Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Summary

One of Time’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time  Winner of the LA Times Ray Bradbury Prize  Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award The New York Times best seller Named a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, Time, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post  "A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made." (Neil Gaiman) "Gripping, action-packed.... The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times) The epic novel, an African Game of Thrones, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings  In the stunning first novel in Marlon James' Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.  Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.  As Tracker follows the boy's scent - from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers - he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?  Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

©2019 Marlon James (P)2019 Penguin Audio

The Book of Night Women

Summary

The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the 18th century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they - and she - will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion - between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently - and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.

©2009 Marlon James (P)2009 Penguin

A Brief History of Seven Killings

Summary

Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years. Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James' place among the great literary talents of his generation.

©2014 Marlon James. Recorded by arrangement with Penguin Books. (P)2014 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Learned Optimism

Summary

You can acquire optimism and significantly improve your life! Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How often do you take on exciting new projects or celebrate your successes? Now psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman, one of the world's experts on motivation, shows you how to chart a new approach to living with "flexible optimism." Dr. Seligman's principles of reasoned, flexible optimism will help you rise above pessimism and the depression that accompanies negative thoughts. Learned Optimism shows you how to: Attain maximum personal achievement Boost your mood - and your immune system - with healthful thoughts Help your children by practicing the patterns of thought that encourage optimism at an early age Change your interior dialogue and experience the astonishing positive results

©1991 Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved (P)1991 Simon & Schuster Audio, All Rights Reserved

Pimsleur Japanese Level 4 Lessons 6-10

Summary

The easiest and fastest way to learn Japanese  With Pimsleur you’ll become conversational in Japanese - to understand and be understood - quickly and effectively. You’ll learn vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation together through conversation. And our scientifically proven program will help you remember what you’ve learned, so you can put it into action.  Why Pimsleur?  Quick and easy - only 30 minutes a day.  Portable and flexible - core lessons can be done anytime, anywhere, and easily fit into your busy life.  Proven method - works when other methods fail.  Self-paced - go fast or go slow - it’s up to you.  Based in science - developed using proven research on memory and learning.  Cost-effective - less expensive than classes or immersion and features all native speakers.  Genius - triggers your brain’s natural aptitude to learn.  Works for everyone - recommended for ages 13 and above.  What’s included?  Five 30-minute audio lessons, all featuring native speakers  What you’ll learn: This course includes Lessons 6-10 from the Japanese Level 4 program featuring 2.5 hours of language instruction. Each lesson provides 30 minutes of spoken language practice, with an introductory conversation and new vocabulary and structures. Detailed instructions enable you to understand and participate in the conversation. Practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons is included in each lesson. The emphasis is on pronunciation and comprehension and on learning to speak Japanese.  Whether you want to travel, communicate with friends or colleagues, reconnect with family, or just understand more of what’s going on in the world around you, Pimsleur will help you learn Japanese, expand your horizons, and enrich your life. 

©2020 Pimsleur (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio