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Showing 1 - 20 of 181 items
By David Robertson. 2020
Acclaimed writer, David A. Robertson, delivers suspense, adventure, and humour in this stunningly illustrated graphic novel continuation of The Reckoner…
trilogy. Cole and Eva arrive in Winnipeg intent on destroying Mihko Laboratories. Their plans change when a new threat surfaces, and Cole has terrifying visions. Are these just troubled dreams or are they leading him to a terrifying truth? Will Eva be able to harness her powers to continue the investigation without him?By David Robertson. 2022
"With Cole barely clinging to life, Eva fearlessly takes the lead to investigate Mihko's horrific experiments. But where's Brady? After…
learning that Mihko reinstated the Reckoner Initiative, Cole and Eva confront Mihko head-on. But a vicious battle with Mihko's newest test subject leaves Cole close to death, and Eva must continue their investigation without him. With Brady missing and Cole in recovery, Eva is on her own. When Eva stumbles across Mihko's secret laboratory, she finds her worst nightmares come to life. What new terrors has Mihko created? And can Eva find Brady before it's too late?"--Back coverBy Raewyn Caisley. 2005
Twelve-year-old Christian Phillips doesn?t think he will make the junior rugby team. When his parents give him a pair of…
footy boots before the trial ? a gift from his late grandfather, a staunch Wallabies fan ? Christian is still not convinced. Shocked when he makes the team, and relegated to the wing, Christian soon realises his idea of teamwork is a little different from that of the coach and other boys. Christian spends most games waiting for a pass and decides conforming is easier than challenging the culture of the team. But when they have to face the brutal Scots team on their home turf, a new leader emerges ? From Raewyn Caisley, the acclaimed and established author of TOP MARKS, NOT CRICKET, HOT SHOT, TENNIS STAR, QUEEN?S CUBBY, FREE STYLE and GREAT LEAD, comes another book in the popular Junior Sports Series.By Cheryl Critchley. 2006
Sam Scott is not your average 13-year-old girl. When Sam?s friends are off chasing boys, she?s on the local footy…
oval training for Richmond Juniors? upcoming matches. Her mother and father desperately want her to give up her obsession with football and get serious about law or medicine like her sister Kate. Sam is blitzing her junior Aussie Rules competition when two major disasters threaten to upset her season. First, she almost quits when the class snob calls her butch. Then, when she turns fourteen on the eve of the finals, red tape looks like forcing Sam out of the game she loves. Her battle to play makes her a public hero, but Sam soon realises that being a winner in the money-fuelled AFL world comes at a big price. From Cheryl Critchley, the author of UNSPOIL YOUR KIDS, ESCAPE THE PARENT TRAP, OUR FOOTY and REAL FANS VS BIG BUCKS, comes another book in the popular Junior Sports Series.By Mcfadden, Bernice L.. 2002
In This Bitter Earth, Sugar Lacey is on her way out of Bigelow, Arkansas, where she’d come to break with…
the past. With her worn leopard-print suitcase and her head held high, she walks past the prying eyes of its small-minded, cruel-hearted townsfolk, praying for the strength to keep going. She doesn’t stop until she arrives at her childhood home in Short Junction. Here she learns the truth about her parentage: a terrible tale of unrequited love, of one man’s enduring hatred, and of the black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women. A powerfully realized novel that brings back the unforgettable characters from Sugar, McFadden’s bestselling debut, This Bitter Earth is a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. .By Dallas Hudgens. 2007
Somewhere between incarceration and sainthood stands Joe Rice, a man who relishes peace, painkillers, and his Friday-night baseball league. When…
his shady business partner Gene dies rounding the bases, Joe knows this isn't going to be an ordinary season. Soon enough, a suburban ex-mobster, his entrepreneurial son, and a gun-toting minister have Tasered, maced and harassed Joe over the location of a three-million-dollar Babe Ruth baseball bat he doesn't know anything about. Joe just wants to save his car-detailing/ticker brokerage business from Gene's mountain of debt, crime and craziness. (Winning a game of Madden NFGL against his ex-girlfriend's twelve-year-old son would also be a relief. ) But first, he must confront the ghosts of his past - namely, his murdered uncle and his mentally unstable mother. He must also deal with the present, navigating the space between the two women he cares about. And finally, he must face the future, every man's least favorite obstacle. Dallas Hudgens, the acclaimed author ofDrive Like Hell, blends Guatemalan chicken, online pharmaceuticals, and unforgettable characters in a raucous but moving story of love and baseball. Season of Geneis a wild ride of a novel about a troubled man, the troubled women who love him and a legendary baseball bat that could either save their lives or get them killed.By Benilde Little. 1998
From the author of the smashing debut bestseller Good Hair comes The Itch, the stirring story of a crisis-torn woman…
who discovers a depth of character and a sense of self she never knew she possessed.Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle. She leads a charmed life -- having attended all the right schools, married the right man, and started a successful film production company with her best friend, Natasha Coleman -- and seems like an ambassador from the world of perfection. It is only when her impeccable marriage turns suddenly shaky that her utopia is left in pieces.By Derrick A. Bell. 1996
