![]() ![]() I couldn't even think about walking away from the interview without nailing it. The man had turned out to be really bad for me the job could change my life in an amazing way. ![]() ![]() There were two things in my life I'd felt that way about: the man I'd stupidly fallen in love with and the administrative assistant position I was about to interview for. Have you ever wanted something so bad, you couldn't imagine not having it? My nervousness only increased after I accepted my visitors badge and headed to the elevator. With damp palms, I slid my ID across the security desk. My heels clicked across the dark marble of the massive lobby with a tempo that echoed my racing heart. IT WAS A breezy fall morning when I entered the mirrored glass skyscraper in midtown Manhattan, leaving the cacophony of blaring horns and pedestrian chatter behind to step into cool quiet. ![]()
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![]() ![]() In the most explosive novel Brad Thor has ever written, page after captivating page of action, intrigue, loyalty, and betrayal will keep you hooked until the very last sentence. With no support, no cavalry coming, and no one even aware of where he is, it will take everything he has ever learned to survive.īut survival isn’t enough. ![]() Now, far from home and surrounded by his enemy, Scot Harvath must battle his way out. Two days ago, that man was crossed- badly. They are highly prized intelligence agents, military operatives, and assassins. Today, men like these still strike from the shadows. They were fearless men of honor who have been known throughout history by different names: Spartan, Viking, Samurai. And once crossed, there was no crossing back. His only hope for survival is to outwit, outrun, and outlast his enemies long enough to get to the truth. ![]() Their loyalty was to their families, their friends, and their kings. The NEAR DARK TV Commercial Share Watch on The Story The world’s largest bounty has just been placed upon America’s top spy. These men were considered part angel, part demon. In ancient texts, there are stories about men who struck from the shadows, seemingly beyond the reach of death itself. #1 New York Times, #1 Wall Street Journal, and #1 Publishers Weekly bestselling author Brad Thor is back with his most gripping thriller yet! ![]() “Raw emotion, nonstop action, and relentless pacing makes Backlash another one-night read from Brad Thor, who delivers the book to beat in 2019.” - The Real Book Spy ![]() ![]() ![]() That's evidence enough for me of a connection with real life. The book jacket illustration is attributed to Clara Van Waning. The central character, Lyle Van Waning, is just too real (and lovable) to be a complete fabrication. ![]() It took me most of the book to figure out that it's "faction." The Jimmy Galvin of the novel is the author, and the other characters are clearly fictionalized versions of people he knew well. It's essentially plotless, and non-linear in the extreme. The book is beautifully and heartfully written, but be forewarned. The life requires great hardiness and ingenuity to withstand the isolation and trials of snow, wind, fire, hunger, disease, and financial uncertainty. It follows about a century's-worth of people's doin's in a mountain meadow at 8,500 feet in southern Wyoming. This is a quiet, thoughtful read for those of us who have a strong heart connection with the high sagebrush country of the inter-mountain West. "Often I am permitted to return to a meadow." ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Oh, you’re so full of shit,” Gretchen began, only to be elbowed by the pregnant one again. So she adjusted the bow on her behind again and nodded. Brontë was spending a lot on her wedding, and Marjorie didn’t want to be the one to kick up a fuss. Apparently they’d been custom-made by a fashion designer, and the price of just one dress cost more than Marjorie would make in months. ![]() Truth was, all that red and white made her look a bit like a barber pole with a bow, but Brontë had worked long and hard to pick out dresses and had paid for everything, so how on earth could Marjorie possibly complain? She’d seen the price tag for this thing. “I love it,” Marjorie lied, casting a brilliant smile at Brontë. “What do you think of the dress, Marj?” Her eyes were and trying to convey a hint that the other woman was just not getting. And you do too.”Īgain, she elbowed her sister and turned to Marjorie. Audrey elbowed the not-as-nice redhead next to her, who was her sister. “Not at all,” said Audrey, who Marjorie knew was the extremely pregnant, nice one. “Do you guys really hate the dresses?” Brontë asked, wringing her hands as the women lined up and studied their reflections in the mirrors. “We look more like cupcakes than bridesmaids.” “Fucking awful,” said the redhead next to her in a similar dress. Marjorie Ivarsson adjusted the bow on her behind and craned her neck, trying to look in the mirror at the back of her dress. ![]() ![]() ![]() The story is nothing if not a cautionary tale of the damage done by things left unsaid. This is a story I’ll never forget, and I have to admit to calling my own mother as soon as it was over, to repeat again how much I love her. We find what really transpired that day, and how she views her own life. In the penultimate section of the book, we finally get to hear from the mother herself. Each has a unique set of stories and regrets and as the reader, the full weight of each are put slowly and painfully on our shoulders. Each narrator knows something the others don’t. We stay with them as they walk through this city of 25 million people, looking for only one and as the search continues, the full story of this woman’s life unfolds. ![]() We follow the family as they search for their mother a mother who has Alzheimer's a mother that never learned to read. And here we begin our story, told from 5 different points of view in 5 separate sections of the book. Arriving at Seoul station, the couple transfers to the needed subway line but as the doors close, and the train begins to move, the husband realizes that his wife is not with him she has been left behind. Each year the couple comes to the vast capital, which is the second largest metropolitan area with in the world, for this celebration. ![]() Their birthdays fall close together, so the family has taken to throwing a joint birthday celebration for them over the years. An elderly married couple travel by train from the rural village they live in to the vast city of Seoul. ![]() ![]() Sula immediately grabs you and throws you into a brutal world, and yet it is funny and ironic and quirky. It is poetic and lyrical and I found myself rereading passages because I loved them so much. I really cannot emphasise how breathtaking some of the prose is in this book. Sula is breathtaking, incredibly perceptive, full of emotion and, of course, beautifully written. ![]() It’s not a secret Toni Morrison writes beautiful books, so I know I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here but this is such a beautiful book. The New York Times described this book as “ enormously, achingly alive” and I could not word it better myself. