Love in Second Language (Parallel World Historical Fiction)


Book Description

When online friendship turns into a long distance relationship between painter Alex and bookworm Scarlet, late night conversations becomes a daily matter and blaming time every times becomes a habit the God thinks for give a little twist to the relationship of London’s Alex and Berlin’s Scarlet. Scarlet’s dad had to shift in London because of his business with his whole family and Scarlet was over the moon about. Scarlet rushed to tell it to Alex but, before that Scarlet thinks for knowing Alex’s house’s location and innocent Alex shares his house’s location while thinking that, Scarlet is just asking for fun. Scarlet was astonished with surprise and shock that Chris’s house will be Scarlet’s neighbour house in London! Scarlet decides to give Alex a surprise and not to tell anything about it to Alex yet and Scarlet stays silent about it, till one day Scarlet gets in London. Alex was living his daily normal London life till the day when Alex heard truck’s sounds from the neighbourhood and Alex wonders that which new neighbours are coming and how they will be. Scarlet surprised Alex by her sudden appearance and they share a perfect hug and their first kiss in the eve of New Year to be their first Love Year. Days pass by and Alex and Scarlet gets more close to each other and both souls became more attached to each other. One day when Scarlet was reading her favourite books from the 1900s and 1800s era, she finds out about a mystery which was pretty triggering to her. Scarlet notices a same pattern in the romantic books of some authors who belonged from a same village and the authors used the same line to compare their written love story with the ‘Holy Love of Mary and Austin’ Now who are Mary and Austin? Thoughts started to come in Scarlet’s mind and she started to researched about it in the internet and there she found out about a tomb made in 1600s to 1700s for remembering the love sacrifice of Marry and Austin. Scarlet gets to know that there’s a village where the tomb is and the village exists in real and the distance is only 20 minutes in car from Scarlet’s house and Scarlet decided to see the tomb of Love and Sacrifice. Scarlet tells it to Alex and Alex also agrees but, Scarlet’s mom comes in middle and destroys their plan by telling that Scarlet and Alex’s family both are going to Paris next week together for vacation! In Paris, Alex and Scarlet gets a surprise by seeing the beauty of Eifel Tower and other Parisian places. There when Alex was resting on his bed with the excitement to go to the castle museum in the evening, Scarlet comes in and started to have fun with Alex. Soon their having fun turns into a beautiful romance with kisses and cuddling and Alex in main time thinks about taking the romance in next level by taking clothes off. Alex takes off his t shirt while Scarlet is sitting on Alex and they are having their best moments in their life and Alex tells Scarlet to undress too but, Scarlet smiles and says nothing and then both started to kissing but- “Room...Service...” The room service lady muttered and being witnessed of instance hotel romance in front of her eyes. Alex and Scarlet both gets red with embarrassment while trying to figure out what to do next. Days passes and Scarlet and Alex both comes back in London but the burning desire of finding the mystery about the love story of Mary and Austin stays the same. When Scarlet and Alex studies more about the love story they find out about so many things more but suddenly- The electricity goes off and the whole room gets filled into darkness and Scarlet gets fear of darkness and right at this time for making Scarlet more sacred Alex says loudly, “Look there is a cockroach near your leg!!! And they are climbing up!!!” Scarlet Jumps on Alex while screaming with fear and suddenly trouble in paradise! Alex’s mom came inside the room for give candles to Alex and Scarlet and again Alex forgot to lock the door and became red with embarrassment while trying to find a word how to describe the current situation while Scarlet is hanging by Alex because of the fear of cockroaches. Days pass more and more cute and embarrassing moments like it happens with our lovers and one day they found out a diary which was written in 1700s by a Austrian traveller who came to Great Britain’s love place and got to know about the Love of Mary and Austin. Alex and Scarlet decides to go in the place and read the diary near the tomb of Mary and Austin. The next day Alex and Scarlet goes there and sat on a bench together and starts to read the diary and they got to know about Mary and Austin’s love story, the love story of 1500s-1600s Great Britain which was sacrificed due to different religions and more hardships. Tears comes out of Scarlet’s eyes while reading about the condition of Austin and Mary but, suddenly in middle of everything Alex notices a beautiful lady wearing white dress is standing near Austin’s tomb and white pigeons are around her and the moon has started to rise. “Who are you?” Alex and Scarlet goes closer to the lady and asked her. “Do you want to know?” The lady asked them back. “Yes” Alex and Scarlet says in unison while being confused. The lady gives her hands towards Alex and Scarlet and Alex and Scarlet touches the lady’s hand and suddenly they both lost their consciousness. Scarlet and Alex started to see everything by their eyes this time, which they were reading in the diary. The Great Britain of 1500s and 1600s, the people, Mary and Austin, Knight David, King and Queen everything! Scarlet and Alex were astonished with seeing that this is all happening in front of their eyes as they are watching a forbidden love story in front of their eyes, which was forbidden because of the social norms of that era and the religious rules. The historical love story was touching Scarlet and Alex’s heart as they were knowing more about it and more but suddenly Alex recognised that Mary is the same lady who told Scarlet and Alex to hold her hands and so is that means? Scarlet and Alex met with Mary’s spirit who wanted to show them how the societal norms has forbidden their relationship? ‘Love in Second Language’ is not only a single love story but a mix of two love stories, first one is today’s modern love story and another one is historical forbidden love story of Mary and Austin. Drive into a world while witnessing the hot and cold and how they were connected to each other in the conspiracy of time and life. Want to know what will happen next? Don’t waste your time, looking for other books with shirtless male heroes in the cover! Read, ‘Love in Second Language’ by Somnath Bhattacharjee and gets into an exciting world, made with unexpected surprises, cute romantic moments, and historical love.