Just like the songs of a gospel choir, the pieces in this book give voice to the hardships faced by…
African Americans. Through allegorical stories and fictional encounters, dreams and dialogues, it presents fresh perspectives on the different issues that concern blacks. Despite their tough subjects, however, these stories resound with laughter and compassion and a continuing theme of Christian love.By Charley Rosen. 2014
Sammy Wong, All-American tells the tale of a very talented Asian basketball player's rise and stumble in the all-American sport…
of basketball--among the most international of team sports, yet one where until very recently Asians were completely unrepresented. The novel unwinds in spectacular fashion. On his high school, college, and professional teams, Sammy isn't given much of a chance. Then when he does get into games, he turns out to be the kind of player who can turn a losing team into a winning one. Wong's career turns on chance opportunities and unexpected twists as much as on talent, persistence and hard work. There are great scenes describing pivotal plays on the hardwood floor as only Charley Rosen can. Like all Rosen's novels, this is about more than basketball. Sammy Wong, All-American is a book about identity in multi-ethnic American culture and the cost of innocence in the modern world. Sammy Wong, All-American will delight basketball fans and fiction readers alike, a sports novel that delivers on multiple levels.By Eric V. Copage. 2011
Thirteen-year-old Jordan Garrison is at a crossroads. He's just about to enter high school, and his biggest worries are his…
new bottom-of-the-totem-pole status as an incoming freshman and his father's constant lectures about becoming a man. Growing further apart from his younger siblings-precocious eight-year-old twins-Jordan thinks his only ally is his grandmother, a hip sixty-two-year-old with a youthful glow that comforts Jordan, especially in the absence of his mother. But when his widowed father suddenly dies, Jordan finds the journey through puberty to adulthood all the more daunting. He feels alone despite the best efforts of his family and friends. He is resentful and confused about new responsibilities forced on him, and torn between acting with his heart or fulfilling the expectations of those around him. A mysterious neighborhood shopkeeper, Snackman, notices Jordan's dilemma and steps in as surely as Jordan's own father would have. He offers Jordan a dirty strip of kente cloth, which he says contains the answers to Jordan's problems. And through this strip of cloth, Snackman guides Jordan to the answer of what it is to be a Black man. But not before Jordan meets with an almost disastrous fire and realizes his true importance to his family. Dazzling and magical, Between Father and Son is a heartening story with a powerful message that adults and children alike will turn to time and time again.By Charles W. Chesnutt, Richard H. Brodhead. 1993
The stories in The Conjure Woman were Charles W. Chesnutt's first great literary success, and since their initial publication in…
1899 they have come to be seen as some of the most remarkable works of African American literature from the Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance. Lesser known, though, is that the The Conjure Woman, as first published by Houghton Mifflin, was not wholly Chesnutt's creation but a work shaped and selected by his editors. This edition reassembles for the first time all of Chesnutt's work in the conjure tale genre, the entire imaginative feat of which the published Conjure Woman forms a part. It allows the reader to see how the original volume was created, how an African American author negotiated with the tastes of the dominant literary culture of the late nineteenth century, and how that culture both promoted and delimited his work.In the tradition of Uncle Remus, the conjure tale listens in on a poor black southerner, speaking strong dialect, as he recounts a local incident to a transplanted northerner for the northerner's enlightenment and edification. But in Chesnutt's hands the tradition is transformed. No longer a reactionary flight of nostalgia for the antebellum South, the stories in this book celebrate and at the same time question the folk culture they so pungently portray, and ultimately convey the pleasures and anxieties of a world in transition. Written in the late nineteenth century, a time of enormous growth and change for a country only recently reunited in peace, these stories act as the uneasy meeting ground for the culture of northern capitalism, professionalism, and Christianity and the underdeveloped southern economy, a kind of colonial Third World whose power is manifest in life charms, magic spells, and ha'nts, all embodied by the ruling figure of the conjure woman.Humorous, heart-breaking, lyrical, and wise, these stories make clear why the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt has continued to captivate audiences for a century.By Bud Shrake. 2001
Not since Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show has a novelist captured the poignant contradictions of young manhood in the…
