Vinnys Wilderness

Vinny's Wilderness opens in South Belfast with divorced teacher Vinny. She returns to her home to discover that her dearly loved and overgrown garden has been bulldozed and unceremoniously dumped in a skip outside her house. Who is responsible? We learn of her friendship with the glamorous Alex Masterton, whose son Denzil she is tutoring for the elevenplus. More interested in the outdoors than in endless practice papers, Denzil struggles against expectations, both at school, and within his rigid family home. The constraints governing Alex's life as Mrs Masterton are similarly exposed, with a psychologically abusive husband scornful of her supposedly inferior education. As Alex and Vinny's relationship develops, both women struggle to come to terms with past hurts and Alex makes a dramatic decision that will affect all their lives. Vinny's Wilderness is a sensitive rendering of childhood friendship, meditating on the importance and strength of female friendships alongside the curveballs of motherhood.

Lucinda Sly is a historical novel from one of the great contemporary Irish language prose writers, Maidhc Dainín Ó Sé. Now celebrated poet Gabriel Fitzmaurice brings this gripping account alive in English. Based on real events that took place in Carlow in 1834-35, Lucinda Sly tells the story of Lucinda Singleton, a widowed mother who married Walter Sly, a well-to-do farmer. He was a drunkard and a brute who so abused his wife that she and her lover, their farm hand John Dempsey, conspired to murder him. They were hanged side by side in public outside Carlow Gaol on March 30, 1835. Lucinda Sly draws a vivid picture of nineteenth-century Ireland, revealing what was often a harsh and unjust society. A haunting and vibrant tale that will remain with you. Lucinda Sly was an award winner at Oireachtas na Gaeilge 2008.

Dublin 2011: Ireland has failed, and if you're in your twenties, you're getting out. Neil, twenty-six, unemployed and disillusioned with the country, is leaving. But having deferred his flight to attend his grandfather's funeral, he's now stuck behind, aiding his grieving grandmother. His girlfriend left for Canada a month ago. Once he gets what has been bequeathed to him, he'll join her. Dublin 1916: Harry Casey is a Pathé newsreel cameraman with a cine-machine and four reels ready to capture the events of Easter Week. However, war destroys even the best-laid plans, and what starts out as an artistic endeavour becomes a subversive challenge to the new republic's hierarchy. Before Neil can leave for Canada, his grandmother asks him to read his great-grandfather Harry Casey's recently discovered memoirs. Eager to find out if the reminiscences are valuable, Neil delays his departure again. With his girlfriend in Canada growing increasingly impatient, and his grandmother's pleas for him to stay in Ireland more desperate, Neil faces a choice between the past and the future that will have far-reaching consequences for the rest of his life. Citizens creates a conversation across a century, between two disparate characters, in one unique interwoven story that combines the historical epic with razor-sharp contemporary cultural commentary.

For anyone who has ever dreamed of truly experiencing America's unique Everglades National Park, there is only one way: by canoe or kayak. And Paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway is the all-in-one guide for safe adventure on this spectacular 99-mile route. No time for such days-long expeditions? No matter. Authors Holly Genzen and Anne McCrary Sullivan entice with their favorite day- and overnight trips from various Everglades departure points. Having spent years exploring this maritime labyrinth, the authors now share their intimate knowledge of historic Everglades rivers and bays, the endless horizon of its Gulf Coast, the eerie beauty of its mangrove forests, and the secrets of ancient tribes and early-American pioneers who left their distinctive traces. Descriptions of wildlife abound (the birds! the alligators!), as do the details of exquisite flora that flourishes here. But Genzen and Sullivan do not skimp on practicalities nor on threats to this environment. Safety, weather, insects, food, fresh water, and camping on rustic "chickee" platforms stilted above the rivers all earn many pages here. As does what lies in store for the timeless but fragile Everglades ecology. This book is a treasure trove for all paddlers—from novices to champions.

