orlando where she sparked with a dancing actor named Buddy Ebsen (yes, that Buddy Ebsen). But when Buddy headed for New York, Elsie's dreams of a life with him were crushed and eventually she found herself back in the coalfields, married to Homer.Unfulfilled as a miner's wife, Elsie was reminded of her carefree days in Florida every day because of Buddy's unusual wedding gift: an alligator named Albert who lived in the only bathroom in their little house. Eventually Homer gave Elsie an ultimatum: "Me or the alligator!" After giving it some thought, Elsie concluded there was only one thing to do—carry Albert home.Carrying Albert Home tells the sweet, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking tale of a young couple and their special pet on a crazy 1,000-mile journey. Told with the warmth and down-home charm that made Rocket Boys a beloved bestseller, Homer Hickam's rollicking novel is truly a testament to that strange and marvelous emotion we call love.
Proof of Guilt
Proof of Guilt
Todd, Charles
¥90.51
Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge must contend with two dangerous enemies in this latest complex mystery in the New York Times bestselling seriesLondon, summer 1920. An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While the signs point to murder, vital questions remain: Who is the victimAnd where, exactly, was he killed?One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead manAnd does either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance—or possible deathWhat about his sisterOr the London office clerkIs Matthew Traynor, French's cousin and partner who heads the Madeira office, somehow involved?The experienced Rutledge knows that suspicion and circumstantial evidence are not proof of guilt, and he's going to keep digging for answers. But that perseverance will pit him against his supervisor, the new acting chief superintendent. When Rutledge discovers a link to an incident in the French family's past, the superintendent dismisses it, claiming the information isn't vital. He's determined to place the blame on one of French's women despite Rutledge's objections. Alone in a no-man's-land rife with mystery and danger, Rutledge must tread very carefully, for someone has decided that he, too, must die so that cruel justice can take its course.
Maya's Notebook
Maya's Notebook
Allende, Isabel
¥90.51
Neglected by her parents, nineteen-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in a rambling old house in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother Nidia, affectionately known as Nini, is a force of nature—willful and outspoken, unconventionally wise with a mystical streak, and fiercely protective—a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya's grandfather, is an African American astronomer and professor—a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya's adolescence.When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails. With her girlfriends—a tight circle known as the Vampires—she turns to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime, a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas. Lost in a dangerous underworld, she is caught in the crosshairs of warring forces—a gang of assassins, the police, the FBI, and Interpol. Her one chance for survival is Nini, who helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile. Here Maya tries to make sense of the past, unravels mysterious truths about life and about her family, and embarks on her greatest adventure: the journey into her own soul.
The Wind Is Not a River
The Wind Is Not a River
Payton, Brian
¥90.51
A gripping tale of survival and an epic love story in which a husband and wife–separated by the only battle of World War II to take place on American soil–fight to reunite in Alaska's starkly beautiful Aleutian IslandsFollowing the death of his younger brother in Europe, journalist John Easley is determined to find meaning in his loss, to document some part of the growing war that claimed his own flesh and blood. Leaving behind his beloved wife, Helen, after an argument they both regret, he heads north from Seattle to investigate the Japanese invasion of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, a story censored by the U.S. government.While John is accompanying a crew on a bombing run, his plane is shot down over the island of Attu. He survives only to find himself exposed to a harsh and unforgiving wilderness, known as "the Birthplace of Winds." There, John must battle the elements, starvation, and his own remorse while evading discovery by the Japanese.Alone in their home three thousand miles to the south, Helen struggles with the burden of her husband's disappearance. Caught in extraordinary circumstances, in this new world of the missing, she is forced to reimagine who she is–and what she is capable of doing. Somehow, she must find John and bring him home, a quest that takes her into the farthest reaches of the war, beyond the safety of everything she knows.A powerful, richly atmospheric story of life and death, commitment and sacrifice, The Wind Is Not a River illuminates the fragility of life and the fierce power of love.
Netherwood
Netherwood
Sanderson, Jane
¥90.51
Two remarkably different worlds—one of wealth and privilege, the other of poverty and desperation—are about to collide in one shattering moment in this mesmerizing tale of high drama, forbidden love, and families fighting to hold on to what they haveUpstairs: Lord Netherwood, a coal baron, earns his considerable wealth from the three mines he owns. Supplying a bustling industrial empire with the highest-quality coal keeps his coffers filled—money he needs to run his splendid estate, Netherwood Hall, and to dress his wife and daughters in the latest fashions. And keeping his heir, the charming but feckless Tobias, out of trouble, doesn't come cheap.Downstairs: Eve Williams, the wife of one of Lord Netherwood's most stalwart employees, cleverly manages her family's well-being on the low wages her hardworking husband earns in the mines. But when her ordered life amid the terraced rows of miners' houses is brought crashing down by the twin arrivals of tragedy and charity, Eve must look to her own self-sufficiency and talent to provide for her three young children. And soon the divide between "upstairs" and "downstairs" is about to close . . .and neither world will ever be the same.