American West the way Bud Shrake does in Billy Boy. And no novel has ever combined history, spirituality and golf into so potent a triumph of the human spirit. There are tough times ahead for sixteen-year-old Billy. He's just come to Fort Worth with his father, Troy, after the death of his mother back in Albuquerque. Troy's drinking and gambling will leave them all but penniless, and he'll soon move on and abandon Billy in this strange town to fend for himself. With only a vague idea of how he's going to live, Billy heads over to Colonial Country Club, where he hopes he can get work as a caddie and where he just might see his hero, Ben Hogan. What he finds there, under the watchful eye of his guardian spirit, teaches him unforgettable lessons about golf, life, love and honor. In Billy Boy, longtime novelist and screenwriter Bud Shrake takes us back to the early 1950s, in a story thick with the Texas dust. Hardscrabble Billy, tough as he thinks he is and smarter than he knows, makes a place for himself behind the walls of privilege at Colonial. He first draws the approval, then the ire, of the club's most eccentric millionaire member, while his looks and manner draw the attention of the millionaire's beautiful granddaughter -- to the displeasure of her boyfriend, the club champion. Billy survives a fierce initiation and a dreadful scene with his drunken father -- but most important, he comes in contact with two of the greatest figures in the history of golf in Texas, Ben Hogan and John Bredemus, each of whom takes Billy under his wing for different reasons and with different results. Shrake skillfully weaves these historical figures and his richly drawn characters into the fabric of the town and the tenor of the time. Billy must face down his fears and doubts, and he does so in a climactic confrontation that combines the yearnings of youth with the redemption of the spirit. Billy Boy is an unforgettable novel of coming of age in a time and a place filled with mythic echoes and frontier dreams.By Lolita Files. 2000
Hollywood. The place people go to fulfill their dreams. But its reality is a cruel one: Opportunities are few and…
the competition ruthless. Innocent hearts can suddenly turn dark, and the most loyal of friends can become bitter enemies. Desi, Sharon, and Bettina are three black women struggling to make names for themselves amid the glitz, glamour, and deception. Before the women can be swept away by the intrigue and intensity of the entertainment industry, they must answer the desperate calls from the ghosts of their pasts....But if they do, will the shadows of infidelity, abandonment, and murder destroy everything they've worked for?By Bill Gutman. 2000
Race for the record! At the Sydney Games, Marion Jones strove to become the first person ever to win five…
gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics, making headlines for simply believeing she could do it. Driven to succeed at a very early age, Marion won multiple titiles at the Junior National Championships and set a junior record in the 200 meters. A multisport athlete, she helped lead the University of North Carolina women's basketball team to a national championship during her freshman year and also competed in track and field, until an injury forced her to reevaluate her priorities. Refocused on her track career, Marion quickly became the woman to beat, racking up an impressive thirty-five wims of the thiry-six events she entred in 1998. And after another injury sidelined her hopes of winning four gold medal at the 1999 World Championships, marion fought back in the 2000 season and is once again dominating the field. Get the full story of this amazing runner's race for the record, from her childhood dreams of gold medals to her tough choice between two sports and her determined drive to become the fastest woman in the world.By John Jennings, Craig Fischer, Frances Gateward, Rebecca Wanzo, William Lafi Youmans, Kinohi Nishikawa, Blair Davis, Nancy Goldstein, Daniel F. Yezbick, Sally Mcwilliams, James J. Zeigler, Qiana Whitted, Reynaldo Anderson, Hershini Bhana Young, Robin Means Coleman, Patrick F. Walter, Consuela Francis, Andre Carrington. 2015
When many think of comic books the first thing that comes to mind are caped crusaders and spandex-wearing super-heroes. Perhaps,…
inevitably, these images are of white men (and more rarely, women). It was not until the 1970s that African American superheroes such as Luke Cage, Blade, and others emerged. But as this exciting new collection reveals, these superhero comics are only one small component in a wealth of representations of black characters within comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels over the past century. The Blacker the Ink is the first book to explore not only the diverse range of black characters in comics, but also the multitude of ways that black artists, writers, and publishers have made a mark on the industry. Organized thematically into "panels" in tribute to sequential art published in the funny pages of newspapers, the fifteen original essays take us on a journey that reaches from the African American newspaper comics of the 1930s to the Francophone graphic novels of the 2000s. Even as it demonstrates the wide spectrum of images of African Americans in comics and sequential art, the collection also identifies common character types and themes running through everything from the strip The Boondocks to the graphic novel Nat Turner. Though it does not shy away from examining the legacy of racial stereotypes in comics and racial biases in the industry, The Blacker the Ink also offers inspiring stories of trailblazing African American artists and writers. Whether you are a diehard comic book fan or a casual reader of the funny pages, these essays will give you a new appreciation for how black characters and creators have brought a vibrant splash of color to the world of comics.By M.A.C. Farrant. 2011
