[PDF] Sauntering Vaguely Downward eBook

Author : Nessa L. Warin
Publisher : Dreamspinner Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 29,48 MB
Release : 2011-10-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781613721865

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Dylan Rojers is excited about Dragon*Con--a huge convention in Atlanta celebrating pop culture, science fiction, and fantasy--but he and his last-minute roommate, Brendan Stone, get off on the wrong foot. It seems that every time they manage a tentative truce, something happens to set them back, and by their second day at the convention, both think there's no way they can get along. But maybe Dylan and Brendan have more in common than they thought. Once they start talking, the sparks that were starting arguments ignite a different sort of passion. Through the four fabulous days of parties, shopping in the Dealers Room, costume parades, and discussion panels, Dylan and Brendan grow ever closer. There's just one problem: they live in different cities, and Dragon*Con doesn't last forever. Will Dylan and Brendan risk a long-distance romance or is a lasting relationship just one more all-too-brief fantasy?

Author : Aldous Huxley
Publisher : Standard Ebooks
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 47,96 MB
Release : 2022-03-04T03:01:11Z
Category : Fiction
ISBN :

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Mrs. Aldwinkle, an English aristocrat of a certain age, has purchased a mansion in the Italian countryside. She wishes to bring a salon of intellectual luminaries into her orbit, and to that end she invites a strange cast of characters to spend time with her in her palazzo: Irene, her young niece; Ms. Thriplow, a governess-turned-novelist; Mr. Calamy, a handsome young man of great privilege and even greater ennui; Mr. Cardan, a worldly gentleman whose main talent seems to be the enjoyment of life; Hovenden, a young motorcar-obsessed lord with a speech impediment; and Mr. Falx, a socialist leader. To this unlikely cast is soon added Mr. Chelifer, an author with an especially florid, overwrought style that is wasted on his day job as editor of The Rabbit Fancier’s Gazette, and the Elvers, a scheming brother who is the guardian of his mentally-challenged sister. As this unlikely group mingles, they discuss a great many grand topics: love, art, language, life, culture. Yet very early on the reader comes to realize that behind the pompousness of their elaborate discussions lies nothing but vacuity—these characters are a satire of the self-important intellectuals of Huxley’s era. His skewering of their intellectual barrenness continues as the group moves on to a trip around the surrounding country, in a satire of the Grand Tour tradition. The party brings their English snobbery out in full force as they traipse around Rome, sure of nothing else except in their belief that Italy is culturally superior simply because it’s Italy. As the vacation winds down, we’re left with a biting lampoon of the elites who suppose themselves to be at the height of art and culture—the kinds of personalities that arise in every generation, sure of their own greatness but unable to actually contribute anything to the world of art and culture that they feel is so important. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Author : Fritz Leiber
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 44,45 MB
Release : 1999-10-12
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780312869724

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In Conjure wife, Norman Saylor learns that his wife is a sorceress. In Our Lady of Darkness, horror writer Franz Westen searches for the paranormal in San Francisco.

Author : Pete Bodo
Publisher : HMH
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 14,36 MB
Release : 2010-11-15
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 0547504454

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A dedicated deer hunter “writes with humor and insight” about his adventures—and misadventures—in the wild (Orlando Sentinel). Every autumn, millions of men and women across the country don their camo, stock up on doe urine, and undertake a quintessential American tradition—deer hunting. The pinnacle of a hunter’s quest is killing a buck with antlers that “score” highly enough to qualify for the Boone and Crockett record book. But in all his seasons on the trail, Pete Bodo, an avid outdoorsman and student of the hunt, had never reached that milestone. Sadly, he had to admit it: He was a nimrod. Whitetail Nation is the uproarious story of the season Pete Bodo set out to kill the big buck. From the rolling hills of upstate New York to the vast and unforgiving land of the Big Sky to the Texas ranches that feature high fences, deer feeders, and money-back guarantees, Bodo traverses deep into the heart of a lively, growing subculture that draws powerfully on durable American values: the love of the frontier, the importance of self-reliance, the camaraderie of men in adventure, the quest for sustained youth, and yes, the capitalist’s right to amass every high tech hunting gadget this industry’s exploding commerce has to offer. Gradually, Bodo closes in on his target—that elusive monster buck—and with each day spent perched in a deer stand or crawling stealthily in high grass (praying the rattlesnakes are gone), or shivering through the night in a drafty cabin (flannel, polar fleece, and whiskey be damned), readers are treated to an unforgettable tour through a landscape that ranges from the exalted to the absurd. Along the way Bodo deftly captures the spirit and passion of this rich American pursuit, tracing its history back to the days of Lewis and Clark and examining that age old question: “Why do men hunt?”

Author : George Elliott
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
Page : 486 pages
File Size : 40,53 MB
Release : 2009-03-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1425040527

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An extraordinary masterpiece written from personal experience, Middlemarch is a deep psychological observation of human nature that revolves around the issues of love, jealousy, and obligation. Eliot's feminist views are apparent through the novel: she stresses the fact that women should control their own lives.

Author : Marie Corelli
Publisher : Graphic Arts Books
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 14,15 MB
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1513288660

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Barrabas (1896) is a novel by Marie Corelli. Published at the height of Corelli’s career as one of the most successful writers of her generation, Barrabas combines Biblical fiction, spirituality, and tragedy to tell the story of the crucifixion from the perspective of the man who was spared. Due for reassessment by a modern audience, Marie Corelli’s work—which has inspired several adaptations for film and theater—is a must read for fans of nineteenth century fiction. “The heavy heat was almost insupportable, and a poisonous stench oozed up from the damp earth-floors of the Jewish prison, charging what little air was there with a deadly sense of suffocation. Down in the lowest dungeons complete darkness reigned, save in one of the cells allotted to the worst of criminals...” In one of these cells, the thief Barrabas awaits punishment for his crimes. Expecting death, he goes through phases of despair and rage, trying with all his might—and failing—to break his heavy chains. In another cell, Jesus himself awaits his trial. While their stories are well known, and despite the infamy associated with such names as Judas and Pontius Pilate, Corelli does her best to provide a unique angle on Jesus’ crucifixion, focusing on Barrabas, the man who was spared. Addressing philosophical, historical, and religious themes, Barrabas is a moving work of fiction which asks important questions about faith, guilt, and the meaning of Christian sacrifice. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Marie Corelli’s Barrabas is a classic work of English historical fiction reimagined for modern readers.

Author : Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 578 pages
File Size : 17,40 MB
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0061804819

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New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.