Totally loved that this Dark Romantasy is set in Dublin. There's a fair amount of set up for the 'premise' of the hidden magical world of the Fae, but it's all fascinating, and the second half of the novel is action packed.
Rubbing my hands with glee that this is a long series.
I used to be your average, everyday girl but all that changed one night in Dublin when I saw my first Fae, and got dragged into a world of deadly immortals and ancient secrets ...
In her fight to stay alive, MacKayla must find the Sinsar Dubh - a million-year-old book of the blackest magic imaginable, which holds the key to power over the worlds of both the Fae and Man. Pursued by assassins, surrounded by mysterious figures she knows she can't trust, Mac finds herself torn between two deadly and powerful men: V'lane, the immortal Fae Prince, and Jericho…
Known for my sweet billionaire romance novels, I am a purveyor of book boyfriends and happy endings. I absolutely love romance stories as you know exactly what you’re in for when you pick them up. You know there will be a Happily Ever After no matter how dire things get at any given point in the story so you can really just sit back and enjoy the ride. As an author I always write epilogues and I’ve built up a growing universe where characters pop in and out of each other’s books. It’s my happy place and as an author I love sharing that world with others.
I found this entire series a refreshing and original set of Billionaire trope romances, as each of the heroes lives with a permanent disability. One really important thing I think Tamie does really well with her books is that they don’t come across as shallow or exoticized – the characters are never magically healed for their happily ever afters – they have their challenges and it makes them who they are, but they don’t need those things to be fixed to be happy and whole. She has a lot of personal insight into this as well, as she covers in her Author’s Note that she wrote these books out of a personal desire to bring representation to this community out of love for her grandson who also – like Bran – happens to be blind.
Stephanie Caldwell fell in love with her boss, but he's too clueless to notice. And being blind is no excuse!
Steph doesn’t care that Bran is blind—at least he’ll never see the longing looks she gives him. If only she could warn him about the lack of love on his conniving fiancée’s face. But Steph has to keep her mouth shut, or she could lose her job, along with the health insurance that keeps her daughter alive.
Billionaire Branson Knight knows women regard him as a pitiful blind man, his wealth his only attraction. So his engagement is merely a…
I came into the world telling stories. From the age of four you could often find me surrounded by a little cluster of friends, amusing them with a story I was spinning on the spot. When I was nine, I began telling my sisters about a Martian who was living on Earth and who loved his comfy chairs. This Martian eventually became Alou, and it has been such a joy to share his world through my picture book Alou: The Martian Agent and its sequels. One thing I’m passionate about is sparking the potent imagination bottled up inside all our little ones and I hope my books can encourage that.
Make-believe was one of my favorite pastimes as a little girl. When I wasn’t writing a story, chances were, I was off with a sister in a world of imagination. And when I was there, it was as if my fancy was reality. I think that’s why I identify with this charming picture book so much. The main character’s potent imagination pulls his surroundings into his play reality. But the ending leaves us to ponder, along with Baby Ben’s mama…can his imagination conjure things into the tangible world? This translation from the original Swedish expertly converted the rhymes, and the pictures add so very much to the adventure. If you have a little adventurer in your life, this is a must-read!
Paul Harris is one of the UK’s most influential music educationalists. He studied the clarinet at the Royal Academy of Music, where he won the August Manns Prize for outstanding performance in clarinet playing and where he now teaches. He is in great demand as a teacher, composer, and writer (he has written over 600 books); and his inspirational masterclasses and workshops continue to influence thousands of young musicians and teachers all over the world in both the principles and practice of musical performance and education.
Should you decide to work through my book, I’m sure you’ll find reading music a very attainable skill. And having attained this skill, you may now be considering the possibility of writing music. There are quite a number of books on the subject to recommend but a very comprehensive and thorough approach is Anna Butterworth’s Harmony in Practice. She takes you through the process of understanding musical harmony which will form the background of the melody and rhythm you may wish to impose and in a short amount of time you may find yourself writing your first simple pieces.
Harmony in Practice explores the main elements of tonal harmony. Students using this book will acquire a secure knowledge of the basics of harmonic practice. Singing, playing and completing the exercises, and studying the music examples, will provide essential experience of the 'tools of the trade'. More than 280 music examples illustrate the author's clear and direct exposition of the history and practice of harmony while the student will be able to work through over 180 exercises. The practical workbook format will enable students to prepare for a variety of musical examinations - for the Associated Board's Grade 6 to…
I went to four different boarding schools when I was younger, which at the time didn’t seem weird but it definitely is. I think boarding schools are peculiar places, full of teenagers with raging hormones, secret homesickness, and a certain sort of reckless swagger that is a recipe for all sorts of drama i.e. the perfect setting for a novel.I was on quite hefty scholarships and know how lucky I was to be there, but whether you have or haven’t been to boarding school, there is an endless fascination with them. I had a lot of fun writing The Islanders, wallowing happily in my nostalgia and reminiscing with old friends about what we got up to.
Marina is another scholarship girl (there’s a theme here) trying to escape her messy family life, but from the get-go, she feels like an outsider at her new boarding school, Coombe Abbey. At this school, everyone’s given a cruel nickname, but even worse is being so invisible you don’t have a nickname at all. Marina doesn’t cope well at all, and one of my favourite hilarious episodes is when she visits the beautiful, drafty, impossibly cool home of her boyfriend and has mortifying sex and a terrifying night-time poo. The ending had me in tears (but from laughter and sadness).
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013 and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014
'I adored Almost English' Nigella Lawson 'I read and ADORED Almost English . . . And now I will read everything she's ever written' Marian Keyes
Home is a foreign country: they do things differently there . . .
