Medical school dropout Victor Mancini comes up with a complicated but ingenious scam to pay for his mother's elder care--pretend to be choking in a restaurant and con the individuals who "save" him into giving him money--while he cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his sick mother, whose Alzheimer's disease hides the bizarre truth a...more
Like the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation. And though we may sniff a bestselling formula, it is certainly not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew that this is the most successful method of entertaining an audienc...more
Social visionary Joseph Chilton Pearce’s indictment of cultural imprinting as the cause of humankind’s cruel and violent behavior • Refutes the Neo-Darwinist assumption that violence is inherent in humanity • Identifies religion as the sustaining force behind our negative cultural imprinting • Shows how infant-adult interactions unconscio...more
Survivor, the second novel by Chuck Palahniuk--whose debut novel The Fight Club was widely received to critical acclaim--is a deranged comedy of nightmares, a groin-kick at Western society's worst excesses. This is satire at its best, and Palahniuk handles it all with a distinct, engaging prose style and with plot devices that keep the pages turnin...more
With The Fifth Mountain, Paulo Coelho turns his talent for spiritual fiction to the story of the Biblical prophet Elijah. Like a blossoming flower, Coelho opens up the brief account of Elijah's flight from Gilead and his time in Zarephath. He deepens the prophet's character by revealing the thoughts, doubts, and discoveries that Elijah must have ex...more
"In this autobiographical tale, we follow Coelho and his wife Chris on a 40-day spiritual journey through the Mojave Desert in search of the eternal feminine. Translation has an uncertain feel and suffers from too much editing, pruning, and rearranging of the original as well as occasional misreading"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, ...more