![]() ![]() And here and now is not a bad place and time to be, especially when so much of the unknown is beautiful.” And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.Īs the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found. ![]() Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. She's found her final candidate.īut in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. ![]() ![]() When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. An adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Not to be mistaken for just a "how-to-do-it," this voluminously illustrated volume (like the classic Disney films themselves) is intended for everyone to enjoy.īesides relating the painstaking trial-and-error development of Disney's character animation technology, this book irresistibly charms us with almost an overabundance of the original historic drawings used in creating some of the best-loved characters in American culture: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Snow White and Bambi (among many, many others) as well as early sketches used in developing memorable sequences from classic features such as Fantasia and Pinocchio. They personally animated leading characters in most of the famous films and have decades of close association with the others who helped perfect this extremely difficult and time-consuming art form. The authors, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, worked with Walt Disney himself as well as other leading figures in a half-century of Disney films. ![]() ![]() The most complete book on the subject ever written, this is the fascinating inside story by two long-term Disney animators of the gradual perfecting of a relatively young and particularly American art from, which no other move studio has ever been able to equal. ![]() ![]() The scene begins in the Persian desert in 363 A.D., when the last pagan emperor of Rome, who shares my name, Julian, subsequently known as Julian the Apostate, was killed. Would you set the scene for that for me, please? There is a pretty cheeky idea at the heart of this story, and it's the suggestion that civilization took a serious wrong turn a very long time ago. He examines whether the way we approach life, death and sex would still be recognizable to us in that alternate reality. ![]() Would those of us alive today be profoundly different human beings? ![]() ![]() In Julian Barnes' new novel, Elizabeth Finch, the characters ponder a tantalizing question: What if the ancient Pagans had defeated the then-upcoming religion, Christianity, in the 4th century?īarnes, who won the Booker prize in 2011, considers with Tapestry host, Mary Hynes, how things might have turned out radically different. ![]() ![]() ![]() In his book, he explains that once you confront one person about something, it will be easier to do it to the next person you don’t agree with. This will help with putting a foot down and not let people take advantage of you. If you are a person that usually agrees with everyone to not get in a conflict, then practice disagreeing with others. The book talks a lot about not letting people walk all over you. ![]() Glover is also the creator of Dating Essentials for Men, a book that helps men in the dating world. He has discussed his take on this topic on numerous platforms such as his book, workshops, online classes, blogs, podcasts, and therapy groups.ĭr. Robert Glover is internationally known for his take on the Nice Guy Syndrome. ![]() ![]() 'I longed to know what would happen next. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit: young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby Tom, the busker who rescues her truant Jasper who gets his kicks on the tube and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all of their lives.ĭispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolhouse are gradually brought closer together in violent and unforeseen ways by London's forbidding and dangerous Undergound. Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compiling his obsessive, secret history of London's Underground. when the unravelling takes place, it is brilliantly unexpected and original' The Times Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award ![]() King Solomon's Carpet - a prize-winning crime classic from bestselling author Barbara Vine ![]() ![]() ![]() In her 1429 Letter to the English, peasant-girl-turned-military-commander Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) demanded, “Surrender to the Maid, who is sent from God, the King of Heaven, the keys to all the good cities that you have taken and violated in France.” Inspired by Jeanne d’Arc’s execution in 1431, the various kingdoms of the French region would unite by the end of the 15th century. Jean II had five children, the eldest son - the dauphin - would succeed him as King Charles V.