Showing results for "Natural" in Genre Fiction

Tom has always known exactly the person he is going to be. A successful soccer player. A man others look up to. Now, though, the bright future he imagined for himself is threatened. The Premier League academy of his boyhood has let him go. At nineteen, Tom finds himself playing for a tiny club in a town he has never heard of. But as he navigates his isolation and his desperate need for recognition, a sudden and thrilling encounter offers him the promise of an escape

The Natural puts you in the boots of famed rodeo announcer Brad Turner, racing his horse Golden Boy into the arena and welcoming the crowd to a pro rodeo performance in Jackson, Mississippi. You'll hit the road with Brad as he crisscrosses the country, struggling with life, love, and business on the pro rodeo circuit. You'll meet Zola Johns, the rebellious, barrel-racing beauty with her eye on the prize of winning a national championship, and Shoat Krammer, the young rough-and-tumble rookie that's the real natural coming up the hard way. 

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first - and some would say still the best - novel ever written about baseball. In it Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material - the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era - and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work.

Of all the sports played across the globe, none has more curses, superstitions, or supernatural events like baseball, America's national pastime. While some of these can easily be explained, there are just as many that cannot. Field of Fantasies delves right into that superstition with short stories written by several key authors about baseball and the supernatural.

I'm indoorsy with a capital I, but I need to fake a little outdoorsiness to get a promotion. A five-day hike sounds like my nightmare, but after upending my life and moving from the city back to my small hometown, I need a win. I didn't expect to find someone like Grant Irwin in the wilderness with me. A cinnamon roll in mountain man form, he's freakishly competent out here, and endlessly patient with my missteps. But after everything with my critical ex-fiancé fell apart, I'm not looking for love. Especially not with someone who's only here on vacation.

Read by the incredible John Lee Winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Kraken is a darkly comic, wildly absurd adventure by the author of Perdido Street Station, China Miéville. Deep in the research wing of the Natural History Museum is a prize specimen, something that comes...

Recorded in front of a live audience, these wry, funny tales introduce us to the varied creatures who make their homes on the shoreline, in garden ponds and in our attics. In 18 comic monologues, they reveal the truth about what life is really like in their respective habitats - and it's much more eventful than you might think.

Critically acclaimed, for readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, a moving and darkly funny novel about an attempt to found an underground Utopia. An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a...

Their oldest female primate, the wise and gentle Rue, is found murdered in a corner of the compound. And a big, panther-like cat, preys around the park. It evades capture, lurking in the shadows and in the back of Patrick's mind. With Patrick's son, Charlie, having left Monkeyland in disgrace and his wife on a field trip in Zaire, Patrick is left alone with his black cat and his fears. Until one night something happens that is so shocking, so deplorable, that it rips apart everything Patrick has ever held to be true.

Derek Jones meets celebrities with a love of wildlife in these 37 episodes from the classic nature-themed interview show Between 1970 and 1980, broadcaster Derek Jones invited a host of famous names to chat about their enthusiasm for nature and their encounters with animals. Delving into the BBC...

Fred Wursup has an enviable existence. Paid to travel around the world "harvesting the annual crop of stars and villains", he has a beautiful geophysicist girlfriend and a friendly relationship with his ex-wife Susannah, whose living room he can see into from the roof of his Lexington Avenue apartment. His latest book, a collective portrait of brilliant but flawed leaders called Down the American Drain, had the good fortune to be published at the height of the Watergate scandal, sending it to the top of the best seller lists.

Kunstvolles Morden. Kommissar Stijn van der Rijns und sein Kollege Henk Peeters stehen vor einem Rätsel. Unterstützt von der scharfsinnigen Kunsthistorikerin Tessa van Eertvelt tauchen sie tief in die dunklen Abgründe der Kunstwelt ein. Doch der raffinierte Serienkiller ist ihnen immer einen Schritt voraus. Ein makabres Katz-und -Maus-Spiel beginnt, das die Ermittler an ihre Grenzen treibt. Der "Bibelkiller" will nicht nur morden - er will die Sünden der Vergangenheit in dramatischen Inszenierungen ans Licht bringen.

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

She is known by many names; Deadly Nightshade, The Devil’s Daughter, Belladonna. Taken in as a girl by the legendary outlaws known as the Wolf Pack, Annabelle Stark becomes a woman to be reckoned with and a legend in her own right. When her husband Joshua is gunned down in cold blood by former friends, Belle and the Wolf Pack hit the trail in search of their own brand of justice. 

Years after complete antibiotic resistance has resulted in the loss of most human life on earth, Kit and Crevan eke out an existence on a remote island. Under a collapsing castle, they spend their days in an underground bunker packed with emergency stores, venturing out only at night. They are safe. One evening a woman washes ashore, nearly drowned. Crevan wants to keep her alive, but Kit isn’t so sure.

When Melbourne lawyer Nathan Smithson takes on the case of mad, wealthy Edward Fonçeca's inheritance trial against his ruthless brother in 1902, he must unearth long-buried family secrets to have any chance of winning. Brazil, 1852: François, the Count de Castelnau and French Consul to Bahia falls dangerously ill on a naturalist expedition and is delivered by a Tupi Indian to the Fonçeca household. 

From a startling new voice in American fiction comes a dark, powerful novel about a tragic city and its inhabitants over the course of one Halloween weekend. Set in a decaying Midwestern urban landscape, with its goings-on and entire atmosphere dominated and charged by one Jesuit prep school and its students, parents, faculty, and alumni, The Natural Order of Things is a window into the human condition.

Die drei Freundinnen Janna, Helen und Lou könnten kaum unterschiedlicher sein. Die eine ist alleinerziehende Mutter, die andere eine Karrierefrau und die dritte hat sich der Rettung des Planeten verschrieben. Trotzdem halten sie seit fünfzehn Jahren zusammen wie Pech und Schwefel. Und seit einiger Zeit haben sie auch noch eine neue Gemeinsamkeit: Frust! Weil das blöde Leben einfach nicht so will wie sie. Also beschließen die drei, etwas zu ändern - und starten mit einer gemeinsamen WG in einem alten Gutshof. Nur warten da ungewöhnliche Nachbarn, zänkische Tiere und liebestolle Besucher auf sie.

"It isn’t a part-time job, it’s a full-time, unrelenting commitment, and to become one of the inner elite you must expect to make sacrifices at the expense of family, friends, and your career.” Dan Shepherd is on a jungle training course in Belize as part of his SAS selection. Along with Liam, Geordie, and Jimbo, he is chosen for further training to see if he makes the cut for the Sabre Squadron Troop. Taken out on real operation patrol, the men run into trouble with Guatemalan troops in the disputed province.

After a string of bad dates and no prospects, Sophia Othonos has finally hit the jackpot: an actual nice guy. When he suggests a romantic getaway, she’s sure they’re about to take the next step toward their future. A rustic cruise to the Galápagos Islands isn’t exactly her idea of a vacation, but Sophia is ready for anything…until her boyfriend has to cancel. Now she’s all alone on a trip that was meant for two. Sophia finds herself at a crossroads about who she is, what she wants, and whether her relationship is really everything she thought.