Shadowville: Book One of the Shadoweaters

Shadowville: Book One of the Shadoweaters

Paul Taylor

Nonfiction / Politics / Sociology

In a small country town an ancient evil is rising...Concealed, hidden in plain sight for millenia this dark force is feeding its way through the town's population, making puppets of them. For years it has been growing, biding its time, and now, it's almost ready....In the tradition of Stephen King's classic 'Salem's Lot, newcomer Paul Andrew Taylor crafts a tale of a small Australian town overcome by a dark and creeping horror.The Shadows are Coming...In the country town of Casino, a young mother hangs clothing on the old hills hoist while her toddler son plays on the lawn beside her. The sun shines brightly, painting shadows across the back yard. When her son's happy gibberish suddenly breaks off into choked gasps, his mother spins around to find him wrapped in her shadow, choked and grey and gasping for breath. The Shadows are Coming....A man sits in a park by the river, quietly feeding pigeons, shadows pooling beneath the bench. He drops some dry bread crumbs by his feet and a bold pigeon struts over to investigate. The man's shadow snaps out and drops over the pigeon like a blanket, devouring it in a puff of feathers and dust.The Shadows are Coming...When Ben Reilly returns to his home town of Casino, soured on city life after a bad break-up, he's hoping for little more than the comfort of things known and familiar and a place to clear his head. Instead, he finds a town full of strange, hungry people with jet black eyes and shadows that tug at their heels like hungry dogs.And like dogs, they need to feed...Searching the internet for answers, Ben draws the attention of a mysterious stranger with no shadow who claims to be impervious to the effects of the shadows. Known only as Shade, the stranger will lead Ben into the heart of darkness in a centuries old battle against these sinister Shadoweaters, people who are little more than appendages to the living shadows that have infected them.
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History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy

History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy

Niccolo Machiavelli

Politics / History / Nonfiction

Theodoric possessed great talents both for war and peace; in the former he was always conqueror, and in the latter he conferred very great benefits upon the cities and people under him. He distributed the Ostrogoths over the country, each district under its leader, that he might more conveniently command them in war, and govern them in peace. He enlarged Ravenna, restored Rome, and, with the exception of military discipline, conferred upon the Romans every honor.
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Traditional Gravity

Traditional Gravity

Stephen Armstrong

Nonfiction / Politics / Economics

Evan Chambers struggles to answer one question: does life have any meaning? Will he find his life's purpose as he navigates the maze of his religious family, the return of a high school love interest and the death of his grandfather? Or is he stuck in an endless cycle of disappointment?Some questions, once asked, can’t be shaken. When Evan Chambers dares to ask if life has any purpose, he finds the answer is elusive. After a random memory from his youth obscures the answer even more, Evan counts the steps from his bed to his balcony, and wonders if the only solution lies over the ledge.As Evan contemplates this, he receives a call from his brother Jordan. Evan’s grandfather is dying. This revelation draws him to his hometown in rural, upstate New York. While there, Evan navigates his grandfather’s last days, his disintegrating bonds with his religious mother and brother, and a surprising connection to the girl he admired in high school, Samantha. Initially hesitant to allow Evan to pursue her, Samantha begins to open up to him. Evan wonders if he is on the cusp of resolving the question that has disturbed him for so long. However, Samantha harbors her own secrets which threaten to derail their newly found relationship.Set against the backdrop of Easter week, Evan navigates through a maze of family, faith, love and death, searching for the meaning of life. Will he find the sense of purpose he desires? Or is he merely trapped in an endless cycle of disappointment?
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Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

Barbara Ehrenreich

Nonfiction / Sociology / Politics

The New York Times bestselling investigation into white-collar unemployment from "our premier reporter of the underside of capitalism"--The New York Times Book Review Americans' working lives are growing more precarious every day. Corporations slash employees by the thousands, and the benefits and pensions once guaranteed by "middle-class" jobs are a thing of the past. In Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich goes back undercover to explore another hidden realm of the economy: the shadowy world of the white-collar unemployed. Armed with the plausible resume of a professional "in transition," she attempts to land a "middle-class" job. She submits to career coaching, personality testing, and EST-like boot camps, and attends job fairs, networking events, and evangelical job-search ministries. She is proselytized, scammed, lectured, and--again and again--rejected. Bait and Switch highlights the people who have done everything right--gotten college degrees, developed marketable skills, and built up impressive resumes--yet have become repeatedly vulnerable to financial disaster. There are few social supports for these newly disposable workers, Ehrenreich discovers, and little security even for those who have jobs. Worst of all, there is no honest reckoning with the inevitable consequences of the harsh new economy; rather, the jobless are persuaded that they have only themselves to blame. Alternately hilarious and tragic, Bait and Switch, like the classic Nickel and Dimed, is a searing expose of the cruel new reality in which we all now live.
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Facing the Beast

