The Willow King

A deeply engrossing, philosophical novel by a rising Estonian literary star. Wrapped into his long coat against the incessant rain and accompanied by a strange parrot, the young Dutch student Laurentius arrives in Estonia on an icy day at the end of the seventeenth century. On the run from a dark past and suspected of heresy, he has fled to Tartu, 'The City of the Muses', to study at the famous university. Laurentius has been searching obsessively for a cure for the mysterious melancholy which torments him, and is desperate to understand where the soul comes from, and how it relates to the body. But the more he searches, the more he is attracted to the world of instinct, superstition and magic of the peasants in the surrounding countryside. A world which he knew as a child, but which now persecutes him in dreams and visions which increasingly blur with reality. In this astonishingly atmospheric novel, Friedenthal enters the bowels of Shakespeare's century to tell the story of anguished modernity, and of the advent of the Age of Enlightenment - while medicine is still progressing on the lines of humours, fears and alchemy, and the dark North dreams of radient antiquity, of symposia in Mediterranean gardens among the sweet hum of the bees - the birds of the muses, the souls of poets.

Originally published by Random House in 1998.

Thanks to the faith and hard work of Katie Durham, Willow King no longer has badly twisted legs. After painstaking training, the colt has gained the strength to compete in major races-and Katie is determined to prove he's a champion. Unfortunately, her new ambition presents her with the most nerve-racking challenge of her life: earning a jockey's license and riding Willow King in the Kentucky Derby. This inspiring story, a sequel to the author's award-winning first novel, is based on her real experiences as a jockey, groom, and assistant horse trainer.

One of NPR’s 50 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Decade: A fifteenth-century palace mapmaker must hide his powers in the time of the Inquisition . . . Award-winning author G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen was an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year and established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. Now she delivers The Bird King, an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Fatima is a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain. Her dearest friend, Hassan, the palace mapmaker and the one man who doesn’t leer at her with desire, has a secret—he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls? As the two traverse Spain with the help of a clever jinn to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate. “Wilson has a deft hand with myth and with magic, and the kind of smart, honest writing mind that knits together and bridges cultures and people.” —Neil Gaiman, author of Norse Mythology “A triumph . . . one of the best fantasy writers working today.” —BookPage “A treasure-house of a novel, thrilling, tender, funny, and achingly gorgeous. I loved it.” —Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians trilogy

Allan Drummond's classic tale unlocks the intriguing story that hides deep within one of the most distinctive and iconic china patterns ever created: the willow pattern.

Included in one of the 2004 YALSA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults lists Nominated for the White Pine Reading Program of the Durham District School Board Gentle Emmaline loves nothing more than books and flowers and her little brother Tommy. Sadly, her idyllic country life in Victorian England comes to an abrupt end when her father dies of cholera. The family is forced to move to a mill town, where Emmaline’s mother is dreadfully injured in a factory accident. To ease her pain she takes laudanum and is soon addicted, craving the drug so badly that she sells Tommy into servitude as a chimney sweep in London. Emmaline knows that a sweep’s life is short and awful. Small boys as young as five are forced to climb naked into dark chimneys, their bare feet prodded by nail-studded sticks to keep them working. If Tommy is to survive, it is up to Emmaline to find him. Linda Holeman brings a bygone period to life in a book of serious historical fiction for young adults.

DIVDIVHubert Selby Jr., acclaimed author of the classic novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, tells the powerful story of an extraordinary bond between an African-American teen seeking vengeance in the wake of tragedy and an old man who guides him toward redemption/divDIV Growing up in New York City’s soul-killing South Bronx ghetto, Bobby, a young black teenager, has only known violence, poverty, and despair. But there is one true light in his life: his girlfriend, Maria. On their way to school one morning, they are set upon by a vicious street gang. Bobby, beaten bloody and senseless, survives, rescued by an old German man who is himself a survivor of the Nazi death camps. The man calls himself Moishe, though he claims not to be Jewish, and he takes the damaged boy under his wing, determined to help heal his physical and psychological wounds. An unlikely friendship is born, strengthened by a shared sense of loss and life’s tragic injustices. But Moishe’s message of learning to forgive the unforgivable falls on deaf ears, because there is a hole in Bobby’s heart that only revenge can fill./divDIV /divDIVHubert Selby Jr.’s extraordinary novel is a devastating work of raw power and stylistic brilliance that captures the pain and hardship of twentieth-century urban life. Unflinching and unrelenting, in the vein of his acclaimed masterwork, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby’s The Willow Tree is a dark tale tempered by hope: a story of love, death, rage, violence, and salvation./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby Jr. including rare photos from the author’s estate./div/div

The world was formless and gray, forever shrouded in fog. Then came the First Flame which ushered in the Age of Fire, bringing with it life and death, good and evil, and the Hollows, lost creatures who faded into undeath as they slowly lost their humanity. Whenever the Flame fades, and darkness threatens to overtake the world, it is the duty of the mighty Lords of Cinder to link the Flame, and keep the light of life burning. Many Lords of Cinder have come and gone, starting the cycle of life and death once more. Now, one of the Lords of Cinder refuses his duty, and the task falls to a lowly band of Hollows to usher in a new age…