When in French


Book Description

A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French. When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidently telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.




The History of Love: A Novel


Book Description

ONE OF THE MOST LOVED NOVELS OF THE DECADE. A long-lost book reappears, mysteriously connecting an old man searching for his son and a girl seeking a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness. Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he’s still alive. But it wasn’t always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book…Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).




Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay


Book Description

Part of the bestselling saga about childhood friends following different paths by “one of the great novelists of our time” (The New York Times). In the third book in the New York Times–bestselling Neapolitan quartet that inspired the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, Elena and Lila have grown into womanhood. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance, and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up for women during the 1970s. And yet, they are still very much bound to each other in a book that “shows off Ferrante’s strong storytelling ability and will leave readers eager for the final volume of the series” (Library Journal). “One of modern fiction’s richest portraits of a friendship.” —NPR




The Poppy War


Book Description

“I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year [...] I have absolutely no doubt that [Kuang’s] name will be up there with the likes of Robin Hobb and N.K. Jemisin.” -- Booknest A Library Journal, Paste Magazine, Vulture, BookBub, and ENTROPY Best Books pick! Washington Post "5 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel" pick! A Bustle "30 Best Fiction Books" pick! A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy. When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising. But surprises aren’t always good. Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school. For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . . Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.




Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes]


Book Description

This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.




Sideways in Time


Book Description

This important collection of essays acknowledges the long and distinctive history of the alternate history genre whilst also revelling in its vitality, adaptability, and contemporary relevance, with many of the chapters discussing late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century texts which have previously received little or no sustained critical analysis.




Conquistador


Book Description

“In this luscious alternative universe, sidekicks quote the Lone Ranger and Right inevitably triumphs with panache. What more could adventure-loving readers ask for?”—Publishers Weekly Oakland, 1946. Ex-soldier John Rolfe, newly back from the Pacific, has made a fabulous discovery: A portal to an alternate America where Europeans have never set foot—and the only other humans in sight are a band of very curious Indians. Able to return at will to the modern world, Rolfe summons the only people with whom he is willing to share his discovery: his war buddies. And tells them to bring their families... Los Angeles, twenty-first century. Fish and Game warden Tom Christiansen is involved in the bust of a smuggling operation. What he turns up is something he never anticipated: a photo of authentic Aztec priests decked out in Grateful Dead T-shirts, and a live condor from a gene pool that doesn’t correspond to any known in captivity or the wild. It is a find that will lead him to a woman named Adrienne Rolfe—and a secret that’s been hidden for sixty years…




If He Had Been with Me


Book Description

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...




The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction


Book Description

The Cambridge Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction explores fiction written over the last thirty years in the context of the profound political, historical, and cultural changes that have distinguished the contemporary period. Focusing on both established and emerging writers - and with chapters devoted to the American historical novel, regional realism, the American political novel, the end of the Cold War and globalization, 9/11, borderlands and border identities, race, and the legacy of postmodern aesthetics - this Introduction locates contemporary American fiction at the intersection of a specific time and long-standing traditions. In the process, it investigates the entire concept of what constitutes an “American” author while exploring the vexed, yet resilient, nature of what the concept of home has come to signify in so much writing today. This wide-ranging study will be invaluable to students, instructors, and general readers alike.