It's the twenty-first century, and all over the world, MMORPGs are big business. Hidden away in China and elsewhere, young players are pressed into working as "gold-farmers," amassing game-wealth that's sold to Western players at a profitable markup. Some of these pieceworkers rebel, trying to go into business for themselves-but there's little to stop their bosses from dragging them back into servitude. Some of them, like young Mala in the slums of Bombay-nicknamed "General Robotwallah" for her self-taught military skill-become enforcers for the bosses, but that only buys them so much.All the way over in L.A., young Wei-Dong, obsessed with Asian youth culture and MMORPGs, knows the system is rigged, knows that kids everywhere are being exploited. Finally, he and his Asian counterparts begin to work together to claim their rights. Under the noses of the ruling elites, they fight the bosses, the game owners and the rich speculators, outsmarting them with their street-gaming skills. But soon the battle will spill over from the virtual world to the real one, leaving the young rebels fighting not just for their rights, but for their lives....
What began as a steamy weekend fling is about to change their lives forever.When Lindsay receives a mysterious invitation to live out her most illicit fantasies, she thinks it's her best friend playing a joke. Little does she know, the invitation is from someone else. Someone who knows her deepest desires...and intends to fulfill them.Erik is a man of many secrets, and he intends to keep it that way. When he invites Lindsay to his mansion, he thinks it's just for a steamy weekend fling. But from their first night together, there's an inexplicably deep connection that shakes him to his core. And with Lindsay in his arms, he feels both thrilled and unnerved. As Lindsay brings his fantasies to life, he's unwilling to let her go. But can he tell her how he knows her deepest desires, and will she stay with him if she learns the truth? You're invited...to explore your most forbidden desires with ILLICIT from author Opal Carew.
Serious solvers know that the puzzles in the New York Times get harder as the week goes on. From an easy Monday to a not so easy Friday puzzle, this brand new collection is sure to challenge you with every passing day. Features: * 200 weekday New York Times crosswords* Edited by crossword great Will Shortz* Puzzles range from fairly easy to fairly hard and everything in between.
One of the greatest spiritual teachers of the twentieth century addresses the conflicts that arise between people with opposing views and the dangers of losing your individual identity in your desire to belong to a group with shared values. In Belief, Doubt, and Fanaticism: Is It Essential to Have Something to Believe In?, Osho brings his unique and often surprising perspective to the religious, political, social and economic forces that drive people into opposing camps, fanatical groups, and belief systems that depend on seeing every "other" as the "enemy." As always, the focus is first and foremost on the individual psyche and consciousness, to identify the root causes and hidden demons of our human need to belong and have something to "believe in."Osho challenges readers to examine and break free of the conditioned belief systems and prejudices that limit their capacity to enjoy life in all its richness. He has been described by the Sunday Times of London as one of the "1000 Makers of the 20th Century" and by Sunday Mid-Day (India) as one of the ten people-along with Gandhi, Nehru, and Buddha-who have changed the destiny of India. Since his death in 1990, the influence of his teachings continues to expand, reaching seekers of all ages in virtually every country of the world.
The autobiography of one of Britain's most beloved figures, last of the Mitford sisters, renowned writer and social figure. Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood of six daughters and one son that included the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote, when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir Wait for Me! chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood roaming the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to Andrew Cavendish, the second son of the Duke of Devonshire. Her life changed utterly with his unexpected inheritance of the title and vast estates after the wartime death of his brother, who had married "Kick" Kennedy, the beloved sister of John F. Kennedy. Her friendship with that family would last through triumph and tragedy. In 1959, the Duchess and her family took up residence in Chatsworth, the four-hundred-year-old family seat, with its incomparable collections of paintings, tapestry, and sculpture-the combined accumulations of generations of tastemakers. Neglected due to the economies of two world wars and punitive inheritance taxes, the great house soon came to life again under the careful attention of the Duchess. It is regarded as one of England's most loved and popular historic houses. Wait for Me! is written with intense warmth, charm, and perception. A unique portrait of an age of tumult, splendor, and change, it is also an unprecedented look at the rhythms of life inside one of the great aristocratic families of England. With its razor-sharp portraits of the Duchess's many friends and cohorts-politicians, writers, artists, sportsmen-it is truly irresistible reading, and will join the shelf of Mitford classics to delight readers for years to come.
