The Absolute Book

The Absolute Book
Author: Elizabeth Knox
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2021-03-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 140594725X

DISCOVER THE ENCHANTING EPIC THAT WILL TRANSPORT YOU TO OTHER WORLDS . . . 'AN INSTANT CLASSIC' GUARDIAN 'BEWITCHING' THE TIMES 'MIND-BLOWING' LAINI TAYLOR 'ASTOUNDING' FRANCIS SPUFFORD 'GORGEOUSLY WRITTEN' DEBORAH HARKNESS _______ Taryn Cornick barely remembers the family library. Since her sister was murdered, she's forgotten so much. Now it's all coming back. The fire. The thief. The scroll box. People are asking questions about the library. Questions that might relate to her sister's murder. And something called The Absolute Book. A book in which secrets are written - and which everyone believes only she can find. They insist Taryn be the hunter. But she knows the truth. She is the hunted . . . _______ The Absolute Book is a tale of sisters, ancient blood, a forgotten library, murder, revenge and a book that might just have the answer to everything. 'An instant classic . . . A work to rank alongside other modern masterpieces of fantasy such as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series or Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Everything fantasy should be: original, magical, well read, compelling' GUARDIAN 'Astonishing. Gripping. Hugely ambitious. An extraordinary conclusion. Admire the sheer scope and grandeur' DAILY MAIL 'A marvellous argument for stories. There are Norse gods, references to Merlin, a tour through purgatory and a strange parallel world where magic is real and humans are bit players in the clash of supernatural realms. Bewitching' THE TIMES 'Contains multitudes, spanning the geographies of Canada, Britain and New Zealand; the cosmologies of fairies, demons and angels; and the genres of thriller, domestic realism and epic fantasy . . . I'm in awe of it' NEW YORK TIMES Review of Books 'Intricately plotted and gorgeously written, THE ABSOLUTE BOOK has something for everyone . . . Here is a cinematic tale that is by turns dark and dreamlike, yet ultimately hopeful' DEBORAH HARKNESS, author of A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES 'Fantastical' THE TIMES 'Savour and absorb the world Knox conjures' SUNDAY TIMES 'Gorgeous. The payoffs and reveals are mind-blowing' LAINI TAYLOR, author of DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE 'An angelic book, an apocalyptic book, an astounding book' FRANCIS SPUFFORD

Nightbitch

Nightbitch
Author: Rachel Yoder
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2021-07-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385546823

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING AMY ADAMS • In this blazingly smart and voracious debut novel, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog. • "A must-read for anyone who can’t get enough of the ever-blurring line between the psychological and supernatural that Yellowjackets exemplifies." —Vulture One day, the mother was a mother, but then one night, she was quite suddenly something else... An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms. As the mother's symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers the mysterious academic tome which becomes her bible, A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography, and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel-marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem. An outrageously original novel of ideas about art, power, and womanhood wrapped in a satirical fairy tale, Nightbitch will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. And you should. You should howl as much as you want.

The Point of Vanishing

The Point of Vanishing
Author: Howard Axelrod
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2015-09-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0807075477

Into the Wild meets Walden—a lyrical memoir for nature lovers and for anyone who has wondered what it would be like to disconnect from our hyper-connected culture and seek more meaningful connections After losing vision in one eye and becoming estranged from his family and friends, a young man spent two years searching for identity in self-imposed solitude in the backwoods of northern Vermont, where he embarked on a project of stripping away facades and all social ties--and learned to face himself. On a clear May afternoon at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Howard Axelrod played a pick-up game of basketball. In a skirmish for a loose ball, a boy’s finger hooked behind Axelrod’s eyeball and left him permanently blinded in his right eye. A week later, he returned to the same dorm room, but to a different world. A world where nothing looked solid, where the distance between how people saw him and how he saw had widened into a gulf. Desperate for a sense of orientation he could trust, he retreated to a jerry-rigged house in the Vermont woods, where he lived without a computer or television, and largely without human contact, for two years. He needed to find a more lasting sense of meaning away from society’s pressures and rush. Named one of the best books of the year by Slate, Chicago Tribune, Entropy Magazine, and named one of the top 10 memoirs by Library Journal

The Golden State

The Golden State
Author: Lydia Kiesling
Publisher: MCD
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2018-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374718067

NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. FINALIST FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.

The Blank Slate

The Blank Slate
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2003-08-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1101200324

A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.

Little Weirds

Little Weirds
Author: Jenny Slate
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0316485357

One of Vanity Fair's Great Quarantine Reads: Step into Jenny Slate's wild imagination in this "magical" (Mindy Kaling), "delicious" (Amy Sedaris), and "poignant" (John Mulaney) New York Times bestseller about love, heartbreak, and being alive -- "this book is something new and wonderful" (George Saunders). You may "know" Jenny Slate from her Netflix special, Stage Fright, as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of "Obvious Child." But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion, and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time. In her dazzling, impossible-to-categorize debut, Jenny channels the pain and beauty of life in writing so fresh, so new, and so burstingly alive, we catch her vision like a fever and bring it back out into the bright day with us, where everything has changed.

Slate as Dimension Stone

Slate as Dimension Stone
Author: Jörn Wichert
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 499
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030356671

This book offers a comprehensive review devoted exclusively to slate as dimension stone. Beginning with a description of the slate as dimension stone, the book describes the origin of slate and related geological phenomena. It thoroughly explains key data acquisition methods and techniques, which are accompanied by extensive data. In turn, slate standards are introduced and compared with regard to their importance for product quality. The book covers in detail the specific petrographical, fabric, strength, physical properties and weathering behaviour of slates. The chapter on mining and production provides an overview of the different forms of exploitation and related geotechnical aspects, together with production and workflow design, from the beginning to the final product. The second part comprises a thorough description of worldwide slate deposits and their geology, properties and appearance as well as a brief introduction of the history. Given its scope and accessible format, the book represents an essential guide for scientists, engineers, and professionals in geology, conservation science, architecture, and mining, as well as readers who are active in the slate industry.