The Earth Hums in B Flat

The Earth Hums in B Flat
Author: Mari Strachan
Publisher: Canongate U.S.
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2009-06-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802197671

The Earth Hums in B Flat is a story of dark family secrets unraveled by the shrewd insight of twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan, a child with an irrepressible spirit living in a Welsh village that is reluctantly entering the modern age. From the small bed that she shares with her sister at night she flies up into the starry sky above her village and looks down on the lives of its inhabitants. And when the family that she babysits for is rocked by the sudden, unexplainable disappearance of their patriarch, Gwenni is determined to solve the mystery of Ifan EvanÕs whereabouts. Turning amateur detective, she is unaware that the trail will lead her closer to home than she ever imagined. Told with a breathtaking, irresistible blend of freshness and wisdom, the voice that sixty-two-year-old Welsh debut novelist Mari Strachan has created with Gwenni is vibrant, charming, and full of heart. An unforgettable character, GwenniÕs unique way of seeing the world lends her the ability to make the ordinary extraordinary. A magical novel about the trials of youth, familial duty, and understanding, The Earth Hums in B Flat will transport you to another time and place.Ê

Blow on a Dead Man's Embers

Blow on a Dead Man's Embers
Author: Mari Strachan
Publisher: ISIS Large Print Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Large type books
ISBN: 9780753189467

With her husband shattered by war, does one young woman have the strength to bring him back to life? In the aftermath of the Great War, Non Davies wakes one morning to find her husband crouching under the kitchen table in a cold sweat and with fear in his eyes, shouldering an imaginary rifle. Non decides she must discover what has changed her Davey so completely. A mysterious letter addressed to Davey gives her the clue she needs and takes her to the city of London in search of an answer. When she returns home Non realises that the dark secrets of Davey's behaviour are working their way ever closer to the surface - secrets that will shatter the fragile happiness of their community if they ever become known.

Dear Lucy

Dear Lucy
Author: Julie Sarkissian
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2014-04-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451625731

Lucy is a young woman with an uncommon voice and an unusual way of looking at the world. She doesn't understand why her mother has sent her to live with old Mister and Missus on their farm, but she knows she must never leave or her mother won't be able to find her again. Also living at the farm is a pregnant teenager named Samantha who tells conflicting stories about her past and quickly becomes Lucy's only friend. When Samantha gives birth and her baby disappears, Lucy arms herself with Samantha's diary--as well as a pet chicken named Jennifer--and embarks on a dangerous and exhilarating journey to reunite mother and child.

We Sinners

We Sinners
Author: Hanna Pylväinen
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2012-08-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0805095349

This stunning debut novel—drawn from the author's own life experience—tells the moving story of a family of eleven in the American Midwest, bound together and torn apart by their faith The Rovaniemis and their nine children belong to a deeply traditional church (no drinking, no dancing, no TV) in modern-day Michigan. A normal family in many ways, the Rovaniemis struggle with sibling rivalry, parental expectations, and forming their own unique identities in such a large family. But when two of the children venture from the faith, the family fragments and a haunting question emerges: Do we believe for ourselves, or for each other? Each chapter is told from the distinctive point of view of a different Rovaniemi, drawing a nuanced, kaleidoscopic portrait of this unconventional family. The children who reject the church learn that freedom comes at the almost unbearable price of their close family ties, and those who stay struggle daily with the challenges of resisting the temptations of modern culture. With precision and potent detail, We Sinners follows each character on their journey of doubt, self-knowledge, acceptance, and, ultimately, survival.

