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Jay kristoff empire of the vampire 25/27/2023 ![]() ![]() The first book in the series, titled Illuminae, was published in late October 2015. Kristoff co-wrote the series with fellow Melbourne author, Amie Kaufman. Kristoff's second series, The Illuminae Files, was acquired by Random House in a preempt in 2013. Kristoff refers to the series as crossover fiction that appeals to older young adults and adults. The prequel novella The Last Stormdancer was the winner of the 2013 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Fiction. The first novel, Stormdancer, was a finalist for a 2012 Aurealis Award, was shortlisted for two 2013 David Gemmell Awards (for best novel and best debut novel), and was a finalist for the 2013 Compton Crook Award. ![]() Kristoff is the author of The Lotus War, a Steampunk series inspired by Tokugawa-era Japan. ![]() He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and a Jack Russell Terrier named Samwise. He worked in creative advertising for television for eleven years before beginning his literary career. He graduated from college with an Arts degree. As a child, Kristoff read frequently and played tabletop games, including Dungeons & Dragons. Kristoff was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1973. He writes both for adult readers and young adults. Jay Kristoff (born 11 November 1973) is an Australian author of fantasy and science fiction. Aurealis Award, Australian Book Industry Award, Gold Inky Award ![]()
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The assembly natasha brown5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() But Assembly’s brevity only attests to Brown’s copious talent, as she says in about a hundred pages what most writers couldn’t say in a thousand. Just when I think the boundaries of fiction can’t be pushed further Natasha Brown took the novel to new dimensions. Assembly is a disarmingly short book, much like Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine, which Brown cites at the end of her novel as an influence. ![]() ![]() It’s a unique book which defies any definition. Assembly is plainly a story, yet there’s references to non-fiction works. I also liked how Natasha Brown dances between the line of fiction and information. Some details crop up later in the book, which makes it readable. One the surface this may seem like a jumbled mess but, in it’s own way the story develops and the themes mentioned above emerge. All told in a stream of conscious manner and a arranged in a cut up way – although the plot development is somewhat linear. In the process she muses on race, social class, the racism towards the black population in Britain, class struggles and sexism in the workplace. I am amazed at how, in a brief 100 pages Natasha Brown manages to fuse many topics in such an innovative manner.Ī banker is preparing to go to her boyfriend’s garden party. I am not exaggerating when I say that Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a total headrush. There are some books which just redefine fiction. ![]()
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The complete eightball5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() “Get a move on, boys! Breakfast is ready!” cries the taskmaster to his underpaid team, bunked in the Infinity Comics compound. The closing feature is “Young Dan Pussey,” a warts-and-all take on a superhero comics mill-a meta-maneuver suggesting firsthand experience. Next comes a sleazy fable of adultery and novelty gags (“The Laffin’ Spittin’ Man”), dressed to kill in angular midcentury fashions and punctuated with the airborne sweat droplets known in the comics trade as plewds. (After getting a pentagram tattooed on her brow, she cackles, “I think it looks radical!”) Then there is “Devil Doll?,” a takeoff on those tracts drawn by the evangelical cartoonist Jack Chick that proselytizers still leave on subway seats-a campy-cruel three-pager in which heavy metal, PCP, and D&D lure a woman to a life of sin. In the surreal opener, “Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron,” our hero gets blindsided by a creepy bondage movie, soul-kissed by a filthy drunk, and arrested by sadistic cops he periodically flashes back to the troubled face of some lost love or phantom. ![]() In 1989 a two-dollar comic book called Eightball debuted with the aggressive subtitle “An Orgy of Spite, Vengeance, Hopelessness, Despair and Sexual Perversion.” True to the letter, the five vices suffuse its thirty-two black-and-white pages. A page from Daniel Clowes’s ‘Ghost World,’ which appeared in Eightball #17, August 1996 ![]()
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The nature of fragile things synopsis5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. ![]() ![]() Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin's silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin's odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn't right. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. ![]()
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Goodbye vitamin novel5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() And just this past Christmas, we buried my mother-in-law after Alzheimer’s had whittled her down to nothing. As a reporter in Congo, I spent years writing about refugees and mass movements of displaced persons fleeing war and famine. ![]() Goodbye, Vitamin is narrated by a 30-year-old woman named Ruth who, after suffering a breakup, moves home with her parents to care for her father, a professor and former alcoholic who now has Alzheimer’s.īoth books were oddly personal for me. Known connections to this year’s contenders: “None.”Įxit West follows the journey of Saeed and Nadia, two lovers who flee their unnamed country as it descends into chaos and war, only to discover a series of magical doors that serve as first-world escape hatches for millions of refugees on the move. Bryan Mealer is a journalist and the author of four books, including the bestselling The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (with William Kamkwamba), soon to be a major film, and The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family’s Search for the American Dream. ![]()