Facing the Beast

Naomi Wolf

Politics / Women & Gender Studies

From New York Times bestselling author Naomi Wolf, Facing the Beast is a devastating, detailed account of wrongthink, deplatforming, and an unexpected political, personal, and spiritual transformation that followed during one of the most divisive times in American history. In this uncompromising investigation into today's most urgent issues, Naomi Wolf uses her own wildly politicized pilgrimage—from New York Times bestselling author and high-level Democratic consultant to a journalist cast out from the elite political and social circles she once moved through—as a stunning narrative framework that is both chilling and incisive. Wolf's sin? Doing the job that good journalists once prided themselves on: asking questions, challenging authority, and, during one of the most politically divisive moments in modern history, exposing the many failures of the public health response during the COVID-19 pandemic by chronicling the dangerous...
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The Sleight of Heart: a modern folk tale

The Sleight of Heart: a modern folk tale

Benjamin Parsons

Biographies & Memoirs / Politics / History

A modern folk tale of love, deceit and murder... with a supernatural twist.In the middle of a quaint Cornish folk festival, Davey sees the beautiful Artemisia Parnell and immediately falls in love ...but her bullying husband stands between them. Davey defies his rival's violent threats to try to rescue his beloved, but soon discovers that rash oaths of love and revenge are more binding and dangerous than he expects.
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The Man Who Lived Underground

The Man Who Lived Underground

Richard Wright

Fiction / Short Stories / Politics

"The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any 'greatest writers of the 20th century' list that doesn't start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright's most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book." —Kiese LaymonA major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel about race and violence in America by the legendary author of Native Son and Black BoyFred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city's sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel, a never-before-seen masterpiece by Richard Wright. Written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the height of his creative powers, it would see publication in Wright's lifetime only in...
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A Rain Of Birds

A Rain Of Birds

P. S. Wright

Science Fiction & Fantasy / Politics / Social Sciences

PS Wright has plagiarized another of Granny Which's tales. This time, a bit of a family tall tale has turned up in the wrong universe.When a couple of youngsters wander along the river, they have an odd encounter and experience some most unusual weather. Lucky for Augustus Deforest, May has brought along her umbrella. The wily old catfish known as grey beard doesn't stand a chance.What you more description of a seven page story? Ok, here it is. PS Wright has gone and plagiarized Granny Which Witch's very own family legend. And if that weren't bad enough, she done added some romancy stuff into it.It's ok though. There's big old blue catfish which folks call a grey beard where we come from. He's a wiley one. Augustus Deforest plans to take that one home for his Gran to cook up for dinner. May and Augustus meet by the riverbank. That's when all sorts of odd stuff starts to happen with the weather that might be all due to the Army Corps of Engineers, or maybe something worse. In any case, May is prepared for whatever might happen. She brought her umbrella.
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The Second Moon

The Second Moon

Bob Marx

Philosophy / Politics / Economics

A young couple is forced to abandon their simple lives to uncover the true purpose behind the alien "Prohibitions" imposed upon the surviving human refugees after abandoning their doomed starship and accepting safe harbor in the vast gorge on Syton.If the atmosphere on Conboet’s inner moon hadn’t been poisonous, the human crew of the doomed generation ship, Tanis, might never have taken a second look at the frozen snowball that was Syton, might never have discovered that life could be sustained deep within its vast gorge, midway between the frigid surface, and the geothermal hell thirteen kilometers below. It was there, over thirty years ago, that Second Officer, Avram Elstrada struggled to break through the language barrier to negotiate a settlement agreement with the resident natives—safe harbor as long as humans agreed to follow certain Prohibitions. Foremost among them was the prohibition against the use of superior technology. They would have to give up thousands of years of science and engineering and live in the same agrarian manner as the natives, if they were to live in the Syton gorge. It was their last, best chance of surviving their dying, seven hundred year old starship. And they took it.The Second Moon, is a science fiction adventure that chronicles a young couple forced to abandon their simple lives and overcome treachery, kidnapping, and murder to save their fragile human colony. Struggling with their own fears and shortcomings, they not only discover the true mysterious purpose behind The Prohibitions, but that heroic and noble traits dwell within all races and possibly, even themselves.
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The Black Ball

The Black Ball

Ralph Ellison

Literature & Fiction / Politics / Nonfiction

'If he only knew what it was, he would fix it; he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad.' Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the author of Invisible Man. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series,with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.
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