![]() ![]() ![]() As she navigates the twisted relationships between her new friends and their powerful parents, Sawyer's search for the truth about her own origins is just the beginning. ![]() There are people in her grandmother's glittering world who are not what they appear, and no one wants Sawyer poking her nose into the past. ![]() The one thing she doesn't expect to find is friendship, but as she's drawn into a group of debutantes with scandalous, dangerous secrets of their own, Sawyer quickly discovers that her family isn't the only mainstay of high society with skeletons in their closet. But when she realizes that immersing herself in her grandmother's "society" might mean discovering the answer to the biggest mystery of her life-her father's identity-she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses, bigger egos, and a whole lot of bless your heart. And she definitely never imagined she would accept. "But."Įighteen-year-old auto mechanic Sawyer Taft did not expect her estranged grandmother to show up at her apartment door and offer her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season. "I'm not saying this is Sawyer's fault," the prim and proper one said delicately. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() “This is the most impressive debut of 2020.” -Locus A new beginning.īut the past hungers for them, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart. In this captivating debut of connection across space and time, these outsiders will find in each other the things they lack: a place of love and belonging. A millennia-old woman, haunted by lifetimes of mistakes. A mute child, burdened with unimaginable power. I did not expect a family.Ī ship captain, unfettered from time. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TORDOTCOM AND KIRKUS REVIEWSĪ mysterious child lands in the care of a solitary woman, changing both of their lives forever.A “highly imaginative and utterly exhilarating” ( Thrillist) debut that is “the best of what science fiction can be: a thought-provoking, heartrending story about the choices that define our lives” ( Kirkus Reviews, Best Debut Fiction and Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year). ![]() ![]() ![]() Aiza will have to choose between her loyalty to the Empire, her heritage, her dreams and her friends. As the pressure mounts, Aiza comes to realise that she and the other recruits are in danger, and that the stories they were told about "serving the greater good" were just propaganda spun by the Empire and the merciless General Hende. The competition among the recruits is fierce, the training is difficult, and there are new friendships and rivalries to navigate. She quickly finds that training as a Squire is not how she imagined it. Squire tells the story of a 14-year-old girl named Aiza, born a second-class citizen in the Bayt-Sajji Empire, who makes the decision to hide her heritage as a member of the recently conquered Ornu people and chase her dream of becoming a Knight in an attempt to gain full citizenship. Squire is 336-pages long, suitable for young adult readers, and was published by Quill Tree Books on 8 March 2022. Squire is a debut fantasy graphic novel from Sara Alfageeh and Nadia Shammas, two rising stars in the comic book world, who teamed up together to tell a story about friendships, rivalries, and colonialism set in an alternate-history version of the Middle East and North Africa. ![]() ![]() It’s a place that seems like heaven to 24-year-old Mae Holland, who is hired with the help of her former college roommate, Annie, a girl who once nursed Mae back to health after she broke her jaw, feeding her through a straw. The Circle, the “world’s most powerful Internet company” from which the book takes its name, is a kind of hybrid Facebook-Google-Twitter-Amazon Silicon Valley tech company of the future, complete with a hoodie-wearing guru leader and a dreamy, sprawling campus that features, among the perks, low-calorie wine that gets you drunk faster. ![]() Such has been the case with Dave Eggers’s new novel, The Circle, which addresses privacy, democracy, and humanity in a time of ever-encroaching digital life. If that book is a work of fiction based enough in the familiar to feel just on the terrifying edge of possible, you can be sure that the Internet will not fail to correct you with regards to the fictionalized world contained in your book. ![]() ![]() The danger of writing a book about the Internet is that you’re writing a book about the Internet, thereby invoking the myriad voices and possible opinions contained within this giant, amorphous collective - whether they agree with you or not. ![]() ![]() This is the biography Gore Vidal has long needed. Provided with unique access to Vidal's life and his papers, he excavates many buried skeletons yet never loses sight of his deep respect for Vidal and his astounding gifts. Jay Parini crafts Vidal's life into an accessible, entertaining story that puts the experience of one of the great American figures of the postwar era into context, introduces the author and his works to a generation who may not know him, and looks behind the scenes at the man and his work in ways never possible before his death. ![]() ![]() But there is plenty of glittering surface as well-a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.The life of Gore Vidal was an amazingly full one-full of colorful incident, famous people, and lasting achievements-that calls out for careful evocation and examination. ![]() ![]() An intimate, authorized, yet frank biography of Gore Vidal (1925-2012), one of the most accomplished, visible, and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century.The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. ![]() ![]() ![]() Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors, 2 vols. Mkhas Grub Rje’s Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras: Rgyud Sde Spyiḥi Rnam Par Gźag Pa Rgyas Par Brjod. ![]() “A Crisis of Doxography: How Tibetans Organized Tantra During the 8th-12th Centuries.” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28:1 (2005): 115–181. Some of the most influential tantric texts are found here, including those from the Kālacakra, Cakrasaṃvara, and Hevajra traditions. This section is devoted to the fourth (and highest) of the four classes of the tantras: “Highest Yoga Tantra” ( བླ་མེད་རྣལ་འབྱོར་རྒྱུད་, bla med rnal ’byor rgyud, anuttarayogatantra). ![]() Tibetan Texts > Bka’ ’gyur > Bka’ ’gyur Master Doxographical Categories > Highest Yoga Tantra ![]() ![]() Brackett was very very good at what she did, and her nearest male rivals – including her husband – were no match. The sensibilities were pure pulp, but the prose was hard-boiled noir polished to a diamond sheen. ![]() These were stories in which adventurers sought alien treasures and became trapped by ancient curses, or the last members of a dying race managed to exact their final revenge. Titles included ‘The Dragon-Queen of Jupiter’ (AKA ‘The Dragon-Queen of Venus’), ‘Sea-Kings of Mars’ and ‘Enchantress of Venus’, among many others. Much of her output could be described as “planetary romance”, stories in which the planets of the solar system – Earth excluded – hosted the dying remains of ancient civilisations. And throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she churned out dozens of science fiction stories, most published in Planet Stories, and a handful of novels. But back in the day, she was almost science fiction royalty, published in many magazines, a collaborator with Ray Bradbury, and married to Edmond Hamilton. These days, it’s likely Brackett is better known as the screenwriter of The Empires Strikes Back (and The Big Sleep, Rio Bravo, The Long Goodbye and others). The Best of Leigh Brackett, Leigh Brackett (1986) ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Churchill never wavered in his determination to fight on but needed American support more than before. France eventually capitulated to the Germans. While his team focused on investigating German air navigation technologies, Churchill continued to focus on France and the United States. ![]() With the war going poorly in France, British troops were forced to evacuate the continent at Dunkirk. Churchill appointed various people to work on technological advancements and to increase aircraft production. Churchill was also convinced that the Allies would need the help of the United States to win the war and set about trying to convince President Roosevelt to join the conflict in support of the British. Sure that German invasion was imminent, and disheartened at the possibility of French capitulation to the Germans Churchill bolstered the Royal Air Force (RAF) to prepare to fight the German Luftwaffe. ![]() He had a somewhat eccentric personality but he was loved by the general population and his skill as an orator soon demonstrated his ability to rally the citizenry and boost their morale. On May 10, 1940, during World War Two, Winston Churchill was made Prime Minister of Great Britain. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Larson, Erik. ![]() ![]() ![]() Farthing should have known I wouldn’t have done something so obvyus. ![]() West sneaked trick candles into my basket and last night one of them went off like a rocket and singed Mr. Yesterday it was my job to change the candlestiks. There’s a boy named West who always takes my brekfast roll and he’s already the size of an elefant. I thought it would be fun to go to bording school but it’s not. It was seen as inevitable that older boys would dominate and browbeat younger boys, and anyone who tattled would be severely punished. ![]() He was a heartless, hardened case of a boy, but his constant misbehavior had been overlooked, as it would have been in nearly any boarding school. West Ravenel had been a frequent subject of Henry’s letters. She had known it since the age of eight, when her best friend, Henry, had started writing to her from boarding school. Phoebe had never met West Ravenel, but she knew one thing for certain: He was a mean, rotten bully. ![]() ![]() ![]() We are changing nature on a global scale and the impacts of our actions are being distributed unequally. The latest report paints a shocking picture. It was coordinated by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an independent body that provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity. ![]() ![]() Alongside experts from more than 50 different countries, he has produced the most comprehensive review ever of the worldwide state of nature, with a summary published in the journal Science. Prof Andy Purvis, a Museum research leader, has spent three years studying human interactions with nature. Air and water quality are reducing, soils are depleting, crops are short of pollinators, and coasts are less protected from storms. Over the last 50 years, nature's capacity to support us has plummeted. If we lose large portions of the natural world, human quality of life will be severely reduced and the lives of future generations will be threatened unless effective action is taken. We have been using more and more natural resources, and this has come at a cost. Human pressure on nature has soared since the 1970s. ![]() |