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.” In Sula, the two will struggle with their relationship, the differences in their ideas and the prejudice, ostracisation and expectations that come along with being black women. Sula comes from a non-conformist family where the women are generally sexually liberal, Nel from a conformist traditional family. Her best friend, Nel, also grew up in Bottom and the to strike up a friendship based on mutual experience and an admiration for eachothers situations. ![]() Sula, the main character, grew up in the black town known as Bottom, ironically situated on the top of a hill. Sula, the second book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison tells the story of Medallion and Bottom, Sula and Nel. where to purchase: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads.diversity: black mc, majority black side cast. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So, she is the one who must initiate things – coming to him, undressing him, etc. For some reason Jasper is reluctant to have sex with Melisande. It stated “But to her chagrin, her husband pursues her, wooing her as if she were a paramour, not his wife.” I found the opposite to be true. There are several sex scenes that are ok but not special. She tells herself it will be a disaster if he ever discovers this. Also he feels he doesn’t deserve happiness. His secret is that he still feels stress from fighting in the army causing him to sleep on the floor. After a few days of this, he realizes he loves her. For most of the book their conversation is “Did you sleep well?” “Yes, thank you.” “Shall we have cook pack a lunch for us?” “Yes that would be good.” He asks her what her favorite food is. I could never understand how they could enjoy being together, converse, and fall in love. (I do not understand why he said yes.) She is shy, prim, and proper. He needs to produce an heir and is jilted by two fiancés. He enjoys socializing and has had many lovers. STORY BRIEF: She has loved him from afar for several years. ![]() ![]() ![]() That failure would keep her from playing basketball and running track in the next school year if there were any chance at all that she could get away from the farm. It’s been a miserable year for her, and she even managed to fail English. Coupled with his hip injury, that leaves just DJ to run the farm. Her father (himself a former football player and coach) had a huge blowout with her older brothers currently playing college ball, and they haven’t been home since. DJ speaks to the reader, in a casual and chatty manner, sometimes irritating you and other times making you want to just hug her.ĭJ Schwenk is 15 (almost 16), the only girl in her football-loving family, and is single-handedly running her family’s dairy farm. I just finished reading it and very much enjoyed it! Catherine Gilbert Murdock has created a memorable character in DJ Schwenk and captures her perfectly in the conversational tone of the book. When I saw the paperback edition at Borders, I decided to pick it up. I’ve heard Dairy Queen bounced around the kidlitosphere for about a year now, and never got around to reading it. Article of the Week with Middle Schoolers.The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin and John Busby. ![]()
![]() ![]() Initially, pictures are rendered in cool tones: blue, gray, black. ![]() ''Want a cozy read-aloud for chilly nights? The Snow Princess is an exquisite choice…Author/Illustrator Ruth Sanderson uses words and images to masterful effect. Sanderson stays true to her source in every detail but one: in the opera the girl is as doomed as her folktale counterpart, but Sanderson allows her to forgo her immortality to stay with the man she loves.'' -Booklist Sanderson's resplendent oils have a suitably chilly polish, and children will be transfixed by the characters' elaborate Byzantine costumes. ''Sanderson's version of a Russian folktale is based on the Tchaikovsky opera-ballet The Snow Princess, which recasts the traditional story as a romance in which the daughter of Father Frost enters the human world and finds her icy heart warmed, to her parents' dismay, by a handsome youth. The page spread of the Snow Princess in her snowflake-studded, ermine-trimmed cloak, her dark hair afloat, with her hand resting on a striding polar bear, will make little girls in particular swoon.'' -Kirkus Reviews Most of the full-page, full-bleed illustrations are done in every shade and tonality of blue, from the ice to midnight, and she uses the washed gold of winter sunlight to pick out other effects. ''It is easy to underestimate the power of Sanderson's exquisite oil paintings, with their glowing textures and near-perfect detail. ![]() ![]() ![]() And Wonna, on the floor just below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband will not be able to afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy of Seoul. ![]() ![]() Down the hall from their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist whose obsession with a boy-band pop star drives her to desperate extremes. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in an impossible relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea's biggest companies. Her roomate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client one evening suddenly threatens her livelihood. Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a "room salon," an exclusive bar where she entertains wealthy businessmen while they drink. When I looked into the mirror, I knew everything in it had to change, even before a fortune-teller told me so." "Even as a girl, I knew the only chance I had was to change my face. A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania. ![]() |