The Invention of Fire
The Invention of Fire
Holsinger, Bruce
¥90.51
The author of the acclaimed medieval mystery A Burnable Book once again brings fourteenth-century London alive in all its color and detail in this riveting thriller featuring medieval poet and fixer John Gower—a twisty tale rife with intrigue, danger, mystery, and murderLondon, 1386. A mass murder has taken place within the city walls. Sixteen corpses have been dumped where they are sure to be found, bearing wounds like none seen before. John Gower, middling poet and expert trader in secrets, is summoned to investigate the killings even as the ruthless mayor of London seeks to thwart an open inquiry for reasons unknown. Gower learns that the men have fallen victim to handgonnes, new and terrifying weapons that threaten to change the future of war.Challenged by deception and treachery on all sides, Gower struggles against his failing vision even as his inquiries take him from the city's labyrinthine slums to the port of Calais to the forests of Kent, where his friend Geoffrey Chaucer serves as justice of the peace. As Gower strives to discover the source of the new guns and the identity of those who wielded them, he must risk everything to reveal the truth—and prevent a more devastating massacre on London's crowded streets. . . .
Bergdorf Blondes
Bergdorf Blondes
Sykes, Plum
¥90.51
The tenth anniversary edition of New York Times bestselling author Plum Sykes's timeless satireBergdorf Blondes are a thing, you know, a New York craze. Absolutely everyone wants to be one, but it's actually très difficult. You wouldn't believe the dedication it takes to be a gorgeous, flaxen-haired, dermatologically perfect New York girl with a life that's fabulous beyond belief. Honestly, it all requires a level of commitment comparable to, say, learning Hebrew or quitting cigarettes.Our heroine, "Moi," described as a "champagne bubble of a girl about town," gets into misadventures with fellow socialite and best friend Julie Bergdorf, a department store heiress. When Moi notices that getting engaged brings about a glow unattainable by facials, she and Julie scheme and shop to attract the perfect PH (Prospective Husband). Sykes's debut is a pitch-perfect examination of the glittering lives of the young, rich, and fabulous living in New York.
Stock Market Wizards
Stock Market Wizards
Schwager, Jack D.
¥90.51
The third in the bestselling Market Wizards series, this time focusing on the barometer of the economy the stock market. It has been nearly a decade since the publication of the highly successful The New Market Wizards. The interim has witnessed the most dynamic bull market in US stock history, a collapse in commodity prices, dramatic failures in some of the world's leading hedge funds, the burst of the Internet bubble, a fall into recession and subsequent rumblings of recovery. Who have been the 'market wizards' during this tumultuous financial periodHow did some traders manage to significantly outperform a stockmarket that during its heyday moved virtually straight upThis book will feature interviews with a variety of traders who achieved phenomenal financial success during the glory days of the Internet boom. In contrast with the first two Market Wizard books, which included traders from a broad financial spectrum stocks, bonds, currencies and futures this volume will focus on traders in the stockmarket.
Where They Found Her
Where They Found Her
McCreight, Kimberly
¥90.51
An idyllic suburban town.A devastating discovery.Shocking revelations that will change three lives forever.At the end of a long winter in well-to-do Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of a newborn is found in the woods fringing the campus of the town's prestigious university. No one knows the identity of the baby, what ended her very short life, or how she came to be found among the fallen leaves. But for the residents of Ridgedale, there is no shortage of opinions.When freelance journalist and recent Ridgedale transplant Molly Sanderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the disturbing news for the Ridgedale Reader—the town's local paper—she has good reason to hesitate. A severe depression followed the loss of her own baby, and this assignment could unearth memories she has tried hard to bury. But the disturbing history Molly uncovers is not her own. Her investigation reveals a decades-old trail of dark secrets hiding behind Ridgedale's white picket fences.Told from the perspectives of three Ridgedale women, Kimberly McCreight's taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth behind the tragedy, revealing that these women have far more in common than they could ever have imagined: that the very worst crimes are committed against those we love. And that—sooner or later—the past catches up to all of us.