Showing results for "Bird" in Literature & Fiction

It all started with a simple, yet sneakily difficult challenge from global best-selling author Harlan Coben: Pick a bird of prey, then use it as the inspiration for a brand-new story. The response from some of the best writers on the planet: Game on! The result: Eleven stories that are twisty, scary, surprising and bursting with imagination. An egg worth more than its weight in gold. A mysterious operative known only as Owl. An eagle-watcher who sees more than she should. Even a story that somehow places the Maltese Falcon in a nursing home.

In 1998, the American Jorgenson family had been on a year-long road trip in Australia. One humid, storming night, the mother - Elsa Jorgenson - vanished in an isolated stretch of Australian everglades. Elsa was never seen again. That night, twelve-year-old Lily Jorgenson was left alone and terrified in the family camper—even her teenage sister Iris is missing. When Iris comes racing back through the rain, she refuses to tell where she’s been. Lily is certain her sister is hiding a dark secret.

Considered by Rumi to be "the master" of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for this epic poem, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul's search for meaning. He recounts the perilous journey of the world's birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf in search of the mysterious Simorgh, their king. Attar's beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, while his poem models the soul's escape from the mind's rational embrace.

The Birds stands apart from Aristophanes other comedies with its unique subject and whimsical concept. This delightful extravaganza is crafted purely for enjoyment, showcasing bright and witty dialogue, captivating lyrical interludes, and stunning visual effects complemented by beautiful costumes. As you listen, picture the actors adorned in masks and outfits that transform them into the very birds they represent.

In a rare and gorgeous departure, beloved novelist Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet. These interconnected narratives are as intelligent as they are haunting, as luminous as they are unusual. Inside Blackbird House more than a dozen men and women learn how love transforms us and how it is the one lasting element in our lives.

'You walk and the harvest moon casts the clearest of shadows. You are nervous. With a moon like that, it is not a night for escaping. It is a night made better for hunting runaway girls.' Himalayas: Unknown Year 'Ten thousand strands of trouble', says Bird's father, watching as Bird's sister braids her hair. On the eve of her 14th year, that trouble finds Bird. Fleeing her home to escape an arranged marriage, she attempts to vanish into a crowd of pilgrims – not knowing that violence is circling, and that it already has its eyes on her.

From the opening story, "Willing" - about a second-rate movie actress in her 30s who has moved back to Chicago, where she makes a seedy motel room her home and becomes involved with a mechanic who has not the least idea of who she is as a human being - Birds of America unfolds a startlingly brilliant series of portraits of the unhinged, the lost, the unsettled of our America. Lorrie Moore explores the personal and the universal, the idiosyncratic and the mundane, with all the wit, brio, and verve that have made her one of the best storytellers of our time.

Ladybird presents Ladybird Tales, a bright, richly adventurous audio story-telling experience. Re-imagining classic fairy tales in a magical audiobook collection. Perfect for entertaining the little ones aged 5 and up. Featuring immersive sound design and beautifully composed music to whisk the...

Living in the heart of Oklahoma, I'm just a cowboy with boots rooted firmly in running Rainbow Ranch. As eldest brother and professional worrier, I spend my days working hard with my family and yearning for someone I can never have. Priscilla. She's called Rainbow Ranch home for years, and without her, my world would fall apart. Pris is gorgeous and smart and deserves everything good in her life. While I've always had eyes for her, I've never been brave enough to cross the fence between friends and lovers.

Tom and Charlie are living out what's left of their lives on their own terms in a remote forest, two pot growers their only connection to the outside world. But then two women arrive - a photographer on the trail of survivors of a decades-ago forest fire and an elderly escapee from a psychiatric institution - and everything changes. And the Birds Rained Down, the recipient of several prizes, is a haunting meditation on aging and self-determination.

Enter the brutal world of Endlock, a prison where the wealthy hunt the inmates for sport. The first novel in an electrifying dystopian romance series, this high-octane debut about forbidden love, found family, and a fight for survival will leave you breathless. In the city of Dividium, the law...

It is 1667, and the war between the Dutch and the English continues apace. Sir Francis Courtney, his son Hal and their crew are carried around the southern tip of the African colonies by the good ship Lady Edwina, licensed to attack and seize the treasure-laden ships of the Dutch East India company. When they capture a Dutch trader and hold the passengers to ransom, Sir Francis hopes only for a good price and a small sense of satisfaction.

In New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Peters's eagerly anticipated Amelia Peabody adventure, the Emerson clan is a hairsbreadth away from unearthing the legendary site they've been searching for. But a sinister plot and a dark family secret stand in the way of their ultimate ambition --...

The day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldn’t speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would sell his soul and lose his son to the sky. My father has a claim to the throne, and he is waiting in the shadows for all of my mother’s words to come to pass. He wants desperately to be king, and I just want to be free. But freedom will require escape, and I’m a prisoner of my mother’s curse and my father’s greed. I can’t speak or make a sound, and I can’t wield a sword or beguile a king.

LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society’s expectations to find her voice and her destiny “A complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people, a reminder of the...

Upon the sudden deaths of their bird-obsessed parents, the three Shah siblings reunite. Aliza has spent years holding their crumbling family together, caring for their younger brother, Sammy. And Aden, named executor of the estate, finds himself resentfully facing the one member of the family who always got their parents’ undivided love: their famous Bollywood-bopping cockatoo, Coco. One reckless night, Aden opens Coco’s cage, letting her do what he did a decade ago—fly away from home.

“A book that demands to be read in a single sitting, and through the cracks between one’s fingers. There has never been a horror story quite like this. Josh Malerman truly delivers.” — Hugh Howey, New York Times bestselling author of Wool Written with the narrative tension of The Road...

Charlie and Demi are the most unlikely of suitors. They are polar opposites in every way, but somehow fate still brought them to one another. After hearing Charlie sing one night in a random smokey bar, Demi finds himself revisiting the hole in the wall just to see her. When given the chance to know her, he realizes that the life he's been living for fifteen years has led him in the wrong direction. With love as their compass, Charlie and Demi must trust themselves enough to get lost in love and in one another as they fight against gravity to let their love fly high.

There are moments in life that are mountainous. They are big, scary, and insurmountable. For Demetrius Sky this moment is the death of his only son. After finding a great love in the alluring, hippie, songstress, Charlie, he thought he'd found his forever. But when grief causes a rift between them he must decide where his loyalty truly lies. With an allegiance to his ex-wife, Lauren, the divorcees must face a sorrowful goodbye, and the only way to get through it is together.

THE SMALLEST SPARK CAN GROW INTO A FIRE.When Prince Joseph broke off his engagement to Brigitte, her life was shattered—but meeting Yuri helped her start putting it together again. The two may have started off as rivals, yet the more she learns about him, the more she’s come to appreciate...