In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family's crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the…
I’ve spent a lifetime in search of the coziest ski village, the most spectacular mountaintop view, and the ultimate powder descent, and for the past 35 years, I’ve been writing about and photographing my experiences for ski and travel magazines. I am one of the world’s most published ski journalists, with more than 600 feature articles with photos having appeared in 20 countries. I’ve skied about 4700 days in my life, and have managed to ski in 650 ski resorts, in 75 countries, and on all seven continents. I have also written an unusual multi-media novel with photos and music called Coming of Age.
Arnie Wilson is a man with as long a history as a ski journalist as anybody alive. He is a passionate skier who skied his way into the Guinness Book of Records by circumscribing the globe while skiing 365 consecutive days back in 1994, and he also spent 15 years as the ski correspondent for the Financial Times and twelve years more as the editor of the British magazine, Ski and Board. This book is a coffee-table book that is divided into chapters on Arnie’s choice of the 40 best ski resorts in the world.
From Chamonix and St. Moritz in the European Alps to Aspen, Colorado, and Lake Louise, Canada, this beautifully illustrated volume features 40 of the most celebrated, fashionable, and diverse skiing destinations in the world. Each resort is treated individually, with the author's vivid and lively description, handsome color photos, and an information panel that tells readers how to get there, the site's altitude, number of lifts, types of pistes or ski runs, the resort's special advantages, and its drawbacks. Each description also features a small map showing nearby cities and approaches by highway. The resorts and sites described encompass the…
I am now a full-time author, and I worked for 25 years for the RSPB at Sandy and BirdLife in Cambridge. An oil painting of W. H. Hudson hangs above the fireplace of the house at Sandy – so he was a familiar face, like an ancestor about whom little is recalled and surprisingly little is ever said. I began to dabble in his books and got drawn in. I wanted to understand him and his female colleagues who created the organisation we know today and that has been such a big part of my life. I have a sense of repaying a debt.
Hudson told Don Roberto Cunninghame Graham he thought it "quite as good as anything in that line I’ve done before," as he supplied one for Don Roberto's mother Missy Bontine. It was a rare example of him expressing satisfaction in anything he’d written.
When people ask me where to start with Hudson, I usually suggest starting with one of the essay books (Birds and Man or Adventures Among Birds are others).
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and…
I’ve always adored romance books—there’s nothing like the thrill of meeting characters that you know you’re going to fall in love with just as much as they’re going to fall in love with each other. I didn’t start out intending to write about rock stars. But when I was sitting down in front of that first blank screen looking for inspiration, it was a rock star that took shape in my mind. There is something so inherently appealing about the artistic, tortured souls of musicians. Relationships in the spotlight come with very special challenges, and I love exploring how characters navigate these while still developing passionate, soul-deep emotional bonds.
Lick was another of my earliest rock star romance reads. It takes the rock star trope and combines it together with the accidentally married trope, and I loved every second of it! It was so much fun reading about how these strangers deal with waking up after a wild night out on the town in Las Vegas only to realize they’re now married. That would be difficult enough without one of them being a very famous rock star. This story is sexy, entertaining, heartbreaking, and heartwarming, all at the same time. Not always an easy combination to pull off, but Kylie Scott manages it beautifully.
Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.
Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man in her room, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.
One thing is certain, being married to one of the hottest rock stars on the planet is sure to be a wild ride.
I am a journalist, travel writer, and author based in Australia, writing about all sorts of people and on topics that I find personally inspiring and thrilling, and which are guaranteed to raise the spirits of readers. I was born in England but travelled the world for 10 years before ending up in Australia in 1989. I also lecture in travel writing at Boston University’s Sydney campus.
I was entranced by this book when I first read it, and still am. I loved the way Kenyan writer and activist Ngugi wa Thiong'o told a story in such a simple, unadorned way that just manages to get under your skin. It’s an important lesson for any writer about unaffected writing! This was the first major novel in English by an East African writer and is just so redolent of its time and place. It charts the life of a young boy growing up through a major change in his home country, and the rise of the Mau Mau freedom fighters.
This is a powerful, moving story that details the effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the African nationalist revolt against colonial oppression in Kenya, on the lives of ordinary men and women, and on one family in particular. Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a rubbish heap and look into their futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has decided that he will attend school, while Kamau will train to be a carpenter. Together they will serve their country - the teacher and the craftsman. But this is Kenya and the times are against them. In the forests, the…
I am Zoltan Istvan, often considered one of the world’s most visible transhumanists. I began my career at National Geographic, but then turned towards leading the radical science movement forward that is now called transhumanism. We want to upgrade the human being with radical technology and overcome biological death. But all great movements need journies, and leaders of them need personal journies to be inspired by. These 5 books were the ones that inspired me the most!
Most people like London’s The Sea-Wolf for the protagonist, Humprhey Van Weyden, who tries to teach Wolf Larson (the Sea Wolf) to be moral. But I actually think The Sea Wolf actually is moral to begin with. He uses a sense of expediency to make his decisions, but even there, along the way of the voyage, we see changes in him as he reconsiders Van Weyden. Ultimately, it’s an incredible journey of multiple characters in the book finding their truest selves.
Hailed by critics as one of the greatest sea stories ever written, this rousing adventure offers a fascinating combination of gritty realism and sublime lyricism in its portrayal of an elemental conflict. Jack London began his career at sea, and his shipboard experiences imbue The Sea-Wolf with flavorful authenticity. In the story, the gentleman narrator, Humphrey Van Weyden, is pitted against an amoral sea captain, Wolf Larsen, in a clash of idealism with materialism. The novel begins when Van Weyden is swept overboard into San Francisco Bay, and plucked from the sea by Larsen's seal-hunting vessel, the Ghost. Pressed into…
