Equal of the Sun

Equal of the Sun
Author: Anita Amirrezvani
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 486
Release: 2012-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451660480

*“Gripping.” —The Washington Post * “ A story of intrigue and action…[whose] scheming and parricide rival A Game of Thrones.” —San Francisco Chronicle* Based loosely on the life of Princess Pari Khan Khanoom, Equal of the Sun is a riveting story of political intrigue and a moving portrait of the unlikely bond between a princess and a eunuch. Iran in 1576 is a place of wealth and dazzling beauty. But when the Shah dies without having named an heir, the court is thrown into tumult. Princess Pari, the Shah’s daughter and protégée, knows more about the inner workings of the state than almost anyone, but her maneuvers to instill order after her father’s sudden death incite resentment and dissent. Pari and her closest adviser, Javaher, a eunuch able to navigate the harem as well as the world beyond the palace walls, possess an incredible tapestry of secrets that explode in a power struggle of epic proportions. Legendary women—from Anne Boleyn to Queen Elizabeth I to Mary, Queen of Scots—changed the course of history in the royal courts of sixteenth-century England. They are celebrated in history books and novels, but few people know of the powerful women in the Muslim world, who formed alliances, served as key advisers to rulers, lobbied for power on behalf of their sons, and ruled in their own right. In Equal of the Sun, Anita Amirrezvani’s gorgeously crafted tale of power, loyalty, and love in the royal court of Iran, she brings one such woman to life, Princess Pari Khan Khanoom Safavi. Amirrezvani is a master storyteller, and in her lustrous prose this rich and labyrinthine world comes to vivid life with a stunning cast of characters, passionate and brave men and women who defy or embrace their destiny in a Machiavellian game played by those who lust for power and will do anything to attain it.

The Persian Boy

The Persian Boy
Author: Mary Renault
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 818
Release: 2013-09-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1480432377

A New York Times–bestselling novel of the ancient king of Macedon and his lover by the author Hilary Mantel calls “a shining light.” The Persian Boy centers on the most tempestuous years of Alexander the Great’s life, as seen through the eyes of his lover and most faithful attendant, Bagoas. When Bagoas is very young, his father is murdered and he is sold as a slave to King Darius of Persia. Then, when Alexander conquers the land, he is given Bagoas as a gift, and the boy is besotted. This passion comes at a time when much is at stake—Alexander has two wives, conflicts are ablaze, and plots on the Macedon king’s life abound. The result is a riveting account of a great conqueror’s years of triumph and, ultimately, heartbreak. The Persian Boy is the second volume of the Novels of Alexander the Great trilogy, which also includes Fire from Heaven and Funeral Games. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author. “Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us.” —Hilary Mantel

The Sun Does Shine

The Sun Does Shine
Author: Anthony Ray Hinton
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-03-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250124719

"A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit"--

Half of a Yellow Sun

Half of a Yellow Sun
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2010-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307373541

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place. Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before.

The City of the Sun

The City of the Sun
Author: Tommaso Campanella
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1602068879

City of the Sun, written in 1602, is Tommaso Campanella's contribution to the body of literature concerned with utopia, the philosophical search for the perfect society. Campanella's utopia was based on a form of communism in which all possessions, including women and children, were shared by men. The great city was ruled by a spiritual leader named Metaphysic, whom Power, Wisdom, and Love served, overseeing all aspects of the society. Wisdom ensures that the sciences are properly taught, while Love ensures that men and women breed the most perfect children. Those with an interest in philosophy and sociology will find this book an intriguing take on the structure of an ideal society. Italian philosopher and theologian TOMMASO CAMPANELLA (1568-1639) became a monk at the age of fifteen. He was imprisoned for twenty-seven years for conspiring against the Spanish crown, and it was during this time that he wrote his most important works, including Atheismus triumphatus (1605) and Metaphysica (1609).

