Bleak

"Why did he come back?" Tommy Tate finished his sophomore year alone at home, suspended from Latimer High School. Hated, dangerous, and accused of plotting to murder a classmate, Tommy was considered a monster by his peers and community. He swore that he would never step foot in LHS again. But now it's fall, and after a summer of silence, Tommy arrives for the first day of school, leaving everyone to ask - why did he come back?

CLASSIFIED: APPARENT SUPERNATURAL Subject: Gabriel Bleak. Status: Civilian. Paranormal skills: Powerful. Able to manipulate AS energies and communicate with UBEs (e.g. "ghosts" and other entities). Psychological profile: Extremely independent, potentially dangerous. Caution is urged.... As far as Gabriel Bleak is concerned, talking to the dead is just another way of making a living. It gives him the competitive edge to survive as a bounty hunter, or "skip tracer," in the psychic minefield known as New York City. Unfortunately, his gift also makes him a prime target. A top-secret division of Homeland Security has been monitoring the recent emergence of human supernaturals, with Gabriel Bleak being the strongest on record. If they control Gabriel, they'll gain access to the Hidden -- the entity-based energy field that connects all life on Earth. But Gabriel's got other ideas. With a growing underground movement called the Shadow Community -- and an uneasy alliance of spirits, elementals, and other beings -- Gabriel's about to face the greatest demonic uprising since the Dark Ages. But this time, history is not going to repeat itself. This time, the future is Bleak. Gabriel Bleak.

Lela knows two things: her history teacher must die and she must start a new life beyond the pear field. On the outskirts of Tbilisi, in a newly independent Georgia, is the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children – or, as the locals call it, the School for Idiots. Abandoned by their parents, the pupils here receive lessons in violence and neglect. At eighteen, Lela is old enough to leave, but with nowhere to go she stays and plans, both for her own escape and for the future she hopes to give Irakli, a young boy at the school. When a couple from the USA decide they want to adopt a child, Lela is determined to do everything she can to help Irakli make the most of this chance.

Delve into a Fantasy Land Dominated by Dark Forces Embark on an exhilarating journey penned by the master of epic fantasy, Glen Cook, author of the acclaimed Bleak Seasons. Experience the world through the eyes of Murgen, a seasoned warrior and standard bearer of the Black Company, a band of mercenaries trapped in a relentless struggle against the primal forces of darkness known as the Shadowlanders. Epic battles, ancient inscrutable gods, and intricate plots dominate this landscape of dark fantasy. You're thrust into the tumultuous period following the perilous siege of Stormgard, where the embattled and outnumbered Black Company has won a fleeting victory against the malevolent entities. The company's survival hangs in the balance, caught between sorcery, treachery, and the machinations of their mad commander, interconnected forces that threaten to shatter the world as they know it. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Bleak liberalism -- Liberalism in the age of high realism -- Revisiting the political novel -- The liberal aesthetic in the postwar era: the case of Trilling and Adorno -- Bleak liberalism and the realism/modernism debate: Ellison and Lessing

A haunting and thought-provoking story about how a mother's love for her children can be more dangerous than the dark world she is seeking to keep at bay. A single mother takes her two sons on a trip to the seaside. They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate, and go to the funfair. She wants to protect them from an uncaring and uncomprehending world. She knows that it will be the last trip for her boys. Beside the Sea is a haunting and thought-provoking story about how a mother's love for her children can be more dangerous than the dark world she is seeking to keep at bay. It's a hypnotizing look at an unhinged mind and the cold society that produced it. With language as captivating as the story that unfolds, Véronique Olmi creates an intimate portrait of madness and despair that won't soon be forgotten.

The comedian offers humorous mock-advice on loneliness, being broke, dating, depression, and self-esteem, along with reflections on living

An anatomy of failed-state Britain, by the author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. In A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain, Owen Hatherley skewered New Labour’s architectural legacy in all its witless swagger. Now, in the year of the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, he sets out to describe what the Coalition’s altogether different approach to economic mismanagement and civic irresponsibility is doing to the places where the British live. In a journey that begins and ends in the capital, Hatherley takes us from Plymouth and Brighton to Belfast and Aberdeen, by way of the eerie urbanism of the Welsh valleys and the much-mocked splendour of modernist Coventry. Everywhere outside the unreal Southeast, the building has stopped in towns and cities, which languish as they wait for the next bout of self-defeating austerity. Hatherley writes with unrivalled aggression about the disarray of modern Britain, and yet this remains a book about possibilities remembered, about unlikely successes in the midst of seemingly inexorable failure. For as well as trash, ancient and modern, Hatherley finds signs of the hopeful country Britain once was and hints of what it might become.

SALTIRE SOCIETY SCOTTISH FIRST BOOK OF THE YEAR R.M. Murray has a story. Quite a few of them. Of seasickness, hangovers, the wrong kind of weather. Of the joy of woe, and disappointments fairy-lit with hope. From fishing in the endless rain on the Isle of Lewis to performing in a band with Peter Capaldi and Craig Ferguson at Glasgow School of Art. A stargazer, looking through the wrong end of the telescope. This is a memoir... of sorts. A join-the-dots journey through a life. A series of vignettes and minor personal fables, sardonic and self-deprecating. If it were a wine it would be very dry with an insolent nose and a desperate finish. Complex but approachable. And affordable.