For readers of Room and The Glass Castle, an astonishing memoir of one woman's rise above an unimaginable childhood. Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor -- raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and subjecting her to endless drills designed to "eliminate weakness." Maude learned to hold an electric fence for minutes without flinching, and to sit perfectly still in a rat-infested cellar all night long (her mother sewed bells onto her clothes that would give her away if she moved). She endured a life without heat, hot water, adequate food, friendship, or any kind of affectionate treatment. But Maude's parents could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak. And when, after more than a decade, an outsider managed to penetrate her family's paranoid world, Maude seized her opportunity. By turns horrifying and magical, The Only Girl in the World is a story that will grip you from the first page and leave you spellbound, a chilling exploration of psychological control that ends with a glorious escape.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I was not normal, and I had terrible tantrums in Lille. I was a bundle of indomitable will, full of joy and rage. I was not afraid of anything. I wanted to go to school, but my parents did not want me to. #2 Linda was a puppy that my father bought to protect the house. But she ended up sleeping in the kitchen because the nights were cold in northern France. She was eventually exiled to the unheated utility room. #3 My father trained a German shepherd to attack me if I ever tried to steal his bike. I learned my lesson, and never tried to steal his bike again. I still loved Linda just as much; I would never believe she had bitten me deliberately.

The Only Girl in the Car Bookworm and dreamer, Kathy was a young girl with a tender heart, an adventurer’s spirit, and a child’s terrible confusion about her proper place in the world. As the oldest daughter in a family of six children, she seemed trapped in her role as Big Sister and Mommy’s Helper. Then, one day, teetering on the brink of adolescence, hormones surging, she heard someone call her “cheesecake,” and suddenly saw her path. “Cheesecake, jailbait, sex kitten”--the very words seemed to be “doors opening” to a splendid new self. But from the moment she decides to lose her virginity and reels in her prey, a “full-grown man,” fourteen-year-old Kathy is headed for trouble. One cold, raw March night some months later, parked in a car with four boys on the outskirts of her small suburban town, she finds it. Though she could never have foreseen the outcome of that night, the “boys in the car could just as well have been Gypsies foretelling my future,” she writes. Girls who break the rules in small towns like the one she lived in are expected to pay a very high price for their transgressions--and she did. And yet...this young girl, as scrappy a protagonist as any in our literature, manages to transform her fate. The story of how she came to be in that car, and how she stepped out of it forever altered, to be sure, yet not forever damaged, is the theme of this extraordinary coming-of-age tale.

Her employers are the high priests of Las Vegas and she is their handmaiden. Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners slaughter the suckers. She longs to be free of the entertainers rubbing elbows with thugs at the craps tables, the divorcées hocking their jewels next to all-night marriage chapels, and the little white balls bouncing along the roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day. But no matter how hard she tries to escape her past, she's fated to be caught for ever backstage in the sick glitter of the infamous strip with nothing but sand and neon and money, money, everywhere.

Adoptee Ed Li is on a mission to find his missing sister. An elaborate plan is devised that involves him teaching in a rural Chinese village, which Ed soon discovers it isn't his idea of a good time. In fact, when he sees a chance to quit, he takes it. But just before he can get out of Dodge, a local girl is murdered. Suspect? That Chinese teacher from America: Ed. With the help of his female colleague, Ed sets out to clear his name, uncovering a web of deceit in a village that's on the verge of becoming a lucrative jade mine. The deeper he digs, the more horrors he unearths. With memories of his sister drawing uncanny parallels to the victim's life, possibility of redemption and revenge looms.

“An eerily beautiful and lyrical story of loss, grief, and how quickly relationships can change, while also changing us.” —Robin Benway, National Book Award winner and bestselling author of Far From The Tree and A Year to the Day “Fast-paced, unputdownable, and full of heart and complicated emotions. An unforgettable story.” —Yamile Saied Méndez, Pura Belpré Award–winning author of Furia, a Reese’s Book Club selection What would you do if everyone you love disappeared? What if it was your fault? For July Fielding, nothing has been the same since that summer before senior year. Once, she had Alex, her loyal best friend, the one who always had her back. She had Sydney, who pushed her during every cross-country run, and who sometimes seemed to know July better than she knew herself. And she had Sam. Sam, who told her she was everything and left her breathless with his touch. Now, July is alone. Every single person in her small town of Lithia has disappeared. No family. No Alex or Sydney. No Sam. July’s only chance at unraveling the mystery of their disappearance is a series of objects, each a reminder of the people she loved most. And a mysterious message: GET TH3M BACK. From the #1 bestselling author of the Matched series, The Only Girl in Town is a searingly candid reckoning with both love and loneliness that perfectly distills the messy, beautiful realities of growing up, growing apart, and the courageous act of self-discovery.

In war films, the portrayal of deep friendships between men is commonplace. Given the sexually anxious nature of the American imagination, such bonds are often interpreted as carrying a homoerotic subtext. In Armed Forces , Robert Eberwein argues that an expanded conception of masculinity and sexuality is necessary in order to understand more fully the intricacy of these intense and emotional human relationships. Drawing on a range of examples from silent films such as What Price Glory and Wings to sound era works like The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Three Kings, and Pearl Harbor , he shows how close readings of war films, particularly in relation to their cultural contexts, demonstrate that depictions of heterosexual love, including those in romantic triangles, actually help to define and clarify the nonsexual nature of male love. The book also explores the problematic aspects of masculinity and sexuality when threatened by wounds, as in The Best Years of Our Lives, and considers the complex and persistent analogy between weapons and the male body, as in Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan .

A comparative study of European cultural and social history during the First World War.