I was thrilled when Dreamspinner Press agreed to publish them as e-books. Again Jonathan, the leading character, is so much like me: ingenuous, romantic, and wanting to please. I repeated the process with A Shooting Star, loosely based on my years as a theatre major in college. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and uses his intelligence and sense of humor to mask hidden pain. Harold, the leading character, is a great deal like me. The story is loosely based on my high school years and ten-year high school reunion. How did these two stories come about? After having been an actor (playing opposite stars like Nathan Lane, Rosie O’Donnell, and Bruce Willis), playwright, director, and college theatre professor, I decided to adapt my hit one-act play, An Infatuation, into a novella. As I wrote, I laughed out loud, felt romantic, and wept. The reviews for my An Infatuation and A Shooting Star really hit home for me, since when writing the novellas, I placed my heart (figuratively) on each page. If you can only afford to buy one book this year, buy this one!” Three Books Over the Rainbow “Grabs you and tugs at your emotions.” Nautical Star Books “Thanks Joe for putting your heart on the page for us to savor!” Bike Book Reviews
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I think we’re all looking for the perfect beach read to read on the beach, and when I say beach I mean, plopping in front of your TV which has a video scape going on of the beach while you’re social distancing at home □. Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. 347) AboutĬlick to read other book reviews SynopsisĪugustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let him circle my waist and we stood there, learning to dance in the rain.” (pg. Slowly, he began to sway me back and forth again. With a little help from the strange-but-beautiful girl next door and her paranoid brother, Bryony sets out to break the curse, dodging bloodthirsty paintings, angry mobs and her wicked uncle along the way. Bryony has accidentally unleashed the Gray family curse, and it's spreading fast. When her newest painting escapes the canvas and rampages through the streets of London, Bryony digs into her family history, discovering some rather scandalous secrets her uncle has been keeping, including a deadly curse she's inherited from her missing father. and now her paintings are taking on a life of their own, and customers are going missing under mysterious circumstances. Her uncle keeps her locked in the attic, forcing her to paint for his rich clients. It was engaging and had unique characters and a plot line quite different from all the others. A book of mystery and adventure filled with evolving friendships, thrilling cliffhangers and great characters. Lemony Snicket meets Oscar Wilde meets Edgar Allan Poe in this exciting and scary middle-grade novel inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray - a family curse is unleashed!īryony Gray is becoming famous as a painter in London art circles. The strange and deadly portraits of Bryony Gray. There in the nineteenth century a teenage prophetess named Nonqawuse commanded the Xhosa people to kill their cattle and burn their crops, promising that once they did so the spirits of their ancestors would rise and drive the occupying English into the ocean. Disillusioned by the problems of the new democracy, he follows his "famous lust" to Qolorha on the remote Eastern Cape. The result is a novel of great scope and deep human feeling, of passion and reconciliation.Īs the novel opens Camugu, who left for America during apartheid, has returned to Johannesburg. In The Heart of Redness - shortlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize - Zakes Mda sets a story of South African village life against a notorious episode from the country's past. A startling novel by the leading writer of the new South Africa Other historians have dealt with Churchill's difficulties during this period, using the partial revelations of certain memoirs and private and public papers. Lukacs also investigates the mood of the British people, drawing on newspaper and Mass-Observation reports that show how the citizenry, though only partly informed about the dangers that faced them, nevertheless began to support Churchill's determination to stand fast. We see how the military disasters taking place on the Continent-particularly the plight of the nearly 400,000 British soldiers bottled up in Dunkirk-affected Churchill's fragile political situation, for he had been prime minister only a fortnight and was regarded as impetuous and hotheaded even by many of his own party. Lukacs takes us hour by hour into the critical unfolding of events at 10 Downing Street, where Churchill and the members of his cabinet were painfully considering their war responsibilities. The decisive importance of these five days is the focus of John Lukacs's magisterial new book. Perutz, New York Review of Books The days from May 24 to altered the course of the history of this century, as the members of the British War Cabinet debated whether to negotiate with Hitler or to continue what became known as the Second World War. but has transformed it into a memorable drama."