Whether you're just beginning your crossword career or are an old pro who enjoys the thrill of blazing through an easy puzzle, The New York Times Crosswords to Unwind Your Mind is sure to provide hours of fun and relaxation. Features:-Seventy-five of the Times' easiest puzzles, perfect for solvers of all skill levels-Portable format is perfect for travel or solving at home-Edited by the biggest name in crosswords, Will Shortz.
If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only have one book with you, what would it be? For sudoku fans Will Shortz Presents the Supreme Book of Sudoku is the obvious answer. With 1,000 easy to hard sudoku puzzles you can satisfy your craving for these addictive, seductive puzzles. Features:· 1,000 top-quality easy to hard sudoku puzzles· Edited by legendary New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz· Big grids with lots of space for easy solving
In Julia Dahl's powerful novel Conviction, Rebekah Roberts investigates a murder that occurred in Brooklyn after the Crown Heights riots of 1991, for which the wrong man may have been convicted.In the summer of 1992, a year after riots exploded between black and Jewish neighbors in Crown Heights, a black family is brutally murdered in their Brooklyn home. A teenager is quickly convicted, and the justice system moves on.Twenty-two years later, journalist Rebekah Roberts gets a letter: I didn't do it. Frustrated with her work at the city's sleaziest tabloid, Rebekah starts to dig. But witnesses are missing, memories faded, and almost no one wants to talk about that grim, violent time in New York City-not even Saul Katz, a former cop and her source in Brooklyn's insular Hasidic community.So she goes it alone. And as she gets closer to the truth of that night, Rebekah finds herself in the path of a killer with two decades of secrets to protect.From the author of the Edgar-nominated Invisible City comes another timely thriller that illuminates society's darkest corners. Told in part through the eyes of a jittery eyewitness and the massacre's sole survivor, Conviction examines the power-and cost-of community, loyalty, and denial.
I'm getting a life's lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we? Scott Simon sat beside his once gorgeous and vivacious mother, holding her hand, comforting her, and reminiscing about good times and bad as she faced her final days. The result of those hours spent in the hospital is Unforgettable-a deeply moving, at times laugh-out-loud funny memoir about the colorful life of this mother and son. An instant New York Times bestseller, Unforgettable is a spirited, affecting, and personal tribute, and it is a testament to the universal bond between all parents and children. "In a return to the bighearted storytelling that made him a star NPR correspondent, [Simon] pays full tribute to the ex-showgirl who...taught her only son to be honest, kind, and entertaining. Be assured, tears will fall."--People Magazine"With UNFORGETTABLE, Simon reveals not the possibilities of social media but its limits. Those 140-character bursts...seem inadequate compared with the skilled unspooling of this memoir."-The Washington Post
Puzzle your cares away with The New York Times Stress-Free Solving Crosswords!This title features: - 75 easy Times crosswords- Edited by Will Shortz - Convenient travel-size volume- Portable and affordable
A sprawling collection of essays about the subcultures of the 1960s by Tom Wolfe, the revolutionary journalist and novelistWhen Tom Wolfe smashed his way into the literary scene in 1965 with The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, he transformed reporting in American popular culture. For his second book, Wolfe traveled from La Jolla to London in search of new lifestyles. The Pump House Gang is the result: a collection of essays that chronicles life at the end of the 1960s, written with all the panache and perceptiveness that made Wolfe one of our greatest American journalists.Running throughout The Pump House Gang is a central theme of Wolfe's writing: status. He discusses the 1960s phenomenon of retreating from conventional social hierarchies, which Wolfe calls "starting your own league." Surfers, motorcyclists, lumpen-dandies, and stay-at-homes-everybody's doing it. Except for die-hards in the crumbling old social worlds of New York and London, where the confusion is so great that nobody can tell whether this is really the path to the top they've taken or just the service elevator.Dazzlingly brilliant as a stylist, daringly provocative as a commentator, and always entertaining, in The Pump House Gang, Wolfe is thoroughly, completely himself.
At Jack Logan's sports-crazy New Jersey high school, the new rule is that all kids must play on a team. So Jack and a ragtag group of anti-athletic friends decide to get even. They are going to start a rebel JV soccer team whose mission is to avoid victory at any cost, setting out to secretly undermine the jock culture of the school. But as the team's losing formula becomes increasingly successful at attracting fans and attention, Jack and his teammates are winning in ways they never expected-and don't know how to handle. Losers Take All by David Klass is a fresh and funny novel that throws out all the rules of high school sports. After all, if you can't win the game, change the rules.
