Title: Centennial Author: James A. Michener File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Historical Description: Michener is America's best writer, and he proves it once again in CENTENNIAL.THE PITTSBURGH PRESSA stunning panorama of the West, CENTENNIAL is an enthralling celebration of our country, brimming with the glory and the greatness of the American past that only bestselling author James Michener could bring to stunning life. From the Native Americans, the migrating white men and women, the cowboys, and the foreigners, it is a story of trappers, traders, homesteaders, gold seekers, ranchers, and hunters--all caught up in the dramatic events and violent conflicts that shaped the destiny of our legendary West.
Title: Even Silence Has an End_ My Six Years of
Author: Ingrid Betancourt
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Autobiography
Description:
Ingrid Betancourt tells the story of her captivity in the Colombian jungle, sharing powerful teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith. Born in Bogotį, raised in France, Ingrid Betancourt at the age of thirty-two gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader in a country that was being slowly destroyed by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. Nothing could have prepared her for what came next. She would spend the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as a prisoner of the FARC. Even Silence Has an Endis her deeply personal and moving account of that time. Chained day and night for much of her captivity, she never stopped dreaming of escape and, in fact, succeeded in getting away several times, always to be recaptured. In her most successful effort she and a fellow captive survived a week away, but were caught when her companion became desperately ill; she learned later that they had been mere miles from freedom. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt's indomitable spirit that drives this very special account, bringing life, nuance, and profundity to the narrative. Attending as intimately to the landscape of her mind as she does to the events of her capture and captivity, Even Silence Has an Endis a meditation on the very stuff of life-fear and freedom, hope and what inspires it. Betancourt tracks her metamorphosis, sharing how in the routines she established for herself-listening to her mother and two children broadcast to her over the radio, daily prayer-she was able to do the unthinkable: to move through the pain of the moment and find a place of serenity. Freed in 2008 by the Colombian army, today Betancourt is determined to draw attention to the plight of hostages and victims of terrorism throughout the world and it is that passion that motivates Even Silence Has an End. The lessons she offers here-in courage, resilience, and humanity-are gifts to treasure.
Title: The Scar
Author: China Mieville
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Science-Fiction
Description:A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon.For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave.Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . .China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Title: Birchwood
Author: John Banville
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction
Description:Review“This is one of the most startling of the century's varied achievements in Irish writing.”br —Seamus Deane John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.” br —_The Scotsman_ _Birchwoo_d represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..” br —Colm Toibin An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of The Sea. I am therefore I think. So starts John Banville’s 1973 novel Birchwood, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets—a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother—Gabriel also recalls his first encounters with love and loss. At once a novel of a family, of isolation, and of a blighted Ireland, Birchwood is a remarkable and complex story about the end of innocence for one boy and his country, told in the brilliantly styled prose of one of our most essential writers.
Title: Lateral Thinking
Author: Edward De Bono
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Self-Help
Description:
In schools we are taught to meet problems head-on: what Edward de Bono calls 'vertical thinking'. This works well in simple situations - but we are at a loss when this approach fails. Lateral thinking is all about freeing up your imagination.Through a series of special techniques, in groups or working alone, Edward de Bono shows us how to look at problems from a variety of angles and in so doing offer up solutions that are as ingenious as they are effective. After reading this book you will become a much more productive and formidable thinker.
Title: The Cloud Maker
Author: Patrick Woodhead
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Suspense
Description:
Clive Cussler meets Dan Brown in this high voltage adventure thriller in which two ambitious young climbers stumble upon a great secret hidden in the depths of the Himalayas and find themselves on the run from the Chinese secret police. From the Hardcover edition.
Title: The Accident Man
Author: Tom Cain
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Fiction:Historical
Description:From Publishers Weekly
The pseudonymous Cain, a British journalist, has come up with a clever premise for his first novel. One summer night in 1997, Samuel Carver, an extremely capable assassin who only targets bad guys, is in a Paris tunnel ready to make a hit. He causes a speeding black Mercedes to smash into a stone pillar, leaving the cars principal passenger, a dangerous terrorist, hes been told, undoubtedly dead. Moments later, Carver himself is on the run from a Russian thug. Only after escaping the Russian does Carver realize hes caused the death of Princess Diana. Carver vows revenge on those who set him up. A number of spy organizations are involved as well as several intermediaries, all of whom Carver must work his way through before finding whos behind the conspiracy. A likable hero and nicely detailed action help offset a predictable and at times overwrought romance between Carver and the Russians female accomplice. Hopefully, Cain will keep the mayhem and soft-pedal the love interest in his next Samuel Carver thriller. (Feb.) br
Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
Review
“Audacious, authentic, full of tension and tradecraft . . . Maybe it’s true and maybe it isn’t, but either way it’s a great thriller read. I loved it.”br
—Lee Child
“This is the best first thriller I have read since The Day of the Jackal, and that was a long time ago. With one mighty bound Tom Cain has vaulted over Archer and Grisham and stands close on Frederick Forsyth’s tail.”br
—Wilbur Smith
Title: Senor Nice
Author: Howard Marks
File Type: Mobi
Subject:Autobiography
Description:
The long-awaited and hugely-entertaining sequel toMr. Nice. During the mid-1980s, Howard Marks had forty-three aliases, eighty-nine phone lines and companies trading throughout the world. At the height of his career he was smuggling consignments of up to fifty tons from Pakistan and Thailand to America and Canada. He was eventually busted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison at Terre Haute Penitentiary, Indiana for marijuana smuggling. He was released in April 1995, after serving seven years. Senor Nice tells the story of what happened next. After release from prison, Marks changed careers: he wrote two best-selling books, became a sports and travel writer, stood as a parliamentary candidate, and embarked on a long-running sell-out series of one-man shows. While performing in his home town of Kenfig Hill, Wales, an elderly aunt told him of his outlaw ancestry: William Owen, the legendary Welsh smuggler (who had operated for some time in South America) and his great-great-grandfather Patrick McCarty, the half-brother of Billy the Kid, who had joined Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Patagonia. So, Marks decided to explore South America. His travels took him to Jamaica and Panama in the footsteps of the Welsh buccaneer Henry Morgan; to a search for obscure Welsh settlers in Brazil whom he never found; and a search among the thriving Welsh community in Patagonia for signs of Billy the Kid's half-brother. Richly comic and charged with the sense of adventure that induced this Oxford graduate to become the world's most notorious marijuana smuggler,Senor Niceis the hugely entertaining sequel toMr. Nice.