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The woman in the window a novel5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() Changes to clues and character backstories make the film’s payoff feel like more of a rug-pull reveal than a slowly unraveling mystery, for better or for worse. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and garnered praise for its suspenseful twists and turns, but readers later got a real-life shock in 2019, when the New Yorker published an exposé on Mallory’s deceitful behavior in the publishing industry.įans should plan to be surprised yet again if they expected the movie adaptation to stick to its source material. But when she meets Alistair Russell (Gary Oldman), he tells her she’s never met his wife, Jane (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Finn), the film follows Adams as Anna Fox, an agoraphobic child psychologist who believes she’s witnessed the murder of her next-door neighbor and new friend (Julianne Moore). ![]() Adapted from the psychological thriller by Dan Mallory (under the pseudonym A. After two years of waiting and wondering when Amy Adams will know peace, The Woman in the Window finally dropped on Netflix on Friday. ![]()
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The Con by Karri Justina Shea5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Please give a warm welcome to Scott Westerfeld! And to celebrate the upcoming release of the awesome second book Behemoth ( which Ana reviewed today), we invited the author to talk about writing it. The first book in his new series, Leviathan, was published last year and Ana barking LOVED IT. We are proud to bring you today a guest post by Scott Westerfeld, author of both Adult and YA books, including the Uglies Trilogy which Thea read and reviewed here. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. “Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. ![]()
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Alain de botton religion for atheist5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() So apparently there’s more to religion than gods, divine beings and other supernatural presences. And the ideas of Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, which dictated that men inclined to a philosophical way of life should build their own communities, led to the development of monasteries. Christmas was created by combining the midwinter solstice – a typical pagan celebration – with the birth of Jesus. After all, early Christianity drew from belief systems outside its own to create powerful new traditions. Secular society should reclaim some of the rituals and festivals that give depth to human experience. ![]() However, “the bad odor of religion,” as Nietzsche referred to it, has made morality something for secular people to avoid, all because of its association with religious practices. ![]() Just think of morality: ideas of how we might live better lives and treat others well need not be explicitly religious. On the contrary, however, there is no reason why you can’t make the most of the cultural, social and philosophical aspects that have evolved out of it. If you’re someone who doesn’t believe in deities, you might assume you’ve got nothing to learn from religion. What do we think of when we talk about religion? A white-bearded God seated on a throne in heaven? An ornately decorated church? Maybe a painting by Botticelli? Such knee-jerk associations reflect how religion and divinity are often assumed to go hand in hand. ![]()
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Serafina and the black cloak 25/26/2023 ![]() ![]() I was able to find a perfect wig from Britlyn Madison. ![]() I was able to find a used doll in excellent condition at a very good price. ![]() The particular face mold had the narrowed cheek/chin line that I wanted. Her face had peculiar angularity of the cheeks.” In the synopsis of the book trailer is goes on to describe Serafina’s hair as: “a mane of streaked, lion-like hair.” I knew immediately that I wanted to use an American Girl doll Marie Grace face mold for this custom doll. On page 13 of the book, Serafina’s hair is described as: “Her long hair wasn’t a single color like normal people had, but varying shades of gold and light brown. Inspiration also came from our own ideas of what we perceived the character would look like from the author’s description in the book. Inspiration pictures were found on google searches and from reviewing the book trailer which you can find here. In this story a brave and unusual girl, who lives secretly in the basement of the grand Biltmore Estate, and her friend Braeden Vanderbilt must work together to solve the dark and dangerous mystery of the black cloak. I don’t want to give too much away if you haven’t read the books…you must read them! We were so intrigued with the Serafina character that my oldest daughter requested a custom doll version. The first book being, Serafina and the Black Cloak. ![]() My daughters and I have fallen in love with the Serafina books from author Robert Beatty. ![]()
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![]() ![]() She rides Indian-style and shoots with deadly aim, greedily devours a treasure trove of leatherbound books, downs fire, flood, Comanche raids and other mortal perils with the unique courage that forged the character of the American West.Rich in authentic details of daily life and etched with striking character portraits of very different pioneer families, this action-packed novel is also the story of a powerful, enduring love between Sarah and the dashing cavalry officer Captain Jack Elliot. As a child, a fiery young woman, and finally a caring mother, Sarah forges a life as full and as fascinating as our deepest needs, our most secret hopes and our grandest dreams. ![]() Turner's unforgettable These Is My Words melds the sweeping adventures and dramatic landscapes of Lonesome Dove with the heartfelt emotional saga of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.Inspired by the author's original family memoirs, this absorbing story introduces us to the questing, indomitable Sarah Prine, one of the most memorable women ever to survive and prevail in the Arizona Territory of the late 1800s. |