Tag Archives: Fiction

In My Hands Today…

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City of Small Blessings – Simon Tay

6058374A Singaporean retires, migrates and then returns. But, he slowly finds, there is no simple return to the place called home. Once a well-known public figure who contributed to the country, he is now outside the rush of workdays, on the fringe of the city he barely recognises, distanced from his wife and son, even as he loves them. A letter comes from the government and he begins the journey. In the present, he must find a way to face the new men of authority. In the past, he must confront old sacrifices and struggles. He regrets. He loves. He cycles and discovers…

In My Hands Today…

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The Dark Road – Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew

15811572Meili, a young peasant woman born in the remote heart of China, is married to Kongzi, a village school teacher, and a distant descendant of Confucius. They have a daughter, but desperate for a son to carry on his illustrious family line, Kongzi gets Meili pregnant again without waiting for official permission. When family planning officers storm the village to arrest violators of the population control policy, mother, father and daughter escape to the Yangtze River and begin a fugitive life.

For years they drift south through the poisoned waterways and ruined landscapes of China, picking up work as they go along, scavenging for necessities and flying from police detection. As Meili’s body continues to be invaded by her husband and assaulted by the state, she fights to regain control of her fate and that of her unborn child.

In My Hands Today…

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Equilateral – Ken Kalfus

157936381A British astronomer, Thayer, high on Darwin and other progressive scientists of the age, has come to believe that beings more highly evolved than us are alive on Mars (he has evidence) and that there will be a perfect moment in which we can signal to them that we are here too. He gets the support and funding for a massive project to build the Equilateral, a triangle with sides hundreds of miles long, in the desert of Egypt in time for that perfect window.

But as work progresses, the Egyptian workers, less evolved than the British, are also less than cooperative, and a bout of malaria that seems to activate at the worst moments makes it all much more confusing and complex than Thayer ever imagined.

We see Thayer also through the eyes of two women–a triangle of another sort–a romantic one that involves a secretary who looks after Thayer but doesn’t suffer fools, and Binta, a houseservant he covets but can’t communicate with–and through them we catch sight of the depth of self-delusion and the folly of the enterprise.

In My Hands Today…

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The Scent of Sake – Joyce Lebra

4702464She was taught to submit, to obey . . . but she dreamed of an empire.

The sole heir to the House of Omura, a venerable family of Kobe sake brewers, nineteen-year-old Rie hears but cannot heed her mother’s advice: that in nineteenth-century Japan, a woman must “kill the self” or her life will be too difficult to bear. In this strict, male-dominated society, women may not even enter the brewery and repressive tradition demands that Rie turn over her family’s business to the inept philanderer she’s been forced to marry. She is even expected to raise her husband’s children by another woman a geisha so that they can eventually run the Omura enterprise.

But Rie’s pride will not allow her to relinquish what is rightfully hers. With courage, cunning, brilliance, and skill, she is ready to confront every threat that arises before her, from prejudice to treachery to shipwrecks to the insidious schemes of relentless rivals in her bold determination to forge a magnificent dynasty…and to, impossibly, succeed.

In My Hands Today…

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To Have and to Kill – Mary Jane Clark

8527018Piper Donovan, an actress who has been having a hard time of it living in Manhattan, has returned home to her parents’ small town in New Jersey. She’s been helping out at her mother’s bakery, which makes it perfect that Piper’s close friend, Glenna Brooks, has asked her to prepare the cake for her upcoming wedding. However, things aren’t as perfect as they seem, and when there is a murder, Piper is determined to figure out what happened and protect her friend.