Double-Barrel

Double-Barrel
Author: Nicolas Freeling
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2011-10-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1448206928

'Two women had committed suicide, and a third had had to be led gently away by men in white coats. There had been an outbreak of anonymous letters. . .That was not so very much. But there was something more, intangible but perceptible.' Inspector Van der Valk changes his mind about the routine nature of his mission to Drente. What lies behind the small-town immoralities, eaves-dropping, hysteria? Could he by chance have stumbled upon one of the century's most wanted criminals?

The King of the Rainy Country

The King of the Rainy Country
Author: Nicolas Freeling
Publisher: House of Stratus
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2001-06-30
Genre: Detective and mystery stories
ISBN: 9781842328439

This was the end of the story that had started 'Once upon a time, in a rainy country, there was a king...' The end had not happened in a rainy country, but on a bone-dry Spanish hillside, three hundred metres from where Van der Valk had left a lot of blood, some splintered bone, a few fragments of gut, and a ten-seventy-five Mauser rifle bullet. No one had broken any laws. But a handsome, middle-aged millionaire had disappeared with a naked girl. And Van der Valk was given the job of finding out why.

King of the Sky

King of the Sky
Author: Nicola Davies
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2017-06-13
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0763695688

When a young boy moves from his home in Italy to Wales, the only thing that cheers him up are the racing pigeons that Mr. Evans keeps in a loft behind his house.

Some Day Tomorrow

Some Day Tomorrow
Author: Nicolas Freeling
Publisher: Arcadia Books
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2000
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Hubertus van Biji, a 70-year-old retired Dutch flower grower, makes a rambling, broken confession.

Father of the Rain

Father of the Rain
Author: Lily King
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2010-07-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802197086

A New York Times Editors’ Choice—“a gripping epic about a father and daughter that plumbs the dark side of a family riven by addiction and mental illness” (Entertainment Weekly). Gardiner Amory’s life is reeling—Nixon is being impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life negotiating her parents’ conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, liquor-soaked life of her father. But when the pair divorces, Gardiner’s basest impulses are unleashed in a deluge, the chasm between all of them widens, and Daley is stretched thinly across it. As she reaches adulthood, Daley rejects the narrow world of her father’s prejudices and embarks on her own life—until Gardiner hits rock bottom. Returning home to help her father get sober, Daley risks everything she’s found beyond him, including a chance at love, in an attempt to repair a trust that was broken long ago . . . In this Winner of the New England Book Award for Fiction, Lily King pulls readers into “a brilliant exploration of the attraction of martyrdom, the intoxication of playing savior. . . . An absorbing, insightful story written in cool, polished prose right to the last conflicted line” (Washington Post).

Shahrzad and the Angry King

Shahrzad and the Angry King
Author: Nahid Kazemi
Publisher: Abrams
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2023-02-07
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1592703984

A rebel dreamer of a girl daydreams about her role in making the world a better place—and since dreams bleed into reality, maybe she really does. A Kirkus Reviews Best Beginning Reader of 2022! Shahrzad and the Angry King is a contemporary reimagining of the Scheherazade tale, starring scooter-riding, story-loving Shahrzad. Shahrzad loves stories and looks for them everywhere. When she meets a boy and asks him to tell her his story, he recounts fleeing a country that was peaceful and happy, until its grieving king grew angry and cruel. Shahrzad can't forget the boy and his story, and so, when she sees a toy airplane in a store, she imagines herself zooming off to the boy's home country, where she confronts the king, to make him reflect on the kind of leader he really wants to be. Like Scheherazade, she tells the king story after story, but this time not to save her own life, but those of the king's people and his own. Because Shahrzad knows the power of the creative imagination and that the stories we tell and the words we use shape our very existence. We live and die by the sword? Not exactly, says Shahrzad. We live or die by the stories we tell and how we see, frame, and word the world. Brought to life by Iranian artist Nahid Kazemi, this bold heroine reminds us of how powerfully intertwined reality is with the stories we tell.

Congo Inc.

Congo Inc.
Author: In Koli Jean Bofane
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2018-01-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0253031915

To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.

Surrealist, Lover, Resistant

Surrealist, Lover, Resistant
Author: Robert Desnos
Publisher: ARC Publications
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2017
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781906570699

This extensive and wide-ranging selection comprises the poetry of one of France's most exciting writers of the twentieth century, the surrealist Robert Desnos. Hailed as the 'prophet' of the Surrealist movement by AndrE Breton, Desnos was a hugely influential figure across all art forms at the time, and yet today his work completely underrepresented in the English language, with only his children's poems currently available in English translation. The present volume of nearly 300 poems seeks to redress the balance, moving from youthful, light-hearted material to full-blown surrealism, from poems full of anguish and torment to delightful love poetry, and from whimsical, humorous verses to some of the great poem sequences of the Nazi Occupation period when Desnos was an active resistant.

Kings of Quarantine

Kings of Quarantine
Author: Caroline Peckham
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-09-16
Genre:
ISBN: 9781914425448

Cruel. Heartless. Quarantined.The ruthless boys of Everlake Prep never saw lockdown coming.But the virus isn't their number one enemy.I am. And as if being confined to a boarding school for the elite wasn't bad enough, now I'm stuck in isolation with the boys who hate me most too. Saint, Kyan and Blake. The Night Keepers. Or so they call themselves. They've embodied the Native American legend which lives in this valley, taking on the role of the monsters who lurk in the forest. And though they act like beasts, they may also be the most tempting creatures I've ever seen. With the virus escalating and my dad's name splashed through the news, my entire world is falling apart. What he did has cast a dark shadow over me. And the Night Keepers want to make me pay for his crimes. Then things went from bad to worse when I touched the sacred rock. A rock which supposedly holds a curse to bind me as the Night Keepers' slave. And as crazy as it sounds, I decided to play along. Because there are things about me they don't know. Things my dad has hidden from me for years. All I can be sure of is that I have to find a way to escape this school. But until then, those savage boys are making my life a living hell. As the virus sweeps through the country and the world twists into something ugly and unknown, the kings of this school become true monarchs. Even the teachers bow to them now. And I'm kinda glad about that 'stay six feet away from one another' rule, because without it, I know they'd rip me apart. At least there's a silver lining. I'm cosying up to Coach Monroe. My hot as hell, brooding P.E. teacher who has a vendetta of his own against the Night Keepers. And with his help, I may succeed at doing more than escaping the clutches of these heartless fiends. I might even destroy them along the way. My father taught me how to be strong. How to prepare for the end of the world. So this isn't going to be the end of my world, mark my words. But if I'm able to use my mind and body to bring these assholes to their knees, it might just be the end of theirs. This is a high school bully romance series where the main character will end up with more than one love interest. It may have triggers for some as it has off the charts angst, dark love-hate themes, scenes of intense bullying and some violence (not aimed towards the main character) and is not for the faint of heart. Prepare to enrol at Everlake Prep. Bring your hand sanitiser, face masks and toilet paper to barter with, but don't expect to hold onto them for long. Because it's time to go into quarantine with the Night Keepers. And everything you own now belongs to them.