Unable to trust anyone except his rescue dog - and with no reason to believe Casey is interested in him for more than a holiday fling - Joel’s icy heart might shatter before it can thaw.Ĭan Casey and Joel’s love overcome mistrust, parental rejection, class differences, and four long years apart? Mr. Joel isn’t as straight as Casey believes, and his years of pining for Casey have left him hurting and alone, caring for his abusive father and struggling to get by. It’s going to take a Christmas miracle to get past that cool façade again. But Joel’s frosty reception reminds Casey of just how hard he had to fight to be Joel’s friend in the first place. Home for the holidays, Casey hopes they might find a way to be friends again. He hoped time and distance would lessen the unrequited affection he felt, but all it did was make him miss Joel more. When Casey Stevens went away to college four years ago, he ghosted on his straight best friend, Joel Vreeland. Frosty former friends get a steamy second chance in this Christmas gay romance!
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Tickets for Théâtre Montparnasse’s adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s masterful Legend of a Life with English surtitles can be found here. It is therefore encouraging to see that more and more of his output is being translated, published and adapted for the stage. Zweig’s tragic death does not diminish the literary skill and humanism his work demonstrates. A work that would go on to inspire director Wes Anderson’s wonderful comedy film The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Increasingly despairing of the situation in Europe, a continent torn apart by war, Zweig and his second wife Lotte carried out a suicide pact in 1942, just one day after he had posted his memoir to the publishers. It was the shock of the fall of Paris in 1940 that drove Zweig to once again abandon ship, fleeing London for New York, Connecticut and finally Brazil, settling in Petrópolis, a city colonised by mostly German immigrants. Casa Stefan Zweig, a museum in the writer’s last residence in Brazil which celebrates his life. He began writing science fiction, but soon started to invade other fields of writing, with some 40 books out now, including the clasic horror novel Vampire Junction, which defined the "rock and roll vampire" concept for the 80s, the Riverrun Trilogy ("the finest new series of the 90's" - Locus) and the semi-autobiographical memoir Jasmine Nights. His avant-garde compositions caused controversy and scandal in his native country, and a severe case of musical burnout in the late 1970s precipitated his entry into a second career - that of author. In the 1970s (while he was still in college) his works were being performed on four continents and he was named representative of Thailand to the Asian Composer's League and to the International Music Commission of UNESCO. Somtow was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and his first career was in music. His grandfather's sister was a Queen of Siam, his father is a well known international lawyer and vice-president of the International Academy of Human Rights. He was Somtow Papinian Sucharitkul in Bangkok. Somtow is an author, composer, filmmaker, and international media personality whose dazzling talents and acerbic wit have entertained and enlightened fans the world over. Called by the Bangkok Post "the Thai person known by name to most people in the world," S.P. a dream which will be realized as grief and rage turn good people into cold-blooded murderers and force alliances among strangers. In snowbound Detroit, a waitress trapped in an abusive relationship gets an unexpected visit that will lead to bloodshed and send her back on the road to a past she has spent years trying to outrun.Īnd Claire, the only survivor of the Elkwood Massacre, haunted by her dead friends, dreams of vengeance. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers - a family of cannibalistic lunatics - are closing in.Ī soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood. On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded, and half-blind away from the scene of an atrocity. Many other Keri Arthur books have been reviewed by AWW participants over the years. This year, catsalive has written some quick reviews of the first two books of Arthur’s Myth and Magic series: Destiny Kills and Mercy Burns. One of the most popular Australian authors of UF/pararom is Keri Arthur, who is also popular overseas. Since there have been quite a few UF/pararom books reviewed even in just the first five months of this year, I’m going to highlight a few and then list some others at the end of the post. I’ve lumped them together for two reasons: one, there is a lot of cross over between the two, depending on definitions, and two, they are not subgenres that I, personally, read very regularly and I feel less equiped to discuss nuances. The good news is that urban fantasy (UF) and paranormal romance (pararom) are very popular among AWW participants and if you miss my old round-ups from yesteryear, then this post will be a bit more along those lines. This month I will be focussing on urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Welcome, intrepid readers, to a look at another subgenre falling under the broad speculative fiction umbrella. Walpole here observes the same trend noted by Dr. Invention has not been wanting but the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a strict adherence to common life. In the former, all was imagination and improbability: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. It was an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern. In his preface to the second edition, to which Walpole appended his own name, he writes: It not only set off a craze for novels about haunted castles and abbeys, about predatory dukes and scheming monks and fainting maidens, all necessary popular accompaniments to Romanticism’s more philosophical critique of Enlightenment rationality, it also changed the novel form. Published pseudonymously in 1764 by an English politician, The Castle of Otranto is usually praised as the first Gothic novel. She says that in that first year afterwards, her kids were lucky to be able to pick the color frosting on their birthday cakes, instead of having a full celebration which they typically did (for $25 or less). But her newsletter subscriber base didn’t just mushroom - it exploded after that Parade magazine interview, and stretched them all really thin. Their tremendous success (appearing on Parade magazine soon after finding out she was pregnant with twins, about a year or so after she started The Tightwad Gazette newsletter) enabled her and her husband to fully retire after 6&1/2 years of doing that. Somebody came across my blog asking that, and although I don’t know the full answer (only the Frugal Zealot herself knows that), I do know what she said in her final book - The Complete Tightwad Gazette, which included all three of the other books, as well as the final editions of the newsletter and her farewell column.īasically, in addition to feeling like she had covered most topics (in one book, she likened it to learning multiplication tables - once you know the basics, you can apply those principles to other problems), she was feeling drained. This caused reviewers and critics alike to label O. The stories in The Four Million were set in New York City. Either way, nearly five million books were sold by the 1920s. Henry's serious career as a writer and, some say, his reputation as a true American literary artist. The French and Russians, in particular, admired his plots' tightness, crisp proportions, and neutral moral stance. In addition, he also enjoyed some vogue in Europe. Henry was called a "born storyteller" and was praised as "the American Maupassant." In addition to the famous French short story writer Guy de Maupassant, reviewers frequently compared him to Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. Henry was one of the first true literary artists to achieve commercial success. Henry's most famous stories, "The Gift of the Magi," "The Cop and the Anthem," and "The Furnished Room." The Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock concluded that O. Henry (William Sydney Porter, 1862–1910), appeared in 1906 to largely laudatory reviews in the Atlantic Monthly, the Critic, the New York Times, and the Independent, among other publications. The Four Million, a collection of twenty-five short stories by O. As for the narrators, I usually like Jessica Almasy. But since they aren't wearing bras, it's fun and crazy!!! Some topics in the book should have been researched more, as it was clear the authors didn't have experience or knowledge with what they were referencing. No wonder their idea of a "fun" night is sitting around staring at each other (which always ends in a fight or tears). They literally can't leave the house without almost dying or some terrible event happening. Lots of unrealistic drama that just never seems to end. Don't forget codependent, antisocial, and boring. Of course, every character is the most famous, beautiful, rich, talented, brilliant, well-endowed. For the most part, I found the characters annoying and suffocating (seriously, they can't even go to the bathroom without the entire group having a conniption). if you don't mind unrealistic, fantasy-like story lines. You will not be taken aback by his crooked grin or the bubbly personality that can make just about anyone instantly fall in love with him. Inside you will be introduced to the world of one extraordinary boy, who at first glance, you will not find anything unusual about his sandy blond hair, his big, deep blue eyes, or even the long, dark lashes that would be the envy of any woman. This is how the real world feels like for Christian Traverse. Imagine being stuck in the world of make believe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because the outside world is too confusing and painful. However, once that story or game has ended, you will slip back into the day to day grind of the real world. Open a book, slip into the comfy seat of a movie theatre, turn on your favourite show or play your favourite video game and you will be transported to another world where you can escape from the day to day stresses of being human. |