Czechoslovakia, 1939: Snow is falling over the city when the Nazis invade. Before the ice on the roads has a chance to melt, everything has changed for the country—and for Viktor Trn. It isn’t obvious at first. The day-to-day realities of occupation take time to sink in. After losing his job as a history professor, Trn remains optimistic, preserving what little he can of his family’s dwindling freedom. In his family’s small apartment, the radio brings worsening news as Europe surrenders to Germany. Friends are arrested, men are hanged in the local school. Trn must protect his young son, but understands leaving their homeland could prove too dangerous. Only when the air raids draw closer is Trn, a soft-spoken pacifist, pressured into making a choice: retreat to his decreasing sphere of familial safety, or join the resistance. Ultimately Trn finds himself caught between two titanic armies—the Nazis and the Soviets—and must decide how to save all that he loves. In the spirit of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale and Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See , The Wooden King explores denial, desire, and family drama against the lyrically rendered backdrop of World War II, deftly navigating “the simple difference between what we do and what we ought to do” in the face of rising totalitarianism.
Rooted in places like Watauga County, Goshen Creek, and Dismal Mountain, the poems in Ron Rash’s fourth collection, Waking, electrify dry counties and tobacco fields until they sparkle with the rituals and traditions of Southerners in the stir of their lives.
In his first book of poetry in nearly a decade, Rash leads his readers on a Southern odyssey, full of a terse wit and a sense of the narrative so authentic it will dazzle you. As we wake inside these poems, we see rivers wild with trout, lightning storms, and homemade churches, nailed and leaning against the side of a Tennessee mountain.
A two-time PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist, Rash has been compared to writers like John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy. With his eye for the perfect detail and an ear for regional idiom, Rash furthers his claim as the new torchbearer for literature in the American South.
Here is a book full of sorrow and redemption, sparseness and the beauty of a single, stark detail—the muskellunge at first light, a barn choked with curing tobacco, a porch full of men and the rockers that move them over the same spot until they carve their names into the ground, deeper, even, into the roots where myths start, into the very marrow of the world.
Set amid the perils of illegal border crossings, The Iguana Tree is the suspenseful saga of Lilia and Hector, who separately make their way from Mexico into the United States, seeking work in the Carolinas and a home for their infant daughter.
Michel Stone s harrowing novel meticulously examines the obstacles each faces in pursuing a new life: manipulation, rape, and murder in the perilous commerce of border crossings; betrayal by family and friends; exploitation by corrupt officials and rapacious landowners on the U.S. side; and, finally, the inexorable workings of the U.S. justice system.
Hector and Lilia meet Americans willing to help them with legal assistance and offers of responsible employment, but their illegal entry seems certain to prove their undoing. The consequences of their decisions are devastating. In the end, The Iguana Tree is a universal story of loss, grief, and human dignity.
L.J. Davenport is the best telephone psychic at the Appalachian TeleServices call center, if best means most persuasive while offering outlandish advice. When a self-appointed karmic enforcer is among the group of new hires, will L.J. foresee how much his world is about to change? Subconscious monster truck announcers, post-teen angst and cubicles full of telephone psychics–Escape from Coolville has that and more. –So much more. A meth-addicted wookie. –Chewbacca. A beautiful young woman. –Of course. A rogue karma policeman bent on revenge. –Or is he an eccentric holy man here to save your soul? Escape from Coolville follows the zany chain of events that are set in motion when a telephone psychic's flippant advice is taken to heart. –Read it now.
Today, art and science are often defined in opposition to each other: one involves the creation of individual aesthetic objects, and the other the discovery of general laws of nature. Throughout human history, however, the boundaries have been less clearly drawn: knowledge and artifacts have often issued from the same source, the head and hands of the artisan. And artists and scientists have always been linked, on a fundamental level, by their reliance on creative thinking.Art and Science is the only book to survey the vital relationship between these two fields of endeavor in its full scope, from prehistory to the present day. Individual chapters explore how science has shaped architecture in every culture and civilization; how mathematical principles and materials science have underpinned the decorative arts; how the psychology of perception has spurred the development of painting; how graphic design and illustration have evolved in tandem with methods of scientific research; and how breakthroughs in the physical sciences have transformed the performing arts. Some 265 illustrations, ranging from masterworks by Dürer and Leonardo to the dazzling vistas revealed by fractal geometry, complement the wide-ranging text.This new edition of Art and Science has been updated to cover the ongoing convergence of art and technology in the digital age, a convergence that has led to the emergence of a new type of creator, the “cultural explorer” whose hybrid artworks defy all traditional categorization. It will make thought-provoking reading for students and teachers, workers in creative and technical fields, and anyone who is curious about the history of human achievement.
Mood Swings offers the reader a behind the scenes look into the world of jazz through the eyes of nine musicians. Like the music itself, the stories range from humor, joy, and success, to failure, and at times, even danger and darkness, as each musician offers a glimpse into some aspect of the jazz life.
Yuri Konikov becomes an unwitting subject for a bioengineered technology that transforms him into an enhanced, privately owned Corporate Agent. The Russian Alliance Corporation wanted an army of agents, but after repeated failures they canceled the project. All traces of the technology must be eliminated, including their only successful super agent.
A disgraced former home run king, whose rampant steroid use has left him as a testicle shrinking, soprano speaking, bra wearing recluse, is holding on to his single season home run record, asterisk be damned. When Roy learns his record may be broken, he won’t let it happen. He leaves a trail of destruction and bodies in his wake.
From the marbled precincts of New York's uptown museum scene to the galleries and lofts of Soho to a Mafia mansion on the coast of Long Island, Lustbader's hotly paced novella sweeps Tess Chase – a no-nonsense woman with a connoisseur's taste for martial and fine arts – into the perilous pursuit of a long-lost painting by Renaissance master Raphael.
Gifted drifter Ned “Noc” Brenner, adept at MMA fighting, motocross riding to blitz chess, finds himself teamed with others of specialized skills to prevent a super villain from unleashing an anti-gravity device that would rain down death on untold millions. It all came so easy to Noc before, now he might just loose his life to prevent wholesale destruction.