A brilliant novel from "the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction" (Marcela Valdes, The Nation)Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middle-class housing development in a suburb of Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle Raúl. In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be apolitical but who quietly sympathized-to what degree, the author isn't sure-with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own life-which is strikingly similar to the life of his novel's protagonist-expose the raw suture of fiction and reality. Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation and on a generation born too late-the generation which, as the author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.
It's high summer in Acker's Gap, a small town nestled in the beautiful but poverty-stricken West Virginia mountains-but no one's enjoying the rugged natural landscape. Not while a killer stalks the town and its hard-luck inhabitants. County prosecutor Bell Elkins and her closest friend, Sheriff Nick Fogelsong, are stymied by a murderer who seems to come and go like smoke on the mountain. At the same time, Bell must deal with the return from prison of her sister, Shirley-who, like Bell, carries the indelible scars of a savage past.In the third mystery chronicling the journey of Bell Elkins and her return to her Appalachian hometown, we also meet Lindy Crabtree-a coal miner's daughter with dark secrets of her own, secrets that threaten to explode into even more violence. Acker's Gap is a place of loveliness and brutality, of isolation and fierce attachments-a place where the dead rub shoulders with the living, and demand their due.|Julia Keller once again captivates readers with this story of a dying West Virginia mountain town and the strong, proud people who inhabit it.
One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Short Story Collections of 2018. Named a Summer Read by Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Nylon, Bustle and Literary Hub. One of Financial Times and TLS's Best Books of 2018.One of Granta's Best Young American novelists, Catherine Lacey, the Whiting Award-winning author of The Answers, showcases her literary style in short fiction with Certain American States, a collection of stories about ordinary people seeking-and failing to find-the extraordinary in their lives.
In O My America!, the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler embarks on a journey across the United States, guided by the adventures of six women who reinvented themselves as they chased the frontier west.Wheeler's career has propelled her from pole to pole-camping in Arctic igloos, tracking Indian elephants, contemplating East African swamps so hot that toads explode-but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. "Fifty is a tough age," she writes. "Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act." Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope.In 1827, Fanny, mother of Anthony, swapped England for Ohio with hopes of bolstering the family finances. There, failure and disappointment hounded the immigrant for three years before she returned home to write one of the most sensational travel accounts of the nineteenth century. Domestic Manners of the Americans made an instant splash on both sides of the Atlantic, where readers both relished and reviled Trollope's caustic take on the newly independent country. Her legacy became the stuff of legend: "Trollopize" emerged as a verb meaning "to abuse the American nation"; Mark Twain judged her the best foreign commentator on his country; the last king of France threw a ball in her honor. Fanny Trollope was forty-nine when she set out for America, and Wheeler, approaching fifty herself, was smitten. Fanny was living proof of life after fertility, and she led Wheeler to other trailblazers: the actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, the radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, the traveler Isabella Bird, and the novelist Catherine Hubback-women born within half a century of one another who all reinvented themselves in a transforming America, the land of new beginnings.In O My America!, Wheeler tracks her subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas at the tail end of the Cascades, armed with two sets of maps for each adventure: one current and one the women before her would have used. Bright, spirited, and tremendous tantrum-throwers, these ladies proved to be the best travel companion Wheeler could have asked for. "I had more fun writing this book than all my previous books put together," she writes-and it shows. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writer's reckoning with a young country, but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women.
The final volume in K. A. Doore's critically-acclaimed assassin fantasy series, praised by Publishers Weekly as "a hit with fans of Sarah J. Maas and George R.R. Martin" (starred review)Seven years have passed since the Siege-a time when the hungry dead had risen-but the memories still haunt Illi Basbowen. Though she was trained to be an elite assassin, now the Basbowen clan act as Ghadid's militia force protecting the resurrected city against a growing tide of monstrous guul that travel across the dunes. Illi's worst fears are confirmed when General Barca arrives, bearing news that her fledgling nation, Hathage, also faces this mounting danger. In her search for the source of the guul, the general exposes a catastrophic secret hidden on the outskirts of Ghadid.To protect her city and the realm, Illi must travel to Hathage and confront her inner demons in order to defeat a greater one-but how much can she sacrifice to protect everything she knows from devastation? The Chronicles of Ghadid#1: The Perfect Assassin#2: The Impossible Contract#3: The Unconquered City
Death of a New American by Mariah Fredericks is the atmospheric, compelling follow-up to the stunning debut A Death of No Importance, featuring series character, Jane Prescott. In 1912, as New York reels from the news of the Titanic disaster, ladies' maid Jane Prescott travels to Long Island with the Benchley family. Their daughter Louise is to marry William Tyler, at their uncle and aunt's mansion; the Tylers are a glamorous, storied couple, their past filled with travel and adventure. Now, Charles Tyler is known for putting down New York's notorious Italian mafia, the Black Hand, and his wife Alva has settled into domestic life.As the city visitors adjust to the rhythms of the household, and plan Louise's upcoming wedding, Jane quickly befriends the Tyler children's nanny, Sofia-a young Italian-American woman. However, one unusually sultry spring night, Jane is woken by a scream from the nursery-and rushes in to find Sofia murdered, and the carefully locked window flung open. The Tylers believe that this is an attempted kidnapping of their baby gone wrong; a warning from the criminal underworld to Charles Tyler. But Jane is asked to help with the investigation by her friend, journalist Michael Behan, who knows that she is uniquely placed to see what other tensions may simmer just below the surface in this wealthy, secretive household. Was Sofia's murder fall-out from the social tensions rife in New York, or could it be a much more personal crime?