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593318188

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

The Pea and the Sun

The Pea and the Sun
Author: Leonard M. Wapner
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2005-04-29
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1439864845

Take an apple and cut it into five pieces. Would you believe that these five pieces can be reassembled in such a fashion so as to create two apples equal in shape and size to the original? Would you believe that you could make something as large as the sun by breaking a pea into a finite number of pieces and putting it back together again? Neither did Leonard Wapner, author of The Pea and the Sun, when he was first introduced to the Banach-Tarski paradox, which asserts exactly such a notion. Written in an engaging style, The Pea and the Sun catalogues the people, events, and mathematics that contributed to the discovery of Banach and Tarski's magical paradox. Wapner makes one of the most interesting problems of advanced mathematics accessible to the non-mathematician.

The Sunbearer Trials

The Sunbearer Trials
Author: Aiden Thomas
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250822149

Welcome to The Sunbearer Trials, where teen semidioses compete in a series of challenges with the highest of stakes, in this electric new Mexican-inspired fantasy from Aiden Thomas, the New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys. “Only the most powerful and honorable semidioses get chosen. I’m just a Jade. I’m not a real hero.” As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the chaotic Obsidian gods at bay. Sol selects ten of the most worthy semidioses to compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body melted down to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years. Teo, a seventeen-year-old Jade semidiós and the trans son of the goddess of birds, isn't worried about the Trials . . . at least, not for himself. His best friend, Niya is a Gold semidiós and a shoo-in for the Trials, and while he trusts her abilities, the odds of becoming the sacrifice is one-in-ten. But then, for the first time in over a century, the impossible happens. Sol chooses not one, but two Jade competitors. Teo, and Xio, the thirteen-year-old child of the god of bad luck. Now they must compete in five trials against Gold opponents who are more powerful and better trained. Worst of all, Teo’s annoyingly handsome ex-best friend and famous semidiós Hero, Aurelio is favored to win. Teo is determined to get himself and his friends through the trials unscathed—for fame, glory, and their own survival.

The Blood Of Flowers

The Blood Of Flowers
Author: Anita Amirrezvani
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2010-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0755377362

'Sensuous and transporting... filled with the colours, tastes and fragrances of life in 17th century Isfahan. Amirrezvani clearly knows and loves the ways of old Iran, and brings them to life with the cadences of a skilled story-spinner' Geraldine Brooks THE BLOOD OF FLOWERS is a mesmerizing historical novel about a young Iranian woman whose destiny changes on the sudden death of her father. Forced to leave their village, the woman and her mother travel to the beautiful city of Isfahan, where they are taken in by an uncle, a wealthy carpet designer, and his unsympathetic wife. When an ill-considered action results in the heroine's fall from grace, she is forced into an extraordinary secret marriage. Spirited and rebellious, she wants to be free to live a life her own choosing, if she can find a way. 'The most wonderful book... Fascinating, totally original and utterly gripping' Esther Freud 'The prose... positively glows on the page, and the characterisation is similarly acute, notably of the wonderfully drawn heroine. As a journey into a society that will be alien to most readers, this is a remarkable achievement' Barry Forshaw

Anthem

Anthem
Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Ayn Rand Institute Press
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2021-07-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0996010130

About this Edition This 2021-2022 Digital Student Edition of Ayn Rand's Anthem was created for teachers and students receiving free novels from the Ayn Rand Institute, and includes a historic Q&A with Ayn Rand that cannot be found in any other edition of Anthem. In this Q&A from 1979, Rand responds to questions about Anthem sent to her by a high school classroom. About Anthem Anthem is Ayn Rand’s “hymn to man’s ego.” It is the story of one man’s rebellion against a totalitarian, collectivist society. Equality 7-2521 is a young man who yearns to understand “the Science of Things.” But he lives in a bleak, dystopian future where independent thought is a crime and where science and technology have regressed to primitive levels. All expressions of individualism have been suppressed in the world of Anthem; personal possessions are nonexistent, individual preferences are condemned as sinful and romantic love is forbidden. Obedience to the collective is so deeply ingrained that the very word “I” has been erased from the language. In pursuit of his quest for knowledge, Equality 7-2521 struggles to answer the questions that burn within him — questions that ultimately lead him to uncover the mystery behind his society’s downfall and to find the key to a future of freedom and progress. Anthem anticipates the theme of Rand’s first best seller, The Fountainhead, which she stated as “individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul.”