This engaging narrative chronicles the history of a beloved railway, highlighting its significance and impact over the years. Through vivid storytelling, it captures the essence of the railway's journey, the challenges it faced, and the affection it garnered from the community. The book offers insights into the railway's role in shaping local culture and economy, making it a cherished part of the region's heritage. Readers will appreciate the blend of historical facts and personal anecdotes that bring the railway's story to life.
Peter Johnson, a pivotal figure in American prose poetry, showcases his mastery in "While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems." This collection highlights his darkly comic and poignant style, which has been influential in reviving and advancing the prose poem genre over the past three decades. Johnson's work embodies characteristics he champions as a critic, including directness, intellectual depth, and an exploration of irony and absurdity. His contributions have significantly shaped the prominence of prose poetry both in America and globally.
The story explores the challenges faced by Headmaster John Stevens as he navigates retirement and the transition to a new family home. After years of holding a prestigious position with significant influence, he must confront the reality of losing his status and the identity tied to his career. The narrative delves into his struggles with self-worth and adaptation to a life beyond work, highlighting themes of change, identity, and the search for purpose in a new chapter of life.
"Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand: On a cliff overlooking the ocean and one of the largest gannet bird colonies in the world, American CEO Harlan Quinn has built his "Plan B"--a lavish estate, complete with an underground doomsday bunker. When the cleaning staff finds a body within, it appears the victim died of natural causes but advanced facial decomposition leaves him unidentifiable. It can't be Quinn, according to his property manager/mistress and his wife back in the states, both of whom insist that the tech mogul is in Germany on business. But the uncooperative wife will not allow the police to search the main house for signs that the billionaire was on site, and so forensic odontologist Alexa Glock is called in to identify the body via dental records. Teeth never lie; the victim is indeed Harlan Quinn. All that's left is an autopsy to determine the cause of death. But something odd in the deceased's mouth sets Alexa and the team on a new track--to find Quinn's murderer. As they work to narrow the suspect field, a second homicide--and a stolen cache of weapons from a locked room in the bunker--ramp up the investigation and the risk to Alexa's life. Will she be able to solve this particular riddle before she becomes victim #3?"-- Provided by publisher
Sara Eliza Johnson's much-anticipated second collection traces human emotion and experience across a Gothic landscape of glacial and cosmic scale. With a mind informed by physics, and a heart yearning for sky burial, Vapor's epic vision swerves from the microscopic to telescopic, evoking an Anthropocene for a body and planet that are continually dying: "So alone / I open like a grave," Johnson chronicles her love for "all this emptiness, this warp and transparence, the whorl of atoms I brush from your brow," and considers how "each skull, / like a geode, holds a crystal colony inside." Almost omnipresently, Vapor stitches stars to microbes, oceans to space, and love to pain, collapsing time and space to converge everything at once. Blood and honey, fire and shadow, even death and mercy are secondary to a profoundly constant flux. Facing sunlight, Johnson wonders what it would mean to "put my mouth to its / mouth, suck the fluid / from its throat, and give / it my breath, my skin, / which was once my / shadow," while elsewhere the moon "is molten, an ancient red, and at its bottom is an exit wound that opens into another sea, immaculate and blue, that could move a dead planet to bloom." In Vapor, Sara Eliza Johnson establishes herself as a profound translator of the physical world and the body that moves within it, delivering poems that show us how to die, and live.
"American Alexa Glock, a traveling forensic investigator in New Zealand, is enjoying a vacation hiking the majestic and remote Milford Track. Her holiday takes a sinister turn when she encounters skeletal remains, with clear indications that the victim was stabbed. Then a fellow hiker goes missing and later turns up dead. Her death was no accident either, which means there's a killer lurking close by--perhaps staying in the same lodge! Detective Inspector Bruce Horne and Alexa's brother Charlie aid her investigation. As she hikes "Bone Track," Alexa scrambles to survive earthquakes, landslides, and evil that's hunting her"-- Provided by publisher
"If you listen, you can hear Satan laughing at the awful things men do to each other. Sometimes it sounds like gunfire, but usually I don't so much hear it as feel it." When Major Jim Harwood received orders to deploy to Ramadi in 2006, he never believed he would come home so mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically broken. Intelligence officers at his level generally deployed to a desk, but this time it was different. Embedded with a small special operations team outside the wire, Jim comes face-to-face with the evil that runs rampant in war. The repeated moral injuries received mission after mission destroy the humanity at the core of the man he had formerly been. Losses within his team drive a deep sense of guilt and shame. Teetering on the edge of hopelessness and suicide, Jim is unexpectedly called home due to family tragedy. Deeply scarred both physically and emotionally, Jim faces a future back home he doesn't recognize or know how to navigate. The world doesn't understand him, and the world he now faces doesn't make any sense either. The systems put in place by the military and the VA are failing him. Left with little he can rely on but an equally broken teammate from Iraq, Jim must navigate recovery, accept his altered reality, and find forgiveness for those who destroyed what mattered most.
Focusing on the evolution of faith in Mahayana Buddhism, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of its practices and beliefs over two millennia. It delves into the historical context, key teachings, and the significance of faith within this Buddhist tradition, providing readers with a deeper understanding of its spiritual landscape.
