Showing titles in World Literature

Nine-year-olds Max Sassaport and Ruby Johnson are best friends who can't imagine a world where they aren't together. Unfortunately, no one-not their families, nor anyone else in rural Georgia in 1906-wants to see a White middle-class Jewish boy get too close to the Black daughter of a sharecropper. It's only a matter of time before fate will separate the two. And that day comes on the eve of Ruby's womanhood, when a violent act sends her running from her home to the life of a child laborer at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta.

Three times throughout its history, Nikan has fought for its survival in the bloody Poppy Wars. Though the third battle has just ended, shaman and warrior Rin cannot forget the atrocity she committed to save her people. Now she is on the run from her guilt, the opium addiction that holds her like a vice, and the murderous commands of the fiery Phoenix - the vengeful god who has blessed Rin with her fearsome power.

In her illuminating debut novel, Aimie K. Runyan masterfully blends fact and fiction to explore the founding of New France through the experiences of three young women, Rose, Nicole, and Elisabeth, who, in 1667, answer Louis XIV's call and journey to the Canadian colony. Known as the filles du roi, their duty is to marry and bring forth a new generation of loyal citizens. Despite their different backgrounds, all three women believe that marriage to a stranger is their best, perhaps only, chance of happiness.

It’s summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy. Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her job at the local pharmacy. Diana Harrington’s summer isn’t off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house.

For those looking for the real story behind the fictionalized movie account of the 47 Ronin story, this is the definitive, fascinating account of this unforgettable tale of a band of samurai who defied the Emperor to avenge the disgrace and death of their master, and faced certain death as a result. It led to one of the bloodiest episodes in Japanese history, and in the process, created a new set of heroes in Japan.

The fates of two women, one American, one Japanese, become entwined in this sweeping novel of 19th century Japan on the cusp of radical change and Westernization. The Japanese tea ceremony, steeped in ritual, is at the heart of this story of an American girl adopted by Kyoto's most important tea master and raised as attendant and surrogate younger sister to his privileged daughter, Yukako.

John Bunyan was a simple maker and mender of pots and pans who received very little education. In spite of that, he penned the most successful allegory ever written. Embark on a perilous journey with Christian, the lead character, from the City of Destruction to the luminous safe haven of the Celestial City. The journey will encourage you to "set your hope fully on the grace to be given you" amidst the obstacles of life.

Born from Bukowski's columns, the LA underground press of the 1960s, Bukowski defined his early alter ego, Hank Chinaski, as a self-described dirty old man who eyes his defeatist attitude about himself with his clarity to see humor and holiness in others. Addictive and instructive listening, Bukowski delivers the humanity and intelligence of all the unseen. Filled with his usual obsessions - sex, booze, gambling - Notes features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, and his tortured, violent relationships.

In a small Southern town where loyalty to family and to "your people" carries the weight of a sacred oath, defying those unspoken rules can be a deadly proposition. After 15 years of growing up in the Ozark hills with his widowed mother, high-school freshman Boady Sanden is beyond ready to move on. He dreams of glass towers and cityscapes, driven by his desire to be anywhere other than Jessup, Missouri. The new kid at St. Ignatius High School, if he isn't being pushed around, he is being completely ignored.

When RaeLynn Shaffer is found on the highway near the Black Horse Campground-drugged, beaten, and unconscious-the mystery behind her disappearance weeks earlier only grows deeper. Soon it's apparent that she wasn't meant to be found alive . . . and what she knows could be fatal to the people she cares about . . . especially campground owner, Corrie Black.

In a hood loaded with sex, brutality, and crime, three friends are at a turning point. They can surrender to the streets - and the murderous men who rule there - or walk a totally different path. But nothing is simple for women addicted to life on the edge. And everything has consequences.... Angel, Jaz, and Kyra are all leading double lives, torn between working hard to leave the ghetto behind and being dragged back in by the lying, pimping, drug-dealing men they can't seem to let go.

At the opening of The Claverings (1866) the beautiful Julia Brabazon jilts her lover Harry Clavering in order to make a marriage of convenience with a wealthy but dissolute earl. Harry licks his wounds, leaves London to train as a civil engineer, and falls in love with his employer's daughter, to whom he soon becomes engaged. But when Julia returns unexpectedly as a wealthy widow, the flame of Harry's old love is rekindled.

"I didn't realize how much I would miss grocery shopping until it was gone." Life was pretty good. The love of Alice's life had proposed, they were proud new homeowners, and she'd just landed a great promotion at work. Things were going to plan. Well, they were, until the Red Death struck. Billions dead in a matter of weeks. The survivors are few and far between. No one is safe. Life will never be the same again.

The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago and never kept....

Considered by Rumi to be "the master" of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for this epic poem, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul's search for meaning. He recounts the perilous journey of the world's birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf in search of the mysterious Simorgh, their king. Attar's beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, while his poem models the soul's escape from the mind's rational embrace.

Viena, 1938. Samuel Adler es un niño judío de seis años cuyo padre desaparece durante la Noche de los Cristales Rotos, en la que su familia lo pierde todo. Su madre, desesperada, le consigue una plaza en un tren que le llevará desde la Austria nazi hasta Inglaterra. Samuel emprende una nueva etapa con su fiel violín y con el peso de la soledad y la incertidumbre, que lo acompañarán siempre en su dilatada vida.

The Guggenheim Fellowship and Whiting Award-winning author Louis Edwards makes his long-awaited comeback with this epic tale of a New Orleans boy whose very creation is so filled with tension that it bedevils his destiny before he is even born. Spanning from the Deep South to the Middle East, Ramadan Ramsey bridges multiple countries and cultures, entwining two families who struggle to love and survive in the face of war, natural disasters, and their equally tumultuous, private mistakes and yearnings.

91 year-old Ira Levinson is kept concious after a car wreck by visions of his late wife, Ruth, who recounts stories of their lifetime together. A few miles away, at a local rodeo, Sophia Danko, a senior at Wake Forest, meets a young cowboy named Luke. Ira and Ruth. Sophia and Luke. Two couples who have little in common. Yet their lives will converge with unexpected poignancy, reminding us all that even the most difficult decisions can yield extraordinary journeys: beyond despair, beyond death, to the farthest reaches of the human heart.

It's Halloween in New Orleans, and the staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum is setting up a fantastic haunted house tour for their visitors. But when flashy movie star Blaine Taggart and his entourage move into the mansion next door, gift shop proprietor Ricki James-Diaz gets a fright of her own.

Has Stuck on Stupid evolved into a new meaning? Can time really heal all wounds? Can you build the trust back once it has been lost? In the last installment, Jazzie was pushed to the limits after finding out Maine was sleeping with Rita and took matters into her own hands. Will that cause her and Maine to separate for good? After Tori aborted her baby, her husband Truth went completely insane, asking for a divorce which pushed his wife into the arms of another man. Will she have a new love interest? Or will she fight for the man she loves? With the death of Trinity, what will happen between...