Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another - and to one another - as we fight to be ourselves. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence - into tumultuous relationships with his mother and grandmother, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Haunted and haunting, Jones memoir tells the story of a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. The I it seems doesnt exist until we are able to say, I am no longer yours. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. About the Book People dont just happen, writes Saeed Jones.
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The plot follows 17 year old Nora, an ex con artist who is caught up in a hostage situation during a bank robbery. It struck me as such an original story and I can confirm it is just as brilliant as it sounds. I was so intrigued by the premise of The Girls I’ve Been plus the upcoming Netflix adaption starring Millie Bobby Brown. Now it will take all of Nora’s con artistry skills to get them out alive.īecause the gunmen have no idea who she really is – that girl has been in hiding for far too long … But when her mother fell for one of the men instead of conning him, Nora pulled the ultimate con herself: escape.įor five years Nora’s been playing at normal – but things are far from it when she finds herself held at gunpoint in the middle of a bank heist, along with Wes (her ex-boyfriend) and Iris (her secret new girlfriend and mutual friend of Wes … awkward). As the daughter of a con artist who targeted criminal men, Nora always had to play a part. Nora didn’t choose a life of deception – she was born into it. Also known as Rebecca, Samantha, Haley, Katie and Ashley – the girls she’s been. And this time, Nora doesn’t have an escape plan … But the ultimate test lies in wait when she’s taken hostage in a bank heist. As an ex con artist, Nora has always got herself out of tricky situations. Basically Baker believed that these two forces shape the world, and could bring magic back into it if they were incarnated.īy the time our story starts, Asphodel is dead and her work is continued by James Reed, the heir she constructed for herself from dead bodies and alchemy. She wanted to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, which McGuire describes as the “balance between language and mathematics” (kindle location 108). It’s effective because McGuire centers a complex story structure around compelling and simple character stakes to make an unusual story.Īsphodel Baker, a talented alchemist who was ignored and underestimated because she was a woman, had a big idea. MIDDLEGAME takes the ‘low and slow’ approach, revealing its secrets bit by bit. It requires a little more work and patience from your reader, but once you figure out the game, it can heighten the pleasure inherent in reading, the tension and relief of revelation. And while unintentional disorientation is the sign of bad writing, intentional disorientation can be fun. Others dole them out slowly, reeling the reader in little by little. A lot of books can’t wait to reveal all of their secrets. He shrugs, and a smug smile takes over his already irritating expression. When I refuse to acknowledge his performance, he eventually sighs and drops his elbows to the table. He thinks I’ll eventually give in and tell him what he wants to hear, but he hasn’t been around me enough in the last two years to know that I’m not that girl anymore. His fingers drum the sides of his coffee cup as he watches me silently for several beats. And once again, I’m forced to be his audience. It’s only been five minutes since he sat down, and he’s already turned his side of the booth into his stage. I look at him and wonder if the regret I see in his eyes is a result of disappointing me or if he’s simply acting again. My back meets the booth behind me and I fold my arms across my chest. “What am I supposed to say?” I mumble, resembling a bratty child, rather than the eighteen-year-old adult that I am. I stab the hollow part of an ice cube with my straw, imagining that it’s his head. “Fallon?” He clears his throat and tries to soften his words, but they still come at me like knives. His voice causes my grip to tighten around the glass in hopes that it stays in my hand and doesn’t actually end up against the side of his skull. I’m a little shocked, but it’s happening,” he says. There are napkins on the table, but not the good kind that could soak up a lot of blood. The potential for a nice big THUD is there. I wonder what kind of sound it would make if I were to smash this glass against the side of his head. He rescued me, but that was only the beginning. Only, I woke up in the back of a helicopter, bound and gagged. He vanished into the night as silently and mysteriously as he appeared, and that was that. He told me knowing nothing was safest for me-and he said this in a quiet, accented voice that only made me curious to know more about him. The moment he was sewed up, he made for the door. He said nothing, refused to even hear my name. Being a nurse, I couldn’t help taking over. Instead, I found a man in my kitchen, using my sewing kit to suture a glancing gunshot wound to his ribcage. What happened? I came home late one night after a hellish shift in the ER, ready for a glass of wine and some mindless TV before bed. I wouldn’t even classify what happened as meeting him, but it was enough, apparently, to warrant my involvement in a mess far beyond anything I could even imagine. I’m no stranger to ugly sights, but I keep all that locked away in a tiny dark little box where it’ll never affect my baby girl. An ER nurse just barely scraping by, working sixty-plus hours a week to make ends meet. I’m a thirty-nine year old single mother to a sweet little blond seven year old girl. What I take from The Giving Tree, and what I try to subtly convey to my kids when I read it, is that giving is good and important. I won’t give away the ending but it’s poignant and tender and the more I think about it, really sad for a children’s story. Although the tree willingly gives to the boy, he never seems to be fulfilled and she grows increasingly sadder. The tree loves the little boy and gives everything she can. The story is about a little boy who loves a tree and as he grows he asks for more and more things from the tree. But I haven’t yet and this makes writing a review a little more difficult than usual. I realize that in this Internet age with sites like Wikipedia and Amazon and any number of blogs and review sites, I *should* be able to figure it out. So I’ve now read it some 60-70 times, but here’s the strange thing: I’m still not quite sure what the moral of the story is. I based my decision to buy it on two things-I had a notion that it was an important book in the canon of children’s literature and I really liked the cover: a simple line drawing of a boy and a tree on a bright green background.