But with Keralie and Varin each keeping secrets-and the lives of the queens hanging in the balance-everything is at stake, and no one can be trusted. Hoping that discovering the intended recipient will reveal the culprit-valuable information that she can barter with-Keralie teams up with Varin Bollt, the messenger she stole from, to complete his delivery and uncover the would-be murderer. Keralie discovers she's intercepted instructions to murder the queens. When on Mackiel's orders Keralie steals a particularly valuable item from a messenger, what seems like a routine theft goes horribly wrong. Four queens, one from each quadrant, rule as one. Eonia, the futurist quadrant values technology, stoicism and harmonious community. Archia, the agricultural quadrant, values simplicity and nature. Ludia, the pleasure quadrant values celebration and passion. Toria, the intellectual quadrant values education and ambition. For Quadara is a nation divided into four regions, each strictly separated from the other. She steals under the guidance of her mentor Mackiel, who runs a black market selling their bounty to buyers desperate for what they can't get in their own quadrant. Keralie Corrington is a talented pickpocket in the kingdom of Quadara. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readersīuy Links: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Book DepositoryĪn enthralling and beguiling murder mystery fantasy perfect for fans of Red Queen and Three Dark Crowns.
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She changes her mind, though, when she realizes that she has, indeed, touched the lives of her students. She decides to leave the public school (government-funded) system to work in a smaller private setting. The title of the book is taken from a memo telling her why a student was being punished: he had gone "up the down staircase". She quickly becomes discouraged during her first year of teaching, frustrated by bureaucracy, the indifference of her students, and the incompetence of many of her colleagues. Sylvia Barrett, an idealistic English teacher at an inner city high school, hopes to nurture her students' interest in classic literature (especially Chaucer and writing). In 1967 it was released as a film starring Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, Ruth White, Jean Stapleton and Eileen Heckart. Up the Down Staircase is a novel written by Bel Kaufman, published in 1964, which spent 64 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Ten years later, his work began to interest many people. From 1908 to 1923 he earned some money by occasionally writing short stories for small-circulation magazines such as Weird Tales. Lovecraft StoriesĪt sixteen he was writing an astronomy column for the Providence Tribune. He was a great innovator of the horror story thanks to his unique treatment of the narrative and the atmosphere of his stories, which brought the genre closer to science fiction. Hodgson, Arthur Machen, and Edgar Allan Poe. Lovecraft prose is influenced by Lord Dunsany, William H. Lovecraft was a solitary person who dedicated his time to reading, astronomy, and corresponding with other fans of macabre literature. Due to his poor health, he did not attend school until he was eight years old and dropped out after one year. Lovecraft was reciting poetry at the age of two, reading at the age of three, and began writing at the age of six. When he was three years old, his father suffered a mental breakdown in a Chicago hotel room and was admitted to a Providence psychiatric facility legally incapacitated. Lovecraft was a Only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft sales representative and Sarah Susan Phillips. But one step out of line, one mistake, could mean life or death…Ī woman with three degrees and fluent in 7 languages is sent into WWII to spread propaganda and aid in the war efforts. But her work is also a way to escape devastating truths about the family she left behind in Czechoslovakia and a future with her controlling American husband.Īs the war drags on and the pressure intensifies, Niki begins to question the rules she’s been instructed to follow, and a colleague unexpectedly captures her heart. One of the OSS’s few female operatives abroad and multilingual, she’s tasked with crafting fake stories and distributing propaganda to lower the morale of enemy soldiers.ĭespite limited resources, Niki and a scrappy team of artists, forgers and others-now nicknamed The Lipstick Bureau-find success, forming a bond amid the cobblestoned streets and storied villas of the newly liberated city. Newlywed Niki Novotná is recruited by a new American spy agency to establish a secret branch in Italy’s capital. Inspired by a real-life female spy, a WWII-set novel about a woman challenging convention and boundaries to help win a war, no matter the cost.ġ944, Rome. “It was just very difficult for me to stay engaged with the story. Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player–any former NFL player–at their helm. Against enormous odds Arnie finally locates just such a team and informs Rick that, miraculously, he can in fact now be a starting quarterback–for the mighty Panthers of Parma, Italy. Overnight, he became a national laughingstock and, of course, was immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams.īut all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent, Arnie, find a team that needs him. With a 17-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provided what was arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. Rick Dockery was the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. His other major series, Fear Street, has over 80 million copies sold. In the early 1990s, Stine was catapulted to fame when he wrote the unprecedented, bestselling Goosebumps® series, which sold more than 250 million copies and became a worldwide multimedia phenomenon. Stine began his writing career when he was nine years old, and today he has achieved the position of the bestselling children's author in history. Stine, who is often called the Stephen King of children's literature, is the author of dozens of popular horror fiction novellas, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American novelist and writer, well known for targeting younger audiences. Like most stories of obsession, the book is a record of desire-in this case Baker’s quest to observe, follow, and ultimately become one with a falcon. The story is simple, set in the flat fields and marshes of Essex and the Blackwater estuary, near Chelmsford, where he lived all his life. But no events or news bulletins impinge on Baker’s narrative. In fits and starts, it becomes clear to the reader that it is also a kind of autobiography. It is structured as a diary, covering the months between October of 1962 and April of 1963, years that were as tumultuous as any others, here and abroad. First published in London, in 1967, by HarperCollins, and reissued by New York Review Classics, in 2004, the book is a story of obsession. One evening after a visit, I found a book that I did not recognize on a side table with a note inside, written in my friend’s tiny ant-track handwriting: “I think you may hate this but on the other hand you might not.” In the middle of October, a friend gave me a book, or I should say that he appeared to. A friend I loved had died at the end of the summer, and I had quarrelled with and parted from another. I found myself unable to unhitch from the four or five or six news feeds that I was checking daily, then hourly, and I was travelling a lot. Last fall, like many people, I felt overwhelmed. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.īy 1934, the world has changed millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. "The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year."-Publishers Weeklyįrom the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them. Did they ever get used for flighting arrows? Arthur doesn’t seem to have taken up a bow beyond, perhaps, playing Red Indians as a child with his friend Ric Eddison. I gather it was Arthur Ransome’s sister, Joyce, who owned a green parrot whose feathers made good pipe cleaners. Another great-aunt was shot in the bonnet by an arrow when the Boxer Rising reached Peking. The influence was not lost on Arthur Ransome who writes in his autobiography that his Great-aunt Susan was a keen toxophilite who attended bow meetings at Belle Isle, the long island on Windermere. ~Sophie Neville dressed as a medieval archer in 1969~Īrchery became a popular sport for ladies in Victorian England. I hope he would be amused to learn it has been the arrow, fletched with green parrot feathers, that has flown through the pages of my life. Much has been written of the legacy left by Arthur Ransome who inspired so many go camping, fell walking or sail the seven seas. The fact that the other woman has "a neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb and you should see her legs" is no consolation. Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel Samstat discovers that her husband, Mark, is in love with another woman. reminds us that comedy depends on anguish as surely as a proper gravy depends on flour and butter. Is it possible to write a sidesplitting novel about the breakup of the perfect marriage? If the writer is Nora Ephron, the answer is a resounding yes. In this inspired confection of adultery, revenge, group therapy, and pot roast, the creator of Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally. Proof that writing well is the best revenge." - Chicago Tribune A 40th anniversary reissue of Ephron's hilarious first novel that memorably mixed food, heartbreak, and revenge into a comic masterpiece-now with a new foreword by Stanley Tucci. |