A Long Slow Affair Of The Heart

Wine, food, love, a canal boat and France. Craving adventure, a writer goes in search of happiness on the French canals. Will his marriage make it home again? Craving adventure, Bruce Ansley goes in search of happiness on the French canals. He and his wife Sally buy a canal boat, the River Queen, in Holland and sail it through Belgium to France. They travel through old battlefields, the great vineyards and wineries of Burgundy, and find the ideal way to live in Paris: on a boat. La Belle France seems flawlessly to live up to Bruce’s expectations. The journey takes the couple through quaint villages and picturesque countryside; it introduces them to colourful people, excellent food and lots and lots of wine. Bruce and Sally find themselves part of a floating community whose people range from hilarious to eccentric to astonishing. Yet aboard the River Queen another drama plays out. Fault lines appear in the perfect life, threatening the ideal escape with an unhappy ending. Throwing the cards in the air is one thing, but knowing how they will land is another. With humour and a poignantly candid touch, Ansley documents a journey within a journey: the internal shifts of a marriage that just might not make it home. This acclaimed travel memoir by award-winning New Zealand writer takes us vividly and unforgettably to France. But it also takes us further than that — deep into the winding, secret interior of the heart.

This is the authors account of a nostalgic journey to post war Italy for further operatic study. On the ship she met the man of her dreams whom she later married. She also met another singer, Lucilla Udovick with whom she shared an apartment in Milano and who became a life long friend. Lucilla introduced her to the anthologies of Louis Untermeyer. This in turn inspired the author to begin writing poetry. On her return to America, while living in New York she met Louis Untermeyer who became her mentor. After studying with him for almost two years she returned to Los Angeles, California. Her literary and friendly relationship with her mentor continued through their correspondence for twenty-four years until his death. She has been so preoccupied with her writing and family activities, she has neglected until now getting her work into publication. To date her only previously published work is a book of poetry, "A Tale of Leaves." She has written over 100 yet to be published books of poetry and prose.

A heartfelt, hilarious and warm-hearted memoir of New Zealand in the 1960s. When you walk along the pier under the huge blue sky and with clean surf on either side, you can easily think that New Brighton is the loveliest place in the world. This was once New Zealand’s most bustling township, however it became a parable of New Zealand when the revolution of the eighties and nineties derailed it. New Brighton’s youth grew up in happy anarchy beside its great, glorious beach. In Gods and Little Fishes, Bruce Ansley gives us immediate entry into one such rich, well-lived boyhood and family life. He both captures the freedoms of a childhood many would envy now, and offers a perceptive adult sensibility charged with a partisan view. Not only a marvellous memoir, this is also a superb portrait of a seaside town set in the second half of last century. New Brighton’s playing fields, the pier, the Cubs and Scouts, the main street shops, even the easterly, are given as much character as the township’s old identities. The nuances of family life, the complexities of a marriage, the entanglements of small town relationships, and the very culture of the place are all conveyed with love and humour, as well as a sharp sense of what has been lost. The sound and brilliance of the sea, the wind, the women, the shadow of a generation of men who went to war: all are described with a poetic clarity and dancing wit that will make you long to have lived the author’s boyhood alongside him.

A picture is worth a thousand laughs. Wise-cracking wedding photographer Zest Renald has just been served divorce papers when she agrees to accompany a lesbian softball team during their elopement to California. She's doesn't know anything about gay marriage, and her only exposure to lesbian culture is an addiction to the talk show Ellen. But with her assets frozen and her husband claiming their house for the Other Woman's Love Child, she needs the job. Zest's gaffes and notoriously bad gaydar endear her to the brides, as well as Bradford, the beautiful male stylist who travels with them. Just when Zest is figuring out how to manage her attraction to the unattainable "safe" man, they arrive in California amidst the worst anti-gay protests San Diego has ever seen. When the minister the women hired turns out to be a Prop 8 zealot hell-bent on preventing the wedding, Zest and the brides are chased across the city in a hilarious yet poignant attempt to foil the protesters and tie the white knot.

Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn't help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon's Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen. In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs. The game is afoot. . .

How was Victoria Houghton supposed to work for Duke Charles Frederick Mead? The gorgeous royal had never met a woman he couldn't seduce—until now. Victoria despised the duke—and his family. They had gained control of her family business in a hostile takeover, then downgraded her to Charles's personal assistant. Well, there was very little she would personally assist Charles with! She had to resist her burning attraction to him…even as he was kissing her into business-meets-pleasure submission.

The Mai Jing or Pulse Classic was written in the late Han dynasty by Wang Shu-he. It is the first book in the Chinese medical literature entirely devoted tp pulse diagnosis. As such, it is the undeniable and necessary foundation text for anyone seriously interested in understanding the rationale for and method of reading the pulse in Chinese medicine. Although not an easy read, this book is a mine of valuable information for those wishing to go more deeply into a study of the pulse.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • THE BLOCKBUSTER JACK REACHER SERIES THAT INSPIRED TWO MAJOR MOTION PICTURES AND THE STREAMING SERIES REACHER “A veritable tour de force . . . brilliantly executed and deliciously plotted.”—The Washington Times Everything starts somewhere. For elite military cop Jack Reacher, that somewhere was Carter Crossing, Mississippi, way back in 1997. Reacher is ordered undercover to investigate the murder of a young woman. Evidence points to a U.S. soldier with powerful friends. Once in Carter Crossing, Reacher meets local sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux, who has a thirst for justice and an appetite for secrets. Uncertain they can trust each other, they reluctantly join forces. Reacher works to uncover the truth, while others try to bury it forever. The conspiracy threatens to shatter his faith in his mission— and turn him into a man to be feared.