Doomed

Doomed
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385533152

Madison Spencer, the liveliest and snarkiest dead girl in the universe, continues the afterlife adventure begun in Chuck Palahniuk’s bestseller Damned. Just as that novel brought us a brilliant Hell that only he could imagine, Doomed is a dark and twisted apocalyptic vision from this provocative storyteller. The bestselling Damned chronicled Madison’s journey across the unspeakable (and really gross) landscape of the afterlife to confront the Devil himself. But her story isn’t over yet. In a series of electronic dispatches from the Great Beyond, Doomed describes the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil. After a Halloween ritual gone awry, Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or, as mortals like you and I know it, Earth. She can see and hear every detail of the world she left behind, yet she’s invisible to everyone who’s still alive. Not only do people look right through her, they walk right through her as well. The upside is that, no longer subject to physical limitations, she can pass through doors and walls. Her first stop is her parents’ luxurious apartment, where she encounters the ghost of her long-deceased grandmother. For Madison, the encounter triggers memories of the awful summer she spent upstate with Nana Minnie and her grandfather, Papadaddy. As she revisits the painful truth of what transpired over those months (including a disturbing and finally fatal meeting in a rest stop’s fetid men’s room, in which . . . well, never mind), her saga of eternal damnation takes on a new and sinister meaning. Satan has had Madison in his sights from the very beginning: through her and her narcissistic celebrity parents, he plans to engineer an era of eternal damnation. For everyone. Once again, our unconventional but plucky heroine must face her fears and gather her wits for the battle of a lifetime. Dante Alighieri, watch your back; Chuck Palahniuk is gaining on you.

Blindsight

Blindsight
Author: Peter Watts
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2006-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429955198

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

White Noise

White Noise
Author: Don DeLillo
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1999-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1440674477

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • An “eerie, brilliant, and touching” (The New York Times) modern classic about mass culture and the numbing effects of technology. “Tremendously funny . . . A stunning performance from one of our most intelligent novelists.”—The New Republic The inspiration for the award-winning major motion picture starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig Jack Gladney teaches Hitler Studies at a liberal arts college in Middle America where his colleagues include New York expatriates who want to immerse themselves in “American magic and dread.” Jack and his fourth wife, Babette, bound by their love, fear of death, and four ultramodern offspring, navigate the usual rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. Then a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives, an “airborne toxic event” unleashed by an industrial accident. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the “white noise” engulfing the Gladney family—radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings—pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.

Factourism

Factourism
Author: Ferdio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2021-05-18
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1507214316

Discover remarkable information about science, animals, history, and more with this collection of 150 interesting and intriguing facts. Did you know peanut butter could be turned into diamonds? Or that one teaspoon of honey is the life work of a dozen bees? Or that babies have 95 more bones than adults? These are just a few of the facts that you could learn in Factourism. Featuring 150 of the most extraordinary things that happen in the world every day, you’ll find amazing pieces of trivia accompanied by bright, colorful illustrations. Each beautifully designed page holds a trivia tidbit that will leave you brimming with knowledge.

The Earth Hums in B Flat

The Earth Hums in B Flat
Author: Mari Strachan
Publisher: Canongate Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2007-11-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1847675557

Gwenni Morgan is not like any other girl in this small Welsh town. Inquisitive, bookish and full of spirit, she can fly in her sleep and loves playing detective. So when a neighbour mysteriously vanishes, and no one seems to be asking the right questions, Gwenni decides to conduct her own investigation. Mari Strachan's unforgettable novel was one of the most acclaimed and successful debuts of 2009. It is a heart-breaking and hugely enjoyable story.

Indigo Rose

Indigo Rose
Author: Susan Miller
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307418138

From author Susan Beth Miller comes a luminous debut novel in the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid. Emotionally gripping and exquisitely written, Indigo Rose tells the story of one woman’s extraordinary passage from sorrow to joy–and the uncommon journey that restores her spirit. When Indigo Rosemartin leaves behind her beloved only child, Louisa, and her homeland of Jamaica to earn a better wage in America, she has no idea just how final her good-bye will be. In Chicago she keeps house for Professor Silver, whose three daughters come to depend on her in the wake of their parents’ crumbling marriage. But when Indigo receives devastating news that is every mother’s worst nightmare, she finds herself without purpose in a wintry, unfamiliar world–her heart hardened even against the girls she has cared for second only to her own. Stricken, Indigo drifts through her days until she discovers Brother Man’s, a private gambling club run by a charismatic fellow Jamaican. In this smoky, lively place that recalls her island home, Indigo numbs her pain at the roulette table in the company of other lost souls. But as her hunger for diversion threatens to consume her life, she realizes that only by facing down her despair will she ever again feel love. With mesmerizing prose, an unforgettable heroine, and a vibrantly drawn cast of characters, this powerful tale offers a compelling window into the ways we make peace with the past–and how family, community, and love can open our hearts to the future.