ĭecades later, a young girl from a small French village claimed witness to divine visions that Charles VII, heir of Charles VI, was the rightful king of France. ![]() ![]() ![]() King Jean (John) II - the second king of the Valois dynasty - attempted several truces to no avail in 1356, he was captured and held for ransom by the English. Ongoing disputes between the kingdoms of France and England culminated in the official start of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, the region was divided into an assortment of kingdoms. By the 3rd century BCE, the area was occupied by the Gallic tribe of the Parisii, until their defeat by the Romans. Paris was settled in the geographic region referred to as the Paris Basin, which provided conditions suitable for farming. ![]() ![]() (I know this is supposed to be light and fun, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be believable too.) I liked the idea of a hero who is less than physically spectacular. Even worse is the game of disguise that Rafe plays with Imogen, who thinks she's embarking on an affair with Gabe (when it's really Rafe in a mustache.) Rafe's transformation from pickled duke (he's an alcoholic, or the 19th century equivalent of one) to virile hero seemed too swift and easy for me. Sounds a bit convoluted/contrived? Well, it is. Rafe discovers and embraces his long lost, illegitimate half-brother Gabe, who brings with him his own illegitimate daughter and a request to help out his baby's mama, an actress, by putting on a play in which she, Loretta Hawes, will star and thus be launched into her brilliant acting career. Unfortunately, when they're brought together for their romance in this third installment of the Essex Sisters series, things didn't work out so well for me. ![]() ![]() ![]() They had such personality, with their flaws and their foibles that could be equally endearing and frustrating. ![]() I was really looking forward to The Taming of the Duke because Imogen and Rafe are some of my favorite characters of the series. ![]() ![]() To watch PeopleTV’s full interview with Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Bush, go to or download the PeopleTV app on your favorite mobile or connected TV device.Īt other more private moments in the book, the sisters and their family are at their most intriguing and unfamiliar. S., and you think your professors and TAs would be above that.” “Both the idea that she thought that I would be able to change the opinion of, truly, the Congress and the U. ![]() “That was definitely the most surprising thing that happened,” she says. I knew the signs were not personal, but it still felt like a stab each time I saw one.” Later in her time at Yale, a teaching assistant offered to give her a better grade if she convinced her father not to go to war in Iraq. The only way to avoid them was to stare at the ground. I couldn’t look out my window without seeing one. “The students living in the dorm across from mine had Al Gore signs in all their windows. “Emotionally, I was unprepared,” Barbara writes in the book. They were in their first semester of college - Jenna at the University of Texas at Austin, Barbara at Yale University - during the election and recount. Being First Daughters brought a series of challenges for the sisters. ![]() ![]() ![]() Lawyer, adventurer, secretary, MP, diplomat, priest. He never had to husband his talent: there was always more where it came from.ĭonne himself went through multiple iterations. As Katherine Rundell says, he arrived in the world “book-hungry” and so he remained: like the “hydroptique (ever-thirsty) earth” of that poem, (“A Nocturnal upon St Lucy’s Day”) he sucked in ideas, impressions, sensations, connections, science, and poured them back transformed into poetic forms, sermons, treatises. “I am the quintessence of nothingness,” he insists, and insists again, until he achieves the very opposite of nothingness: a tomb, yes, but one heaped with dark treasure. ![]() Even when writing about death and extinction, he piles absence on absence. He had no sense of enough: infinity was not enough, hence the title of this wonderful book. In the company of English love poets, with their cool ironising, their prophylactic mockery, their continence and equivocation, Donne blazes out like a winged unicorn in a dressage stable. Seldom has a man burned with such fervent intensity. “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Revelations 3:16.) Whatever problems God had with his servant John Donne, lukewarmth was not among them. ![]() ![]() ![]() They bring their two dogs - Pip, a lurcher, and Voss, a terrier - with them and live a simple life supported by social welfare payments and dwindling savings.Īfter the excitement of moving in together for the first time (the pair met at a party), taking minimal furniture and an odd assortment of belongings with them, their lives quickly settle into a routine. ![]() Set over the course of seven years, it tells the quiet, contemplative story of Bell (Isabel) and Sigh (Simon), who both ditch their menial city jobs - Bell waiting tables, Sigh packaging TVs in a factory - to move into a rental house, “a drab, roofed box girdled by countryside” at the bottom of a mountain. The rhythms of nature and the passing of time are the central themes in Sara Baume’s latest novel Seven Steeples. ![]() Fiction – Kindle edition Tramp Press 288 pages 2022. ![]() |