Showing results by narrator "Eunice Wong" in All Categories

Nicholas Dowling's mail-order bride is not what he'd hoped for - she's too young, too delicate, and far too superstitious for a pragmatic man like himself. But not even Brianna's untamable spirit can't cast a shadow over her luminous beauty, and before long the blaze of their attraction grows into something neither one of them was expecting.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that terrible apologies are the worst. We’ve all been on the receiving end, and oh, how they make us seethe. Horrible public apologies—excuse-laden, victim blame-y, weaselly statements—often go viral instantaneously, whether they’re from a celebrity, a politician, or a blogger. We all recognize bad apologies when we hear them. So why is it so hard to apologize well? How can we do better? How could they do better? Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy show us the way.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible? Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions.

As the late-emperor's first-born, Princess Lu knows the throne rightfully belongs to her. She also can't forget her promise to shape-shifter Nok, the boy she loves, to win justice for his now powerless people. Yet even with an army at her side, Lu must face a major obstacle: the current empress, her younger sister, Min. Princess Min used to live in Lu's shadow. Now she wields an ancient magic, one she's determined to use to forge her own path for the empire, even if that means making enemies in court.

It's 1980s New York, and though the coke flows freely, money and glamour are the more powerful intoxicants. While fortunes are being made in SoHo galleries and on Wall Street, an underclass of transient drag queens and dandies, club kids and strippers, artists and actors, models and waitstaff wander the streets, providing the city's background color, cheap labor, and even cheaper entertainment. 

It’s 1968, London is in full swing, and the Savoy Hotel is at the height of its legendary glitz and glamour, welcoming the rich, famous, and aristocratic into its rarified world of perfection. Royals wait upstairs in luxurious suites for discreet encounters. All is as it should be at the Savoy. If only it weren’t for the dead body in Room 705. Could it be murder? Impossible! Who could have done such a thing? Suspicion falls upon Priscilla Tempest, the quick-witted Canadian head of the Savoy press office who has a penchant for champagne, the wrong sort of men—and trouble.

In this accessible and beautiful book, Yen Ooi explains the various facets of Rén and explores how this philosophy applies to everything from our relationship with ourselves and the people in our lives, to how we relate to society and the wider world. She shows us how, using the basic principles of Rén and through simple changes to our lives, we can connect better with friends, family, and colleagues, become helpful members of society, and find fulfillment in ideas of community, justice, morality, and compassion.

Kenton is the last of his people, desperately searching for others who can aid in his quest to unearth the gods from their hiding places and restore goodness and order to the world. As Kenton gathers together the legendary godbearers - who are said to be able to retrieve the gods, wherever they lie - he finds an unlikely ally in Daniella, the daughter of the dictator himself. Daniella is tired of being her father's puppet, all too eager to be out of his grasp. But as they travel together, Kenton begins to suspect she may be something far more dangerous than a dictator's pawn.

Roxy just wants her old job back, but destiny has other plans. The Slayers made their wishes clear, and now she's back to hustling repair jobs while dodging job offers from a certain prince. But her peaceful life doesn't last for long. O'Malley is still out there, and this time, he's pulled Roxy's old apprentice, Finn, into the Pit for a deadly tournament. When Roxy's sensei tells her to get back in the game, she knows she can't say no.

In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest. Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark fate. But when the voice of a long-dead sorcerer begins to speak inside her head, she listens. There may be another future for her, if she's willing to fight for it.

For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be.

In Heiress Apparently, Gemma Huang’s big acting break led her to Beijing, where she uncovered an incredible family secret. This second novel in the Daughters of the Dynasty series delves further into Gemma’s complex and storied legacy, moving back one generation to tell the story of Gemma’s mother, Lei, as she finds love against the backdrop of 1980s China and the Tiananmen Square protests and makes a difficult decision that forever alters the course of her life.

Each of the three seeds in this story - a cherry seed in the Middle East, an acacia seed in Australia, a lotus seed in Asia - survives a difficult journey through flood, fire, or drought, then sprouts (in the case of the lotus seed, a hundred years later) and flourishes. To author Stephie Morton, nature's powerful forces are a metaphor for the hardships faced by displaced children. Kids, like seeds, thrive when given a chance. 

Millennials, people between the ages of 15 and 34, make up nearly half of the current vegan population. Despite being dealt a bad deal by prior generations, this generation is increasingly able to see past all the ways our society indoctrinates us to use nonhuman animals. Millennial Vegan offers support to this important group by providing tips for advocacy, strategies for communicating with unsupportive peers, advice on issues related to dating, and information on maintaining personal wellbeing.

Kind is the kind of poetry book that makes you think differently about our world and the beings that inhabit it. Primack explores all facets of our lives with other beings - the beauty, the tragedy, and the absurdity that surrounds her existence. Kind cuts to one’s emotional core to make us think and feel.

In the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and conceived of as a modern-day vade mecum, Letters to a New Vegan consists of 32 humorous, evocative, spirited, and even tender epistles offering advice, counsel, and inspiration from activists and leaders who’ve followed the vegan path for years.

What is the reality of policing in the United States? Do the police keep anyone safe and secure other than the very wealthy? How do recent police killings of young Black people in the United States fit into the historical and global context of anti-blackness? This collection of reports and essays explores police violence against Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities, miscarriages of justice, and failures of token accountability and reform measures.

Seeking ways to understand video games beyond their imperial logics, Patterson turns to erotics to re-invigorate the potential passions and pleasures of play. Video games vastly outpace all other mediums of entertainment in revenue and in global reach. On the surface, games do not appear ideological, nor are they categorized as national products. Instead, they seem to reflect the open and uncontaminated reputation of information technology. Like literature and film before it, video games have become the main artistic expression of empire today.

In a cruise-ship stateroom, a soul awakens in the afterlife, still dressed in the Roman servant garbs of his previous life. He can’t remember much, but a silent woman stands out in his memory: his first and only love. Unable to cope with an eternity without her, he leaps from the ship and back into the depths of the life stream. Five hundred years later, he awakens again in the same stateroom, alone and fueled with new memories of her.

Copywriter Ruby Sugars is in a rut. Her life consists of the following: long hours, boring neutral colors, and regular fat shaming from her stick-insect-looking boss. But Ruby isn't really a Bland Betty - she's a complete Bettie Page hottie, with an enviable collection of vintage couture and very naughty vixen lingerie. Now if only she could channel that girl into her real life.... Cue Ruby's best friend, whose recent fixation is "fantasy matchmaking." She's decided that all Ruby needs is one night with a sexy, delectable man....