Showing results for "the quest" in Literary Fiction

A seemingly ordinary young man is forced to become a spiritual guru and takes a leap of faith. He sets off with his followers on a 600 km journey on foot, without money and belongings to test the truth of the scriptures and spiritual laws. Inspired by the life of a sparrow, which survives every day without any worry and never hoards for the future, he wishes to prove that survival, which has become a central concern of all human beings, is no big deal. He believes that human beings are destined to play a much bigger evolutionary role. A higher calling awaits us.

On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: 30-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter, Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast-enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother’s self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsu’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties. 

A mosaic of seven regular townsfolk are going about their days, blissfully unaware their lives are about to interweave, interchange and interact; entangling into such a messy web that, together—and unbeknownst to them—they end up changing the face of America forevermore. In the mold of movies such as Traffic, Magnolia & The Usual Suspects, In the Middle of Middle America follows multiple characters, allowing the listener to become a fly on the wall to observe seven lives as they entangle into such a mess that it all leads to a head-spinning twist.

Ben Schroeder, a talented young man from an East End Jewish family, has been accepted as a pupil into the Chambers of Bernard Wesley QC. But Schroeder is an outsider, not part of this privileged society, where wealth and an Oxbridge education are essentials. He encounters prejudice, intrigue and scandal.

When Ellie Chapman inherits a dilapidated farm, perched high up on the cliffs above the English Channel, it’s not long before she decides to launch a wedding business. After all, with a mum whose cake baking skills rival Mary Berry’s, and the perfect venue, it seems the natural choice. 

She might be a total novice when it comes to the first wedding, but with a bride who leaves everything until the last minute, a vengeful ex-fiancé of her own, and the world’s naughtiest donkey...What could possibly go wrong?

In her provocative debut, Carmen Maria Machado demolishes the borders between magical realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. Startling narratives map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited on their bodies, both in myth and in practice.

Number Thirty-Two was once a family home. Anna was once a mother and a wife. Now, she is in arrears and alone. With little choice but to sell up, she is forced to confront the memories of the people who once inhabited the empty rooms. With the help of an unlikely ally in her next door neighbour's son, she is finally able to piece together the tragic events of forty years ago that have inextricably linked the fates of their families and ricocheted through both of their households for decades.

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family's communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

Have you ever questioned your life’s direction, wondered about your purpose for being here or why you have had to go through and endure what seemed to be emotional hardships? Have you ever found yourself repeating the same patterns and behaviours, stuck in a cycle, attracting the same drama in your life? If your answer is yes to any of these defining questions, The Empyrean Quest has come to your awareness for a reason.

Standing on the cliff above the wild Irish sea, Hannah wipes a tear from her eye and thinks about the man she called ‘Da’. She was never his daughter. Hannah has been lied to her whole life by everyone she loved. Will she ever find where she truly belongs? When warm-hearted Hannah Barry’s...

The Silver Fleece, cotton, could be the answer to Zora and Bles' prayers in overcoming poverty. While attending Miss Smith's School in rural Alabama, they lovingly nurture their crop. But, the white aristocracy is determined to control the price of cotton and monopolize the market. Can two young lovers prevail despite the daunting obstacles laid before them?

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a novella by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, the draft was completed on January 22, 1927 and it remained unrevised and unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing.

After the year Aidan and I have had, we needed some respite. My husband is overworked, whilst I'm anxious about the past, so renting a night at this converted barn house in the countryside seems like the perfect place for the pair of us to relax and unwind. It might be situated at the bottom of a large garden, but it's private enough that we don't have to mingle with the homeowners who live nearby. Or at least that's what I thought...

When Georgia removes her autistic son, Dylan, from a prestigious Edinburgh school, she seeks refuge in her family’s ancestral home on the sunlit shores of the Greek island of Corfu. Among the olive trees and cicadas, she discovers her late mother’s diary—an intimate glimpse into a marriage shaped by love, betrayal, and tragedy. The diary’s revelations challenge everything Georgia thought she knew about her parents—and herself.

Meet Jim Greene. An ordinary detective constable trying "not" to solve a murder. The remote and isolated Cornish island of Gallymay was meant to be the perfect place for a break. But things don’t quite go to plan when Jim stumbles across a body on his first day. Which is the last thing he needs. But it’s fine. He’ll call Devon and Cornwall Police. They’ll sort it out. Except the storm, and the island, have other ideas.

In Edinburgh’s rain-swept streets, Grace thought she had found her forever in Jamie—until a devastating betrayal shatters their marriage and forces her to question everything she believed about love.

The extraordinary new novel from David Flusfeder. ‘John the Pupil’ is a medieval road movie, Umberto Eco seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarrantino, recounting the journey taken from Oxford to Viterbo in 1267 by John and his two companions, at the behest of the friar and magus Roger Bacon...

Gifted and burdened with beauty far beyond that of mere mortals, Medusa seeks sanctuary with the Goddess Athena. But when the lustful gaze of mighty Poseidon falls upon her, even the Temple of Athena cannot protect her. Young Perseus embarks on a seemingly impossible quest. Equipped with only bravado and determination, his only chance of success lays in the hands of his immortal siblings.

Time: 2047. Place: Washington DC. A loner. A teacher. A killer. A preacher. On the streets of the capital city, four lives may be about to collide. And if they do, a nation once regarded as “the greatest country in the world” will begin to self destruct. President Sally W. Campbell can see the danger coming. But can her plan to end America's misery come to fruition before it's too late? The power, of course, is not in her hands. The power lies in the hands of those who control the narrative to the American people: the media.

In a small suburb of Connecticut, and totally unaware of each other, four lives are about to collide. But will their lives entangle before experienced cop, Nate Bennett, and rookie cop, Maggie Zucha, complete their investigation of tracking down footage that, if released, will shake America to its very core? Their detective skills are put to the toughest test, but they'll need to be quick because they're not the only ones searching for this story… and whoever finds it first will hold all the power.