"My only Son," is the story of Vinny Denucci, the son of Sonny Denucci, the head of a New York organized crime family and the" Boss of Bosses" of the (5) Mafia families of New York. The story begins when Vinny is fourteen (14), a naive, intelligent good- natured boy, who does not fully understand what his father does for a living. Vinny has dreams of becoming a lawyer when he reaches adulthood. Sonny is a ruthless crime lord, who wants his only son to be his successor as head of the crime family. Felicia, Vinny's mother, is a strong willed individual who has grown tired of living the life of a crime boss" wife, and wants her son, with whom she is extremely close, to follow his dreams to a life outside the family. Sonny is so outraged and threatened by Felicia's interference with his plans for Vinny that he takes Felicia's life, and with the help of a crooked New York Detective, is able to cover up his horrible crime. With Felicia out of the way, Sonny drags Vinny into the life he and Felicia so vehemently wanted him to avoid. This story, through its many twists and turns, traces the life of Vinny as he is initiated into the family, becomes a" mobster," and eventually winds up in prison. While Vinny is in prison his grandmother Gina, Felicia's mother, is approached by an FBI Agent Rick Carr, who tells her that Felicia's death was not natural, as had been reported, and that he suspects Sonny was involved with her death. Once Gina relates this information to Vinny upon his release from prison, he makes the life altering decision to work with the FBI to try to bring down his Father's empire, in order to avenge his beloved mother's death. The story culminates in a heart stoppingconfrontation between Vinny and Sonny that will have the viewers on the edge of their seats.

Vinny Armstrong is thirteen. On a school skiing holiday to France an avalanche sucks him into a world beneath the snow. This is Snowwhere, dedicated to the supremacy of skiing. He discovers that his mission is to help the Snowwhere 'authorities' rid the slopes of snowboarders. He meets a host of oddbods: the mysterious Sal O'Pet, his own 'chalet pet', a yeti and the daunting figure of Princess Bellaclava and Monty, an emperor penguin. But who is friend and who is foe? And why are three other youngsters held captive? Escape is the only answer, but first he has to face the snowboarders, ski for his life and outwit Allie Pine, the princess's right-hand woman.....

The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throw aside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy to understand why this passion should be strongest in those who are most refined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness. -from Chapter VI: "Camping Out" Hilariously snide and sarcastic, these essays of an American Victorian gentleman's adventures in the great outdoors are strikingly contemporary; for all that they were first published in 1878. Warner relates his encounters with such denizens of the wildness as the bear (who "minds his own business more thoroughly than any person I know") and the deer ("who would like to be friendly with men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protection from the savageness of man"), shares his feelings on the "unromantic" Adirondacks ("I suppose the red Indian lived here in his usual discomfort"), and regales us with the kind of misadventures that "some people call pleasure." American essayist and novelist CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) served on the editorial staffs of the Hartford Press, the Hartford Courant, and Harpers Magazine. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and published numerous books, including My Summer in a Garden (1870), My Winter on the Nile (1876), and a biography of Washington Irving (1881).

Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm.

Haunting Bollywood is a pioneering, interdisciplinary inquiry into the supernatural in Hindi cinema that draws from literary criticism, postcolonial studies, queer theory, history, and cultural studies. Hindi commercial cinema has been invested in the supernatural since its earliest days, but only a small segment of these films have been adequately explored in scholarly work; this book addresses this gap by focusing on some of Hindi cinema’s least explored genres. From Gothic ghost films of the 1950s to snake films of the 1970s and 1980s to today’s globally influenced zombie and vampire films, Meheli Sen delves into what the supernatural is and the varied modalities through which it raises questions of film form, history, modernity, and gender in South Asian public cultures. Arguing that the supernatural is dispersed among multiple genres and constantly in conversation with global cinematic forms, she demonstrates that it is an especially malleable impulse that routinely pushes Hindi film into new formal and stylistic territories. Sen also argues that gender is a particularly accommodating stage on which the supernatural rehearses its most basic compulsions; thus, the interface between gender and genre provides an exceptionally productive lens into Hindi cinema’s negotiation of the modern and the global. Haunting Bollywood reveals that the supernatural’s unruly energies continually resist containment, even as they partake of and sometimes subvert Hindi cinema’s most enduring pleasures, from songs and stars to myth and melodrama.