The grand adventure continues in George Mann's Newbury & Hobbes steampunk mystery series, as a Victorian special agent races across a continent to save his beloved's life on board The Revenant Express. Sir Maurice Newbury is bereft as his trusty assistant Veronica Hobbes lies dying with a wounded heart. Newbury and Veronica's sister Amelia must take a sleeper train across Europe to St. Petersberg to claim a clockwork heart that Newbury has commissioned from Faberge to save Veronica from a life trapped in limbo.No sooner do they take off then sinister goings-on start to plague the train, and it is discovered that an old villain, thought dead, is also on board and seeking revenge. Can Newbury and Amelia defeat him and get the clockwork organ back to the Fixer in time to save Veronica? And can they do so without Newbury going so far into the dark side of occult magic that he can never return?Meanwhile, Sir Charles Bainbridge is the only one of their team left in London to struggle with a case involving a series of horrific crimes. Someone is kidnapping prominent men and infecting them with the Revenant plague, leaving them chained in various locations around the city. But why?It's a rousing chase to save both London and Veronica. Will these brave detectives be up to the task?Newbury & Hobbes Investigations#1: The Affinity Bridge#2: The Osiris Ritual#3: The Immortality Engine#4: The Executioner's Heart#5: The Revenant Express
"It reads like John Le Carré if Le Carré ate a ton of acid before writing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy..." -NPR on SummerlandFrom Hannu Rajaniemi, one of the most exciting science fiction writers in the last decade, comes an awe-inspiring account of the afterlife and what happens when it spills over into the world of the livingLoss is a thing of the past. Murder is obsolete. Death is just the beginning.In 1938, death is no longer feared but exploited. Since the discovery of the afterlife, the British Empire has extended its reach into Summerland, a metropolis for the recently deceased.Yet Britain isn't the only contender for power in this life and the next. The Soviets have spies in Summerland, and the technology to build their own god.When SIS agent Rachel White gets a lead on one of the Soviet moles, blowing the whistle puts her hard-earned career at risk. The spy has friends in high places, and she will have to go rogue to bring him in.But how do you catch a man who's already dead?Other Tor books by Hannu Rajaniemi:Jean le Flambeur series1. The Quantum Thief2. The Fractal Prince3. The Casual Angel
The Three Musketeers meets Jules Verne in A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery, the masterful second novel in Curtis Craddock's critically-acclaimed high fantasy Risen Kingdoms series, continuing the engrossing tale of courtly intrigue and breathtaking magic.Isabelle des Zephyrs has always been underestimated throughout her life, but after discovering the well of hidden magic within her, unveiling a centuries-long conspiracy, and stopping a war between rival nations, she has gained a newfound respect amongst the cutthroat court. All that is quickly taken away when Isabelle is unfairly convicted of breaking the treaty she helped write and has her political rank and status taken away. Now bereft, she nevertheless finds herself drawn into mystery when her faithful musketeer Jean-Claude uncovers a series of gruesome murders by someone calling themselves the Harvest King.As panic swells, the capital descends into chaos, when the emperor is usurped from the throne by a rival noble. Betrayed by their allies and hunted by assassins, Isabelle and Jean-Claude alone must thwart the coup, but not before it changes l'Empire forever."A gripping tale of a woman who refuses to be defined by her physical and magical limitations, thwarting both assassins and all who see her as a pawn. A great read!"-#1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, on An Alchemy of Masques and MirrorsThe Risen Kingdom series#1 An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors#2 A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery
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