A Hole In Juan

"A brief and majestic debut." —Matías Néspolo, El Mundo Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish.

Philadelphia English teacher Amanda Pepper joins forces with her husband, C. K. Mackenzie, to investigate when a yearly tradition in which children play harmless pranks throughout the city on the night before Halloween turns deadly.

Named one of The Washington Post's Best Travel Books of 2021. "Winter Pasture is Li Juan's crowning achievement, shattering the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir." —Smithsonian Magazine "Li Juan spent minus-20-degree nights with nomadic herders in the Chinese steppes. You’ll want to join her." —Laura Miller, Slate "Deeply moving...full of humor, introspection and glimpses into a vanishing lifestyle." —The New York Times Book Review Winner of the People's Literature Award, WINTER PASTURE has been a bestselling book in China for several years. Li Juan has been widely lauded in the international literary community for her unique contribution to the narrative non-fiction genre. WINTER PASTURE is her crowning achievement, shattering the boundaries between nature writing and personal memoir. Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter. The so-called "winter pasture" occurs in a remote region that stretches from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains. As she journeys across the vast, seemingly endless sand dunes, she helps herd sheep, rides horses, chases after camels, builds an underground home using manure, gathers snow for water, and more. With a keen eye for the understated elegance of the natural world, and a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Li vividly captures both the extraordinary hardships and the ordinary preoccupations of the day-to-day of the men and women struggling to get by in this desolate landscape. Her companions include Cuma, the often drunk but mostly responsible father; his teenage daughter, Kama, who feels the burden of the world on her shoulders and dreams of going to college; his reticent wife, a paragon of decorum against all odds, who is simply known as "sister-in-law." In bringing this faraway world to English language readers here for the first time, Li creates an intimate bond with the rugged people, the remote places and the nomadic lifestyle. In the signature style that made her an international sensation, Li Juan transcends the travel memoir genre to deliver an indelible and immersive reading experience on every page.

Dive into this thrilling FREE first installment of the Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride Series, a transmigration/time travel (isekai) romantic fantasy with a powerful heroine, badass hero warrior, arranged marriage, action and adventure, and kingdom-building by Alexia S. Praks What’s a girl to do when she finds herself in a medieval-like world of magic and monsters and is forced to wed an infamous earl? Marries the hunky warrior, of course! Plus saves his citizens, feeds them delectable food, and builds a grand kingdom in the process. Quinn Chen has her life planned out after university graduation—working in one of the biggest medical research companies and then maybe dating again after a bad breakup. The only problem is on the day of her graduation, she is hit by a truck and wakes up to find herself as eighteen-year-old Quinn Fairchild in a war-torn medieval-like fantastical world full of magic and monsters and is forced to become a bride to an infamous, ruthless, cold-blooded warrior of an earl. Swept not only into the isolated, strangely beautiful, lush land of Norsewood, but the powerful arms of the piercing blue-eyed Lord Aldric Templeton, Quinn—armed with blessings—must navigate her way through poverty-stricken, dangerous medieval life with a modern mindset and maybe even teach her gorgeous golden-haired husband, who is both kind and gentle and nothing like the merciless character that rumors imply, that having a girl from another world as a bride isn't so bad after all. Apparently, I’m the Infamous Earl’s Legendary Bride is a romantic fantasy series featuring a vivacious heroine with a determination to change and improve the lives of civilians in a medieval-like, war-torn world with the use of her modern knowledge and her magic and a hunky hero hell-bent on protecting his land and people and claiming his bride’s love. This series contains romance, magic, kingdom building, and food and cooking. Oh, and enough steam to fog up the other world’s medieval-era glass window in later books as the story progresses. A kingdom-building fantasy series usually involves strong, powerful protagonist/s with talent or knowledge that is rare or unknown in the world they are in as they work on building and managing their own village, town, city, nation, or even empire and gathering citizens and subordinates.