The Book of Happenstance PDF Download

Author: Ingrid Winterbach
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781934824337
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
A middle aged lexicographer, Helena, travels alone to Durban to assist in the creation of a dictionary of Afrikaans words that have fallen out of use. Shortly after her arrival, her flat is burgled and her precious lifetime's collection of shells is stolen. Meeting with indifference from the local police, she decides to investigate the crime on her own, with the help of her new friend Sof who works at the Museum of Natural History. While investigating the crime, Helena reflects on her life and her ex husband, daughter, childhood and her married boss who she is falling for.

Author: Robert Root
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609381912
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 259

View

Book Description
Reflecting on how a student’s parents met because of a fly ball to center field in a summer softball game, author Robert Root wondered how the lives of that student’s parents and of the student himself would have changed had the batter bunted or struck out. Haunted by this pure example of happenstance, he began to ponder his own existence, dependent in part on geology (the Niagara Escarpment) and history (the Erie Canal). He wondered how happenstance had influenced the course of his parents’ lives, in particular their marriages (they married and divorced each other twice), and consequently the shaping of his identity. Happenstance investigates the effects of that phenomenon and choice on one man’s life. Root explores this theme in interwoven strands of narrative, interpretation, and reflection. One strand, “The Hundred Days,” follows his attempt to write one hundred journal entries, each about a different day in his life, to recover memories of specific moments or collections of moments. In the strand headed “Album,” he examines and interprets old family photographs in light of the way he reads them in the present, as someone now privy to a family secret that directed his and his siblings’ lives without their knowledge. Interspersed among these brief interpretations and narratives are reflections on happenstance and choice, a sequence contemplating their effect on his life and perhaps on all our lives. Through juxtaposition and accumulation, the book’s incremental unraveling of meaning imitates the process of unexpected epiphanies and gradual self-discovery in anyone’s life. By revisiting individual days, giving voice to photographs that mutely preserve family moments, and reflecting on the way happenstance and choice determine the directions lives take, Robert Root generates a meditation on identity anchored in an album in words and images of a mid-twentieth-century life.

Author: P. W. Catanese
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143915337X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

View

Book Description
Master storyteller P.W. Catanese begins the Books of Umber trilogy with Happenstance Found—now available in paperback—when twelve-yearold Happenstance awakens in a cave with no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. Lord Umber and his companions rescue Hap, and the group sets out on dangerous and unusual missions that continue in Dragon Games. Hap’s and Umber’s journeys take them to the corrupt kingdom of Sarnica, where Umber’s nemesis has acquired some dragon eggs. Umber wants to study a new magical species, but what starts as a quest for knowledge turns into a dangerous rescue operation. The deft plotting of these actionpacked, heart-stopping adventures will pique the imagination and leave readers anxious for the final installment.

Author: John D. Krumboltz
Publisher: Impact Publishers
ISBN: 188623003X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 171

View

Book Description
Unplanned events--chance occurrences--more often determine life and career choices than all the careful planning we do. A chance meeting, a broken appointment, a spontaneous vacation trip, a "fill-in" job, a hobby--these are the kinds of experiences that lead to unexpected life directions and career choices. Newly revised and updated with fresh examples and current issues for today's challenging times, Luck is No Accident actively encourages readers to create their own unplanned events, to anticipate changing their plans frequently, to take advantage of chance events when they happen, and to make the most of what life offers. The book has a friendly, easy style about it, and is packed with personal stories that really bring the ideas into focus.

Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 1841154687
Category : Married people
Languages : en
Pages : 404

View

Book Description
A week spent apart for a long-time married couple brings new and frightening experiences for each. Bewildered in a new city, Brenda struggles to cope. Meanwhile, at home, Jack's world falls apart; but while dealing with the crises around him, he learns something about himself.

Author: Carol Shields
Publisher: London : Flamingo
ISBN: 9780586092248
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 404

View

Book Description
A novel about a marriage from the viewpoints of both the husband and the wife at a time when they are both undergoing changes.

Author: Tolu Oloruntoba
Publisher: Anstruther Books
ISBN: 9781989287729
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 80

View

Book Description
Personal, primordial, and pulsing with syncopated language, Tolu Oloruntoba's poetic debut, The Junta of Happenstance, is a compendium of dis-ease. This includes disease in the traditional sense, as informed by the poet's time as a physician, and dis-ease as a primer for family dysfunction, the (im)migrant experience, and urban / corporate anxiety. In the face of struggles against social injustice, Oloruntoba navigates the contemporary moment with empathy and intelligence, finding beauty in chaos, and strength in suffering. The Junta of Happenstance is an important and assured debut.

Author: Joel Austin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 337

View

Book Description
This addictive new thriller series introduces Captain Frank Sherman. When Frank Sherman was one month into college the Twin Towers fell. He joined the Army the next day. That was fifteen years ago. He never left the war. After a brutal and bloody mess in Eastern Europe he is given leave to visit his only true friend in Northern California. Sherman arrives in the small backwater town to find an empty house and a sinking sense of despair. What began as an escape from the violence and blood quickly spirals back to the war. As each new link in the mystery is uncovered, Sherman takes another step back towards the cold-blooded killer he has become.For a generation left with no choice but the War on Terror, Sherman knows only one truth. It was not his war to start, but it is his to fight.Fans of Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp, and Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne will enjoy this Frank Sherman thriller.

Author: Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935514626
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 318

View

Book Description
Catherine Fitzpatrick has used her keen reporter's eyes for detail and fashioned a sweeping saga of the wealthy Reinhardt family, St. Louis merchants who built a local retail empire over the course of a century... The characters vividly jump off the pages and pull you into their lives. Carol S. Cole, Former Features Editor, St. Louis Globe-Democrat An epic ... Writing it meant knowing vast amounts of information ... Many, many passages are strikingly beautiful, some scenes are memorable - so real they're painful to remember. Rose Marie Kinder, Editor Emerita, Pleiades, Winner, 1991 Willa Cather Award Author of An Absolute Gentleman I fell in love with several characters. A.Y. Stratton, Author of Buried Heart With intelligent research and a fine feel for place, this book builds around its characters the kind of historical context that helps to explain how and why people see the world as they do. Eric Sandweiss, Carmony Chair, Department of History, Indiana University, Author of St. Louis: The Evolution of an Urban American Landscape A rare and nearly perfect glimpse into a world long past. It's a well-researched first novel that will entertain, inform, and touch emotions for everyone. Kris Radish, Best Selling Bantam Dell Author, www.krisradish.com

Author: Jamie McGuire
Publisher: Jamie McGuire
ISBN: 1311063935
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

View

Book Description
Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it all. Now that Erin has learned the truth about the girls who tortured her, and about the boy she loves, she finds her time before graduation dwindling at an alarming and exciting pace. What used to be summer break was now a countdown to her final days in Blackwell. Her parents, Sam and Julianne struggle with the fear that just when they’ve found Erin, they must let her go, and the tension is higher than it’s been since Erin discovered who she really was. Finally with the girl he’s loved since childhood, Weston grows more desperate as the summer days pass. He and Erin will go to separate colleges. His biggest fear is that this means they’ll go their separate ways. Plagued with making the best of the time he has left with Erin, and finding a way to make it last, Weston finds himself in a different state of mind hourly. He is just beginning to realize that hope is like quicksand. The harder Weston struggles, the faster Erin sinks.