万本电子书0元读

万本电子书0元读

A Fold in the Tent of the Sky
A Fold in the Tent of the Sky
Hale, Michael
¥90.51
Struggling actor Peter Abbott is about to land the biggest role of his life. His audition for Calliope Associates—a clandestine private investigation firm made up of men and women with highly developed psychic abilities—requires only proof of Peter's psychic skills, no dramatic monologue. Business is booming until members of the group begin disappearing at the hands of fellow psychic Simon Haywood. His genius is matched only by Peter's, but Simon alone discovers a unique way to use his extrasensory skills to travel back in time, committing crimes without any trace. Simon's mind grows warped and paranoid as the universe strains against his tinkering. Terrified that his extracurricular voyages will be curtailed, he plans to "erase" his colleagues. But Simon's methods are not exactly cold-blooded; instead he goes back to the moment of his victims' conception and prevents them from being created. Because no one in the present day recalls he or she ever existed, he's not caught . . . until Peter realizes what's happening. Now time is running out as Simon's sociopathic travels are disrupting the universe, folding and twisting the constraints of matter to a near-breaking point and threatening to spin the entire cosmos out of control. A Fold in the Tent of the Sky takes murder into a new dimension as it races toward its electrifying, time-twisting climax.
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.
The Social Sex
The Social Sex
Yalom, Marilyn
¥90.51
In today's culture, the bonds of female friendship are taken as a given. But only a few centuries ago, the idea of female friendship was completely unacknowledged, even pooh-poohed. Dating back to the Greeks and the Romans, women were long considered weaker than men and constitutionally unsuited for friendship at the highest level. Only men, the reasoning went, had the emotional and intellectual depth to develop and sustain these meaningful relationships.Surveying history, literature, philosophy, religion, and pop culture, acclaimed author Marilyn Yalom and coauthor Theresa Donovan Brown demonstrate how women were able to co-opt the public face of friendship throughout the years. Chronicling shifting attitudes toward friendship both female and male from the Bible and the Romans to the Enlightenment, to the women's rights movements of the 1960s up to Sex and the City and Broad City, they reveal how the concept of female friendship has been inextricably linked to the larger social and cultural movements that have defined human history.With Yalom and Brown as our guides, we delve into the fascinating historical episodes and trends that illuminate the story of friendship between women: the literary salon as the original book club, the emergence of female professions and the working girl, the phenomenon of gossip, the advent of women's sports, and more.Lively, informative, and richly detailed, The Social Sex is a revelatory cultural history.
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.
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.
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.
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.
With Wings Like Eagles
With Wings Like Eagles
Korda, Michael
¥90.51
In the summer of 1940, fewer than three thousand young fighter pilots of the Royal Air Force stood between Hitler and the victory that seemed almost within his grasp.In this superb history of three epic months that saved the world, Michael Korda brilliantly re-creates the intensity of combat in "the long, delirious, burning blue" of the sky above southern England while tracing, perhaps for the first time, the entire complex web of political, diplomatic, scientific, industrial, and human decisions during the 1930s that inexorably led to the world's first, greatest, and most decisive air battle. With Wings Like Eagles brings to vivid life the extraordinary men and women on both sides of the conflict from Winston Churchill, Neville Chamberlain, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Gring to the ground crews, the German pilots, the American volunteers, and the courageous airmen and airwomen of the RAF.
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.
Pieces of Light
Pieces of Light
Fernyhough, Charles
¥90.51
How is it possible to have vivid memories of something that never happenedHow can siblings remember the same event from their childhoods so differently?Do the selections and distortions of memory reveal a truth about the self?Why are certain memories tied to specific places?Does your memory really get worse as you get older?A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create recollections anew each time we are called upon to remember. As the psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he eloquently illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough via a series of personal stories a visit to his college campus to see if his memories hold up, an interview with his ninety-three-year-old grandmother, conversations with those whose memories are affected by brain damage and trauma each illustrating memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.Fernyhough guides readers through the fascinating new science of autobiographical memory, covering topics including imagination and the power of sense associations to cue remembering. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light brings together science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to help us better understand the ways we remember and the ways we forget.
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.
Burning Chrome
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
¥90.51
Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."
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.
Love May Fail
Love May Fail
Quick, Matthew
¥90.51
"It doesn't matter how I got here. What I do with the puzzle pieces that are now in front of me—that's what matters.Save Mr. Vernon.My three-word quest.Why I'm here in this time and space."Portia Kane is having a meltdown. After escaping her ritzy Florida life and her cheating pornographer husband, she finds herself back in South Jersey, a place that remains largely unchanged from the years of her unhappy youth. Lost and alone, looking for the goodness she believes still exists in the world, Portia sets off on a quest to save the one man who always believed in her—and in all of his students: her beloved high school English teacher, Mr. Vernon, who has retired broken and alone after a traumatic classroom incident.Will a sassy nun, an ex–heroin addict, a metalhead little boy, and her hoarder mother help or hurt Portia's chances on this quest to resurrect a good man and find renewed hope in the human raceLove May Fail is a story of the great highs and lows of existence: the heartache and daring choices it takes to become the person you know (deep down) you are meant to be.
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.
A Pattern of Lies
A Pattern of Lies
Todd, Charles
¥90.51
Bess Crawford must keep a deadly pattern of lies from destroying an innocent family in this compelling and atmospheric mystery from the New York Times bestselling author of A Question of Honor and An Unwilling AccompliceIn 1916, at the height of the war, an explosion and fire at an armament factory in Kent killed more than a hundred men. With Ashton Powder Mill situated so close to the coast—within reach of German saboteurs—the Army investigated, eventually ruling the event an appalling tragedy. Now, two years later, suspicion, gossip, and rumor have raised the specter of murder—and fingers point to the owner, Philip Ashton, whose son is battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's friend and former patient.While visiting the Ashtons, Bess finds herself caught up in a venomous show of hostility that doesn't stop with Philip Ashton's arrest. Indeed, someone is out for blood, and the household is all but under siege. The police are hostile—the Inspector's brother died in the mill explosion—and refuse to consult either the Army or Scotland Yard. Why, after two years, has the village turned against Ashton?In France, Bess searches for the only known witness to the explosion, now serving at the Front, and tries to convince him to give evidence about that terrible Sunday morning, only to find herself and the witness hunted by someone intent on preventing anyone from discovering what—or who—is behind this web of vicious lies. Uncertain whom to trust, she can rely only on her own wits and courage, but how can she stop a killer whose face she has never seen?Philip Ashton is urged to throw himself on the mercy of the court—where he will surely find none. Time is running out. And Bess, at the point of a gun, has only one choice left: to risk her life to save the Ashtons.
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.