In this short, cheerful, and eminently practical book, Pinker shows how writing depends on imagination, empathy, coherence, grammatical knowhow,and an ability to savor and reverse-engineer the good prose of others. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn't carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. " A short and entertaining book on the modern art of writing well by New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker Why is so much writing so bad, and how can we make it better? Is the English language being corrupted by texting and social media? Do the kids today even care about good writing? Why should any of us care? In The Sense of Style, the bestselling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more.
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That set her on the path to writing a multitude of historical romance novels that have been translated into more than a dozen languages and earned her prizes like the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Maggie Award. She proceeded to write ‘The Irish Gypsy’, her first novel which Avon Books published in 1982. Woodiwiss book and it prompted her to take up the pen soon after. She took to the business of homemaking and might have given the rest of her life to her family if it wasn’t for ‘The Wolf and the Dove’. In fact, after she was married and living in Grimsby, Ontario, Virginia Henley spent a long while as a housewife. Writing was not always in the cards for Virginia. Virginia counts her History degree and her marriage to Arthur Henley in 1956 among her greatest achievements.Īrthur died in 2013, leaving behind two sons and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Virginia Henley was born in 1935 in Bolton England to a mother from whom she inherited her love for history. However, Virginia has said on numerous occasions that it was the romantic aspects that drew her to historical fiction and that is all she cares to write. Virginia’s novels are so detailed and thoroughly researched that some of her readers have wondered whether she will ever produce straightforward historical fiction. Virginia Henley is a bestselling English author that writes historical romance. He takes up Methodism despite working and literally living in an Anglican church, becomes close friends with Charles Moon a fellow WWI vet who has been hired to unearth the grave of the ancestor of an important local family, becomes an honorary member of the Ellerbeck family, and falls in love with the vicar’s wife. We learn the value of vocation and art for their own sake. And we see Birkin slip almost imperceptibly into the life of the village. Through Birkin’s experience we meet the people of Oxgodby and are introduced to their various quirks and natural distrust of a city boy from the South. Carrs novel, A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, first published in 1980, has quietly become a modern classic. Over only 135 pages, Carr’s poetic writing conjures up so many moving, beautiful, and humorous images, I feel very clumsy writing about it. Written as a memoir, Birkin’s story is equal parts country idyll, love story, and ethnographic sketch. Carr is directed by Pat OConnor and stars Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth in their first film roles.The Church. Tom Birkin, a Londoner, and a somewhat shell-shocked veteran of World War I arrives in Yorkshire to uncover a suspected wall painting in the village church. The film version of the classic book by J.L. Carrs deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote. Ken Follett is one of the world’s most successful authors. Ken Follett will donate his proceeds from this book to the charity La Fondation du Patrimoine. Follett then tells the story of the cathedral, from its construction to the role it has played across time and history, and he reveals the influence that the Notre-Dame had upon cathedrals around the world and on the writing of one of Follett's most famous and beloved novels, The Pillars of the Earth. In this short, spellbinding book, international bestselling author Ken Follett describes the emotions that gripped him when he learned about the fire that threatened to destroy one of the greatest cathedrals in the world-the Notre-Dame de Paris. The feeling was bewildering, as if the earth was shaking.” -Ken Follett Something priceless was dying in front of our eyes. The sight dazed and disturbed us profoundly. “The wonderful cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the greatest achievements of European civilization, was on fire. My skin burns like fire from the intense lights. I don’t know how many days have passed with no food. She had taken the one person Pamela truly loved-nothing else really mattered. The girl didn’t know it yet, but she was walking into her own grave. “I’ll do whatever you say,” Pamela promised. I don’t care how many have to die before I’m finished.” “Just remember I’ve already killed two people,” Carson warned. Your mother would never want you to do that.”Ĭarson looked like a deer trapped in the headlights for a moment. I’m the only one left who knows where they are. “Don’t you want to rescue the missing girls first? If you kill me, they’ll die. She would pay for taking Madelyn from her. Madelyn was dead and it was Joanna’s fault. What else did she want? Fury swelled inside Pamela. That relentless bitch had spoiled everything. I made sure they both got exactly what they deserved.” Her friend Joanna figured out who he and the blonde woman who helped him were so it was easy for me to find them. That piece of shit who raped her took her. And I know she didn’t volunteer for anything. “She killed herself because of what you did to her. “Your mother volunteered to be a part of my program.” With nothing but the car’s dash putting off soft light, Pamela was able to inch her right hand into her case. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. Pamela should have killed him herself years ago. The story circles the inextricably bound destinies of three dauntless women. When the Child of Fire brings the Battle Drum,Įl-Arifi's incendiary second Ending Fire fantasy (after The Final Strife) again weaves hypnotic African and Arabian myths into the tumultuous tale of a blood-caste-segregated empire mired in conspiracies. Ready we will be, when the Ending Fire comes, The drumbeat of change thrums throughout the world. The three women find their answers, but not the answers they wanted. Now she must guard both her heart and her land. Her search uncovers the extent of the atrocities of the empire’s past and present. Hassa’s web of secrets grows ever thicker as she finds herself on the trail of crimes in the city. But in finding answers, she must make a decision: Should she sacrifice her old life in order to raise up her sword once more? Sylah braves new lands to find a solution for the hurricane that threatens to destroy her home. She must solve the mystery and clear her name without the support of her beloved, Sylah. But when she is accused of a murder she didn’t commit, her reign is thrown into turmoil. And the truth they find will have the power to ignite a war, in the sequel to The Final Strife, the continuation of a visionary fantasy trilogy inspired by the myths of Africa and Arabia.Īnoor is the first blue-blooded ruler of the Wardens’ Empire. Sacrifice: Three women seek the truth of the empire’s past. Gen’s mom died from cancer and she had to come back home. We met Evan in the first book and I liked him more than Cooper. I liked this one more than Good Girl Complex. But can a bad reputation ever truly be shed? Do second chances really work? Genevieve and Evan are about to find out.īestselling author Elle Kennedy returns to Avalon Bay in this sexy second chance story about two exes who can’t stay away from each other, Bad Girl Reputation. He knows they can be good together, but he just has to convince Genevieve of that, even if it means turning over a new leaf himself. Her plan is to temporarily remain in town to help her father run his business, but the second he finds somebody else, she’s out of there.Įvan has other ideas. This time around, however, she’s resolved to walk a new path. And the moment she sees her gorgeous ex again, it’s clear to Gen that Evan is still as unruly, sexy, and irresistible as ever. A heck of a lot of passion… which she’s trying desperately to forget.īut it’s impossible not to run into Evan in the small coastal town where they once ran wild. When former bad girl Genevieve West returns home for her mother’s funeral, she’s prepared to keep her distance from her ex-boyfriend, Evan Hartley. I approached Helen Oyeyemi’s short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours with all of this narrative baggage in my mind. The list goes on, with storytellers moving gracefully between active and passive voices in a kind of dance where consent perhaps lies somewhere in between. These days, my thoughts on consent still filter through canonical bodies: Daphne, desperately fleeing Apollo’s sexual advances, loses ownership of her body in a different way when she transforms into a laurel tree Zeus impregnates Danaë as a sudden shower of gold. Before I even learned how to read, the body was the original plot device. This notion of control is about more than just “good and evil”-in core childhood narratives, elements of magic constantly compromise the bodily autonomy of women, from the prick of your finger on an enchanted spinning wheel to the loss of your voice in exchange for legs. When we tell stories about magic, it’s easy to forget that we’re not just exploring the marvelous and mystical, but also illustrating the dynamics of power and control, the dominance of certain forces over others. Moving to Manhattan from his native Massachusetts, Cheever began publishing stories in The New Yorker in the 1930s, establishing a crucial if sometimes contentious relationship that would last for much of his career. “The constants that I look for,” he wrote in the preface to The Stories of John Cheever, “are a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being.”Ĭheever’s superlative gifts as a storyteller are evident even in his first published work, “Expelled” (1930), which appeared in The New Republic when he was only 18: “I felt that I was hearing for the first time the voice of a new generation,” said Malcolm Cowley, then an editor at the magazine. At the same time, the stories reveal their author to be a master whose prose is at once precise and sensuous, in which a shrewd eye for social detail is paired with a lyric sensitivity to the world at large. Ensnared by the trappings of affluence, adrift in the emptiness of American prosperity, his characters find themselves in the midst of dramas that, however comic, pose profound questions about conformity and class, pleasure and propriety, and the conduct and meaning of an individual life. John Cheever’s stories rank among the finest achievements of twentieth-century short fiction. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”Īll Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use. If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews. Roland felt his fangs descend and lengthen. Would drinking from her merely dull the pain? Or would it set him aflame? What would she taste like? Sweet like her smiles? Or spicy like her daring spirit? Roland slid one hand up her back, tunneling through soft, thick curls, and rested his fingers upon the satiny skin of her neck just over her pulse. As he listened to the steady thrum of it, his own heart began to pound. Her pulse was slow and steady now, the blood in her veins calling him to come and satiate his hunger. His body hardened even more when he remembered the way her heartbeat had sped up at his touch. |