This tell-all book by M.A.C. Farrant, whom Publishers Weekly has celebrated as "a brave iconoclast" and whose work the Globe…
& Mail has said "bristles with moral fury ... at the absurdities of our accelerated age and a great dose of laugh-out-loud humour," offers her readers nothing less than The Strange Truth About Us.A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions, speculations, and meditations, by turns philosophical, dark, comedic, and lyrical, it attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned world."Annotations About an Absence" is a series of 115 numbered annotations to the day-long ruminations of a retired couple living in a gated community attempting to create an imaginary novel in which they express their fears about the future: "We attempt to express the universal confusion of mind that is the main feature of contemporary life. Which is? We are afraid.""Woman Records Brief Notes Regarding Absence" is written as a series of notes to these annotations, providing (in the utterly blank spirit of transparency) a running satiric narrative on the project. Each of these "notes" is written as if it were a description of a late-night TV movie or the content of a wet Jehovah's Witness pamphlet left on a woman's doorstep that has taken hold of her mind."Other Prose Surrounding Absence" comprises twenty-seven prose pieces that take aim at a globalized world bludgeoned by the threat of "end times"-climate change, species extinction, pandemics, and really bad politics-that seem designed insofar as we are able to retain our status as "individuals."Unique in style and approach, engaging, enigmatic, controversial, and delightful, this book is an attempt to prick the bubble of our complacency in the face of the "awful atrocity" we've made for ourselves.By Randall A. Major, Svetislav Basara. 2008
Told through a series of "historical documents"--memoirs, illustrations, letters, philosophical treatises, blue prints, maps--the novel details the tale of a…
secret Brotherhood who meet in dreams, gain esoteric knowledge from contemplation of the bicycle, and seek to move in and out of history, manipulating events.By James Hurley. 2013
"The only constant passion in my life was my love of fly fishing and all that went with it. I…
coveted the escape I could find sitting at my vise for hours, tying deceitful little flies. I loved to be in the world where trout lived--the rivers and mountains and forests and meadows, away from people and the demands and requirements that created stress in my life."Meet Benedict Salem, whose friends call him BS, a frustrated writer and teacher looking to find himself. Middle-aged and blocked creatively, his dreams are filled with those magical moments when the weather, the lay of the cast, the fly, and the water converge with the fish in one fluid arc of perfection. The desire to perpetuate these moments takes BS to a small town in Maine, home to the crossing house inn, behind which lies a tract of virtual wilderness, a clean-running river, and a bounty of large, smart, and mostly fearless trout.BS soon befriends the owner of the inn, Bill Cahill, and together they and a group of fellow anglers found the Samuel Tippett Fly Fishers club. They soon devise a fishing contest between them, but what starts out as a friendly game to determine the best trout fly to represent their new club, quickly descends into a bitter rivalry that threatens to overtake reason. Feelings and friendships are forgotten as a fight over rules and the hunger to win takes hold of the men.In a deftly interwoven tale that explores the camaraderie and sportsmanship among anglers, The Contest challenges the wisdom of chasing perfection, and instead, encourages the reader to revel in life's most important moments, however brief or passing.By Thomas Scoville. 2001
Welcome to Silicon Valley -- where fortunes are fast, dating's dysfunctional, and computer geeks rule. Meet Paul Armstrong, a late-twenties…
computer "consultant" who sits in his cubicle at TeraMemory wondering where it all went horribly wrong. "Well, I wasn't always a nerd. I started out as a liberal-arts type in college -- though I aggressively concealed this on my resume. Hiring managers don't like it. Non-technical outside interests. Bad sign. "Watch him order a latte from the of?ce coffee cart and poke at his Chinese lunch special while his longtime pal Steve Hall, hacker extraordinaire, accuses him of selling out to The Man. "When the money dries up, this place will be just like anywhere else. It was never theplace,anyway -- that's what The Man will never understand. "Meet The Man himself: Barry Dominic, the ?amboyant, lecherous, millionaire founder of TeraMemory. He insists they're poised to revolutionize networking with a cutting-edge technology, appropriately called WHIP. "Nobody fucks with Barry Dominic. "That's where Liz Toulouse comes in. A Stanford English Lit grad and TeraMemory marketing associate, she accidentally cc's the entire company a snide e-mail about The Man's bad grammar on her very ?rst day. . . . "If only I'd had any idea. I'd have stayed in school. I'd have changed majors. Gotten a master's. Anything. "Welcome toSilicon Follies, a hilarious dot. comedy of ambition and disillusionment in a land of luck, loss, and sometimes even love.By Walidah Imarisha, Adrienne Maree Brown. 2016
Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision,…
and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia’s Brood span genres-sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism-but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas.