The Amulet of Samarkand


Book Description

Be careful what you wish for. Nathaniel is a magician's apprentice, taking his first lessons in the arts of magic. But when a devious hot-shot wizard named Simon Lovelace ruthlessly humiliates Nathaniel in front of his elders, Nathaniel decides to kick up his education a few notches and show Lovelace who's boss. With revenge on his mind, he summons the powerful djinni, Bartimaeus. But summoning Bartimaeus and controlling him are two different things entirely, and when Nathaniel sends the djinni out to steal Lovelace's greatest treasure, the Amulet of Samarkand, he finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of magical espionage, murder, and rebellion.




Madame Chair


Book Description

"Westwood provides an inside account of a period that reshaped national politics. Second-wave feminism, party reform, and the civil rights and antiwar movements opened up American politics. As a principal in shaping that reform, Jean Westwood not only helped build the road; she traveled it."--BOOK JACKET.




Many Furrows


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Dee Goong An (Three Murder Cases Solved)


Book Description

First published in the eighteenth century, Dee Goong An chronicles three of Judge Dee's celebrated cases, woven together into a novel. A double murder among merchants, the fatal poisoning of a new bride, and an unsolved murder in a small town — these crimes launch Judge Dee down the great silk routes and even into graveyards to consult the spirits of the dead. With his keen analytical wit, can he discover the killers? First of the Judge Dee books, translated by Robert van Gulik.




The Gaze


Book Description

A beautiful and compelling novel, Elif Shafak's The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others "I didn't say anything. I didn't return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.' An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others. "Beautifully evoked" - The Times "Original and Compelling" - TLS "Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes" - Helen Oyeyemi "Entertaining and affecting" - Publishers' Weekly Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.




Dark Pools


Book Description

A news-breaking account of the global stock market's subterranean battles, Dark Pools portrays the rise of the "bots"--artificially intelligent systems that execute trades in milliseconds and use the cover of darkness to out-maneuver the humans who've created them. In the beginning was Josh Levine, an idealistic programming genius who dreamed of wresting control of the market from the big exchanges that, again and again, gave the giant institutions an advantage over the little guy. Levine created a computerized trading hub named Island where small traders swapped stocks, and over time his invention morphed into a global electronic stock market that sent trillions in capital through a vast jungle of fiber-optic cables. By then, the market that Levine had sought to fix had turned upside down, birthing secretive exchanges called dark pools and a new species of trading machines that could think, and that seemed, ominously, to be slipping the control of their human masters. Dark Pools is the fascinating story of how global markets have been hijacked by trading robots--many so self-directed that humans can't predict what they'll do next.




Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years


Book Description

Have you retired or are about to and have no clue what to do next? Don't succumb to isolation and depression as so many have. This book offers a detailed guide for retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors to reinvent themselves in this new stage of their lives by finding joy, excitement, and purpose in their retirement. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach but instead highlights how each individual can identify and locate gratifying activities and pursuits based on their own interests and comfort level. The author learned the secret the hard way and finally transitioned from retired probation officer to actress, author, public speaker, and blogger. Audience members at her lectures on senior reinvention began requesting a book on the subject. This is the result, and it contains the content of those talks as well as six years of posts from her free, online blog. Her lectures, blog, and this book are all titled, "Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years." The book details the author's own personal reinvention after she retired; why people fear retirement; why they eventually do retire; how you can find joy, excitement, and purpose in your retirement; how you can figure out what might be of interest to you personally; and what the secret is to customizing available choices to your particular personality. To help guide them, the reader is then given a long, detailed account of what is available to retirees in the community as well as where and how to find those activities and pursuits. There is a separate chapter on volunteer activities and another on employment opportunities for retirees and seniors. The final chapter offers six years of posts from the author's blog which she has been writing every two weeks since 2013 where she discusses her thoughts, observations, and experiences which she believes are universal to the retiree and senior populations. Her website is: LeeGaleGruen.com




The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships


Book Description

The authors share what they have learned about social relationships over the course of years struggling with the effects of autism, identifying Ten Unwritten Rules as general guidelines for handling social situations.




Farmyard


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The Hudson


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