Beginning with the events immediately following the dark days after the death of Shakyamuni and continuing over a period of 1,000 years, this dynamic tome covers a vast and complex series of events and developments in the history of Buddhism. Through a thorough examination of its early development in India, a new light is cast on little-known aspects of Buddhist history and its relevance to the understanding of Buddhism today. Topics include the formation of the Buddhist canon, the cultural exchange between the East and West, and the spirit of the Lotus Sutra.
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A novel of the contemporary American West, Spoon tells the story of Arcus Witherspoon, a mysterious half-black, half-Indian, oddly clairvoyant man searching the West for his roots. Hitchhiking near Hardin, Montana, Spoon falls in with a ranching family struggling to keep their ranch afl oat amidst the pressures of hard economic times and an encroaching coal company. Proving himself a gifted ranch hand and mentor, Spoon charges himself with rescuing the Darleys and guiding the family’s teenage son TJ on his path to manhood. While Spoon’s checkered past includes a prison stint and a navy tour of Vietnam,
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Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator of The Lace Reader, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations, but the disappearance of two women brings Towner home to Salem and the truth about the death of her twin sister to light.
The Lace Reader is a mesmerizing tale which spirals into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies and half-truths where the reader quickly finds it’s nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction,
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At the heart of this vibrant saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean; its purpose, to fight China’s vicious nineteenth-century Opium Wars. As for the crew, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.
In a time of colonial upheaval, fate has thrown together a diverse cast of Indians and Westerners, from a bankrupt raja to a widowed tribeswoman, from a mulatto American freedman to a freespirited French orphan. As their old family ties are washed away, they, like their historical counterparts,
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From the internationally bestselling author of The Island comes a dazzling new novel of family betrayals, forbidden love, and historical turmoil.
Sonia knows nothing of the Granada’s shocking past, but ordering a simple cup of coffee in a quiet cafe will lead her into the extraordinary tale of a family’s fight to survive the horror of the Spanish Civil War.
Seventy years earlier, in the Ramirez family’s cafe, Concha and Pablo’s children relish an atmosphere of hope. Antonio is a serious young teacher, Ignacio a flamboyant matador, and Emilio a skilled musician.
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52-year-old Lily Crisp has traveled from Idaho to a coastal village in southern France in order to reassess her life. Her cattle-ranching husband of 26 years died suddenly two years before, and Lily, still processing that loss and complications from a love affair she had ten years earlier, takes up residence in the French farmhouse that has been in her husband’s family for generations. To make sense of both past and present, she turns to her old portable typewriter, Madame Olivetti, with whom she shares her secrets, pounding out on creaky keys a story about love and loss, courage and betrayal,
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