įast forward a few months and it has become one of the three or four books that *must* be read before bedtime. I’d seen it before but never read it and thought it might be nice to read to my children. Not so long ago, I bought The Giving Tree on a visit to a great NY bookstore. No one wants to run around wearing a scratchy mask for hours on end. The mask is a true work of art.īlack filigreed lace made from the softest silk covers the top half of my face. I look up at the security camera hidden in the corner above the door and scratch my nose through my mask with my middle finger. The doors slide open again, and I exit to find myself facing a locked set of mahogany double doors. I hum along under my breath, waiting for the elevator to reach the forty-eighth floor. Pleasant classical music tinkles faintly from hidden speakers inside the metal box as it moves. I press the call button for the elevator, and when its doors open, I step inside and key in the code. Luckily, after some convincing, I managed to get this week’s code from one of Roan Incorporated’s senior executives. The code for this elevator changes weekly. Based on the blueprints I permanently borrowed from a helpful lower-level employee, there should be an elevator up ahead that will take me to the corporate headquarters. I swipe the flat end of my switchblade back and forth across my thin yoga pants – also black, the color has an added bonus feature of hiding blood – to clean it, for when it’s needed again. My footprints are still clean from stepping around the growing pools of blood from my earlier victims. My black ballet flats don’t make even a whisper of sound on the gold veined marble floor. Keep your friends close, the old adage says. Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead. . Amid the boisterous revelry of New Year’s Eve, the cord holding them together snaps, just as a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Harper Collins - The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley Red Bee Creative 2.75K subscribers Subscribe 3.8K views 4 years ago We created a suite of trailers to promote Harper Collins’ fiction and. But after a decade, the weight of secret resentments has grown too heavy for the group’s tenuous nostalgia to bear. The trip begins innocently enough: admiring the stunning if foreboding scenery, champagne in front of a crackling fire, and reminiscences about the past. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands-the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves. “My favorite kind of whodunit, kept me guessing all the way through, and reminiscent of Agatha Christie at her best - with an extra dose of acid.” - Alex Michaelides, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Silent PatientĮveryone's invited.everyone's a suspect.ĭuring the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of thirtysomething friends from Oxford meet to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students ten years ago. To save her people, Nor must learn to negotiate the treacherous protocols of a court where lies reign and obsession rules.but discovering her own formidable strength may cost her everything she loves. And as she grows closer to Ceren's brother, Prince Talin, Nor learns of a failing royal bloodline, a murdered queen.and a plot to destroy her village. Learn more Ask the Author To ask Mara Rutherford questions, please sign up. She is the author of Crown of Coral and Pearl and its sequel, Kingdom of Sea and Stone Luminous The Poison Season, and A MULTITUDE OF DREAMS (September 26, 2023). She soon discovers her future husband, Prince Ceren, is as forbidding and cold as his home. A triplet born on Leap Day, Mara has lived all over the world with her diplomat husband and two sons. Then Zadie is injured, and Nor is sent to Ilara in her place. Nor once dreamed of seeing the mysterious mountain kingdom for herself, but after a childhood accident left her with a scar, she knew her twin sister, Zadie, would likely be chosen to marry the crown prince. Red Queen meets House of Salt and Sorrow in Mara Rutherford's debut YA fantasy Crown of Coral and Pearl, which follows a young woman from a village on the sea who must impersonate her twin on land to save everyone she loves from a tyrannical prince.įor generations, the crown princes of Ilara have married the most beautiful maidens from the ocean village of Varenia. "A fabulous interweaving of fantasy, politics, and sisterhood-this unusual, tense tale will have you on the edge of your seat!"-#1 New York Times bestselling author Tamora Pierce I would definitely currently determined that the authentic culprit of the backyard scare tactics more than likely was – it’s constantly great when you assume SOMETHING right – however there were most absolutely a couple of shocks in the last quarter of overview that I really did not see coming. I will not wreck that the target is for you, nevertheless suffice it to state I was a little shocked. CAUTION: if you’re delighting in the collection as well as likewise do not want completion spoilered, do not buy thebook The collection has actually abided by along instead continually up until now, with 1 or 2 small modifications (the movie theater manufacturing isn’t an issue in overview, for example).īig Little Lies is perfectly made up, with a boosting air of stress throughout the book as we obtain closer and also closer to the murder foreshadowed originally. So when a buddy talked about that it was changed from a book by an Australian writer (as well as likewise the establishing modified from a classy Sydney North Coast suburb to Monterey) I can not withstand acquiring it.īig Little Lies Audiobook Free. I have really been seeing the HBO collection as well as likewise totally appreciating it. |