Showing results by author "V.V.A.A." in All Categories

Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along.

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker.

Like everyone else in Palm Springs, Gish idolizes her smart, beautiful, kind older sister. Even their parents compare Gish unfavorably to Gloria—threatening to send her to boarding school once the more perfect sister leaves for college.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.

Pursuit of Truth by W. V. Quine is a classic of modern philosophy, the summation of one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers. The pursuit of truth is a quest that links observation, theory, and the world. Various faulty efforts to forge such links have led to much intellectual confusion. Quine's efforts to get beyond the confusion begin by rejecting the very idea of binding tocether word and thing, rejecting the focus on the isolated word.

Are you nervous about adulthood? Don't worry–everyone feels the same way. And you're about to uncover the skills that will make it a breeze. You’re right in the middle of the most important stage of your life, and as you know by now, it isn’t always an easy road.

After witnessing the devastation of the end of the world, Salvos returns to the Netherworld stronger than ever. She is still resolved to find her first companion, but the threat of corruption still weighs on her mind. Because she knows she has to speak to the one responsible for the Apocalypse. She knows she has to speak to her father—the Devil himself.

Late in the 22nd century, the settling of a new world falls on the strong shoulders of young Megan. The perfect leader, she undertakes to guide her sisters to a new planet, free from the shackles of the brutal Earth regime. Negotiating politics in a society of women is second only to securing their safety. When a landing party of men and women discover their colony Megan must decide if the outsiders will live or die. And that includes Lt. Laurel Meredith, whose disturbing beauty is as dangerous to Megan as her people are to Megan's world.

In just over three years, real estate giant Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, lost billions of investors' dollars on a single deal. In Other People's Money, Charles V. Bagli, the New York Times reporter who first broke the story of the sale of Stuyvesant Town - Peter Cooper Village takes listeners inside the most spectacular failure in real estate history, using this single deal as a lens to see how and why the real estate crisis happened.

Lilly may be losing a husband, but she's gaining a toy poodle. That could be seen as a win-win, since her new adopted pooch, Aggie (named after Agatha Christie), is cute and adorable and Lilly's dirty dog of a spouse is cheating on her with a blonde bimbo - except for one problem: Albert Echosby's just been murdered, and Lilly is the number-one suspect.

Left behind by their sisters, they’ve become the hunted. In this gripping sequel to Daughters of a Coral Dawn, Katherine V. Forrest tells the story of an Earth beyond nightmare, ruled by dictator Theo Zedera—known simply as Zed—whose weaponry is invincible. With ruthless determination he seeks the vanished women remaining on Earth. Among these women is the leader of the Unity, the extraordinary Africa Contrera, Zed’s childhood friend as well as his colleague and intellectual equal.

A traumatic brain injury is a life-changing event, affecting an individual's lifestyle, ability to work, relationships - even personality. A severe blow to the head results in acute and, often, lasting symptoms. People with brain injury benefit from understanding, patience, and assistance in recovering their bearings and functioning to their full abilities. Neuropsychiatrists Drs. Vani Rao and Sandeep Vaishnavi - experts in helping people heal after head trauma - explain how traumatic brain injury, whether mild, moderate, or severe, affects the brain.

Daily Strength, a year-long devotional, walks Christian men through Scripture passages that speak to their most pressing issues. Featuring content from the ESV Men's Devotional Bible, each daily devotion features a short summary of a Bible passage with a thought-provoking message from from one of more than forty contributors. Arranged canonically from Genesis to Revelation with short introductions to each Bible book, Daily Strength encourages and enlightens men throughout the year while equipping them for moral and spiritual transformation.

One hot summer night, Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. Their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes suspects it's something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

Kimberley King has spent the last five years trying to outrun the reason she left the police force. Her life is a mess and she's desperate for change. So when she is randomly selected for the new series of the hit show LoveWrecked, she can't pass up the chance to win the £100,000 prize. All Kimberley needs to do is couple up with one of her fellow contestants, win the infamous LoveWrecked challenges, and she will have enough cash for a fresh start.

The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.

The fugitive slave Ghu has ended the assassin Ahjvar's century-long possession by a murderous and hungry ghost, but at great cost. Heir of the dying gods of Nabban, he is drawn back to the empire he fled as a boy, journeying east on the caravan road with Ahjvar at his side.

Many men came to America to escape their old lives. Baron Karl Augustus Dietrich Wilhelm von Brandt was no different, though he fled his father's crimes and not his own. Easily swindled into buying a Nebraska ranch that's little more than a sand dune, the European tenderfoot is befriended by half-Pawnee Johnny Moon, a ne'er-do-well usually one step ahead of the marshal. Working together, the impoverished nobleman and the half-breed cowboy transform the ruin into a thriving ranch. Through tough times and good, Johnny Moon is there for Will, closer than a friend, trusted like a brother.

In Storm Assault , the eighth book of the Star Force series, the story moves in a new direction. Massive fleets are built by both Star Force and the Imperials - but there is a third player in the game: the Blues.