Bast knows how to bargain. The give-and-take of a negotiation is as familiar to him as the in-and-out of breathing; to watch him trade is to watch an artist at work. But even a master's brush can slip. When he accepts a gift, taking something for nothing, Bast's whole world is knocked askew, for he knows how to bargain - but not how to owe. From dawn to midnight over the course of a single day, follow the Kingkiller Chronicle's most charming fae as he schemes and sneaks, dancing into trouble and back out again with uncanny grace. The Narrow Road Between Desires is Bast's story. In it he traces the old ways of making and breaking, following his heart even when doing so goes against his better judgement. After all, what good is caution if it keeps him from danger and delight?
Twenty-one-year-old Hardy 'Hardly' Reed good-natured, easy-going, usually stoned is drifting through life. A minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, he avoids unnecessary effort and unrealistic ambitions. Then one day he notices two children, around six or seven, sitting all alone on a bench. Hardly checks if they're okay and sees injuries on both children. Someone is hurting these kids. He reports the incident to Child Protective Service. That should be the end of it. After all, Hardly's not even good at looking out for himself so the last thing he wants to do is look out for anyone else. But he's haunted by the two kids, his heart breaking for them. And the more research he does the less he trusts that Child Protective Services understaffed and overworked will do anything about it. That leaves ... Hardly. He is probably the last person you'd ever want to count on. But those two kids have nobody else but him. Hardly has to do what's right and help them. Gradually, with assistance from unexpected allies, he develops investigative skills and discovers he's smarter and more capable than he ever imagined. But Hardly also discovers that the situation is more dangerous than he ever expected. The abusive father who has been hurting these children isn't just a lawyer he also runs a violent drug-dealing operation. The mother claims she wants to escape with the kids but Hardly isn't sure he can trust her. Faced with a different version of himself than he has ever known, Hardly refuses to give up. But his commitment to saving these kids from further harm might end up getting the kids, and Hardly himself, killed.
Raised in a conservative Palestinian family in Brooklyn, Yara thought she would finally feel free when she married a charming entrepreneur. Now, she has a good job at the local college, and balances that with raising her two daughters and taking care of their home. Yara knows that her life is more rewarding than her mother's - so why doesn't it feel like enough? After Yara responds to a colleague's racist provocation, she is put on probation at work and must attend mandatory counselling. Her mother blames a family curse for Yara's troubles, and while Yara doesn't believe in superstitions, she still finds herself growing increasingly uneasy about falling victim to the same mistakes as her mother. Yara's carefully constructed world begins to implode and suddenly she must face up to the difficulties of her childhood, not fully realising how that will impact not just her own future, but that of her daughters too.
Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They're opposites in every way. She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother's wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer - destined to be one another's great love story. Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered. But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can't help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been. What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can't let go?
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power, and connected by a single city: London, until the magic grew too fast, and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory - Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London. But barely a glimpse of them have been seen in the last seven years - and a new Antari named Kosika has appeared in White London, taking the throne in Holland's absence,' it continues. 'The young queen is willing to feed her city with blood, including her own - but her growing religious fervor has the potential to drown them instead. And back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one determined to correct the balance of power by razing the throne entirely.
Forest bathing offers specific guidelines for finding replenishment among the trees - from turning off the phone to seeking irregularities in nature - which in turn can make us gentler toward the world and ourselves.
The Good Enough Job reminds us that the biggest goal of all is to live a life we are happy with, and in which work is but one of the multitude of facets that make us who we are. An antidote to the toxic #hustle movement convincing us all we need to find fulfilment in the office, it denounces the dangers of burnout linked to those of us who cannot answer the question: beyond work, what's left?
Conversations of burnout have bubbled to the top of the cultural zeitgeist as the line between work and not-work continues to blur. Burnout and workaholism are symptoms of a deeper root cause: a lack of separation between who we are and what we do. This book is not a credo against looking to work for fulfilment, nor is it in favour of treating work as a necessary evil. It is a guide to developing a healthier relationship to work through the stories of people who have successfully done so. These are stories that invite us to re-evaluate what makes us happy, and how we can work to live, rather than the other way round.
On the dawn of 16 July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, Cristina Rivera Garza's sister, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of femicide. She was a twenty-year-old architecture student who had been trying for years to end her relationship with a high school boyfriend who insisted on not letting her go. A few weeks before the tragedy, Liliana made a definitive decision: at the height of her winter she had discovered that, as Albert Camus had said, there was an invincible summer in her. She would leave him behind. She would start a new life. She would do a master's degree and a doctorate; she would travel to London. But his decision was that she would not have a life without him. Returning to Mexico after decades of living in the United States, Cristina Rivera Garza collects and curates evidence - handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, voice recordings and architectural blueprints - to defy a pattern of increasingly normalised, gendered violence and understand the life lost. What she finds is Liliana: her sister's voice crossing time and, like that of so many disappeared and outraged women in Mexico, demanding justice.
Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, her poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become a messenger from the past, our voice for the future. The final poem in the book is The hill we climb, which was read at President Joseph Biden's 2021 inauguration. -- adapted from jacket and perusal of book.
Dogs of all shapes and sizes visit Ruth Shaw's three wee bookshops in Manapouri in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. Local dogs, holiday house dogs, travelling dogs: many have great stories, be they funny, sad, strange, bemusing, quirky or sweet. Woven throughout are tales of the very special Hunza, the dog who worked with troubled teens alongside Ruth when she was a youth worker. This is a window into the wonderful world of Ruth and her generous love of people, books and dogs. It's a must-read for dog fans, book fans and anyone who loved her first book, The Bookseller at the End of the World.