-M.F. Washington Post Book World Bestseller "Customers are raving about Five Days in London." "Gripping. Run, don’t walk to pre-order this monstrous gem." What I can say is that if you loved Liars, you will love this.Once you see the tragic connections that tie Cady and Carrie’s stories together, you can never unsee them. These are lies that bind. “I am AGAIN blown away and AGAIN, can say very little because this deliciously nasty little package is just one big SPOILER. "Formidable… uncomfortably thought-provoking… impossible to put down." An irresistible, unpredictable boy.Ī summer of unforgivable betrayal and terrible mistakes. The thrilling prequel to the TikTok phenomenon and #1 New York Times bestseller We Were Liars takes readers back to the story of another summer, another generation, and the secrets that will haunt them for decades to come.Ī windswept private island off the coast of Massachusetts.Ī hungry ocean, churning with secrets and sorrow.Ī fiery, addicted heiress. This curiosity leads him to discover the mechanism of how the town functions. The perfection of the town mesmerises him at the same time makes him curious. He is assigned the role of the Dreamreader. The Protagonist is accepted into this world but has to leave his shadow behind in order to be a part of it. It is capsuled by high walls that make it impossible for escape. The End of the World is a perfect world with a perfect ecosystem. It is written in the present tense (and the reason why would be a surprise that you should read for yourself). The End of the World is the parallel story. The story revolves around how the Protagonist became a Calutec, the clashes with the “Factory” (the organisation that works against the System to steal data), solving some of his own mysteries that answer questions he has had about himself. From here entails a weird adventure that connects the protagonist to his subconscious mind. The Scientist has an ulterior motive to hiring the Protagonist. He is called for a special assignment by a scientist who was a former researcher at the “System”. The Hard-Boiled Wonderland revolves around a mid-thirties male protagonist who is a Calutec (human processor) who works for the “System” (an organisation that protects the data). The first narrative is called the Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the second one is called The End of the World. The story has two narratives that take place simultaneously. The genre is sci-fi and equal part surrealism. Armed only with an amulet and a mantra, and vague stories of an ancestor who lived in Kanpur and died during the Revolt of 1857, she finds herself among people and in a culture very different from her own. She ends up on the green, exotic island of Rajapur in the middle of the Karnali river. Armed only with an amulet and a mantra, and vague stories of an ancestor who lived in Kanp Deserted by her husband and forced out of her job as a schoolteacher, Sonia Swayne flees the sullen climes of Cambridge, England, to work for a charity which trains teachers in the plains of Nepal. Deserted by her husband and forced out of her job as a schoolteacher, Sonia Swayne flees the sullen climes of Cambridge, England, to work for a charity which trains teachers in the plains of Nepal. So, how did King's short story turn into a novel that spawned seven sequels? Well, it's kind of an interesting story if you have a few minutes… Volume 2, The Drawing of the Three, turns thirty-five, and finally, most importantly, and the reason that I'm here with you all today, Volume 1, The Gunslinger, turns forty. In 2022, Volume 8, The Wind Through the Keyhole turns ten, Volume 4, Wizard and Glass, turns twenty-five. This year, four of those volumes are celebrating milestone anniversaries. Of course, we could celebrate the existence of The Dark Tower cycle every day, but this year is a bit different. Now, 52 years later, King's eight-volume series sits on bookshelves across the planet thousands of pages open a door to one of the most enchanting worlds this particular FANGORIA contributor has ever had the pleasure of visiting. On June 19th, 1970, still four years from publishing his first novel, an author named Stephen King wrote the following sentence: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." In doing this, Stephen King sealed his fate, and became destined to write his magnum opus, The Dark Tower. Sometimes good things come to pass, sometimes bad regardless, it is a wheel that turns, undeterred. Fate, if such a thing exists, begins when it chooses. leavened by wit and humor" ( The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke. When the four women begin traveling to one another's worlds, their preconceptions on gender and identity are forever challenged. Librarian Jeannine is waiting for marriage in a past where the Depression never ended, Janet lives on a utopian Earth with an all-female population, Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s, and Jael is a warrior with claws and teeth on an Earth where male and female societies are at war with each other. Widely acknowledged as Joanna Russ's masterpiece, The Female Man is the suspenseful, surprising, darkly witty, and boldly subversive chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael-all living in parallel worlds-meet. Four alternate selves from radically different realities come together in this "dazzling" and "trailblazing work" ( The Washington Post). |