Showing results by narrator "Nancy Wu" in All Categories

A young Avatar Roku has only just commenced his training at the Southern Air Temple when his erstwhile friend, Prince Sozin, requests his aid in preventing the Earth Kingdom from claiming a remote Fire Nation island. Despite his inexperience, Avatar Roku slips away with the help of an irritating young Airbender named Gyatso. As the reluctant companions delve deeper into their wayward mission, they begin to realize that even greater threats lie ahead.

We know that autoimmune disease - a condition when the body's immune system attacks its own healthy tissue and cells - affects millions of people worldwide. But as New York Times bestselling author Dr Gottfried explains in this eye-opening new book, autoimmune disease may be even more pervasive than we realise - and its cause may surprise you. The Autoimmune Cure offers a road map to lasting relief from autoimmune disease by addressing the underlying cause of the condition and healing the body, mind and spirit.

In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts.

Meet Keiko. Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years. Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married. But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store.

When 34-year-old Ms Shibata gets a new job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment at her old one, she finds that, as the only woman at her new workplace—a company that manufactures cardboard tubes—she is expected to do all the menial tasks. One day, she announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups—because she's pregnant and the smell nauseates her. The only thing is...Ms Shibata is not pregnant.

'No regrets.' You've heard people proclaim it as a philosophy of life. That's nonsense, even dangerous, says Daniel H. Pink in his latest bold and inspiring work. Everybody has regrets. They're a fundamental part of our lives. And if we reckon with them in fresh and imaginative ways, we can enlist our regrets to make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school and deepen our sense of meaning and purpose.

Hornclaw is a 65-year-old female contract killer who is considering retirement. A fighter who has experienced loss and grief early on in life, she lives in a state of self-imposed isolation, with just her dog, Deadweight, for company. While on an assassination job for the 'disease control' company she works for, Hornclaw makes an uncharacteristic error, causing a sequence of events that brings her past well and truly into the present.

In between running her vampire nightclub and hunting down the perfect pair of shoes, Betsy learns her long-lost half-sister Laura is actually the spawn of Satan. Complicating matters, prophesy states that the devil's offspring and the queen of the vampires are destined to rule the world together.

When failed scholar Yên is sold to Vu Côn, one of the last dragons walking the earth, she expects to be tortured or killed for Vu Côn's amusement. But Vu Côn, it turns out, has a use for Yên: she needs a scholar to tutor her two unruly children. She takes Yên back to her home, a vast, vertiginous palace-prison where every door can lead to death. Vu Côn seems stern and unbending, but as the days pass Yên comes to see her kinder and caring side.

As World War II rages, Francine Lawrence and her small daughter, Ruth, wait in the fading splendor of Raffles Hotel in Singapore for Francine's British husband. But when he is delayed, Francine, half-Chinese and unwelcome there, is forced to begin a terrifying journey. Seeking to escape a world exploding in nightmare, Francine ultimately makes a gut-wrenching decision: to entrust Ruth to strangers in order to save the child's life. But when the war ends, all traces of Ruth have vanished; years of searching bring only heartbreak.

The Sino-American contest is driven by clashing geopolitical interests and a stark ideological dispute over whether authoritarianism or democracy will dominate the twenty-first century. But both history and China's current trajectory suggest that this rivalry will reach its moment of maximum danger in the 2020s. The Chinese challenge will most likely prove more manageable than many pessimists currently believe—but during the 2020s, the pace of Sino-American conflict will accelerate, and the prospect of war will be frighteningly real.

In the first book of the Tensorate series, a rebellion threatens the power of the Protectorate. Akeha, one of the twin children of the Protector, leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. In the second book in the Tensorate series, Sanao Mokoya has abandoned the life that once bound her. Broken by the loss of her young daughter, she now hunts deadly, sky-obscuring naga. And an investigation into atrocities committed at a classified research facility threatens to expose secrets that the Protectorate will do anything to keep hidden in the third volume.

Betsy Taylor needs a job and amazingly lands the perfect one: selling designer shoes at Macy's. But the other vamps, including sexy Sinclair, don't want their queen selling shoes. And the vampire hunters are becoming a real pain, murdering innocent vampires. It seems that everyone wants something from Betsy.

He was suspect number one - the man who tried to kill Deputy Mattie Cobb and may have killed her father 30 years earlier. But when Mattie and cold-case Detective Jim Hauck reach the Colorado state prison where they will finally get to interview him, he's found dead in his cell. There's only one clue: a map leading to Timber Creek and rugged Redstone Ridge. Following the clue, Mattie and her K-9 partner, Robo, journey into the burned forest surrounding Redstone Ridge.

A deluge has flooded the high ground near Hanging Falls - but heavy rains aren't the only menace descending on Timber Creek. While on a scouting mission to pinpoint trail damage, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, stumble upon a body floating at the edge of a lake. Robo catches human scent, which leads to an enigmatic forest-dweller who quickly becomes suspect number one. With help from veterinarian Cole Walker, Mattie identifies the victim and discovers an odd religious cult whose dress and manners harken back to the 19th century.

Magneto, the X-Men's oldest, deadliest foe, has taken over a top-secret government installation that houses the Sentinels, powerful mutant-hunting robots. The X-Men must fight to keep this deadly technology out of Magneto's hands. But the Acolytes, Magneto's fanatical mutant followers, stand between the X-Men and victory - a victory that’s quickly slipping away - for a more ruthless enemy, the US government, holds the X-Men responsible for the installation's takeover!

“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this volume use their own vulnerability to guide listeners on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of essays presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.

The popular Beijing Duck House in Rockville, Maryland, has been serving devoted regulars for decades, but behind the staff's professional smiles simmer tensions, heartaches and grudges from decades of bustling restaurant life. Owner Jimmy Han has ambitions for a new high-end fusion place, hoping to eclipse his late father's homely establishment. Jimmy's older brother, Johnny, is more concerned with restoring the dignity of the family name than his faltering relationship with his own teenage daughter, Annie.

When Donaldina Cameron arrives at the Occidental Mission Home for Girls in 1895, she intends to teach sewing skills to young Chinese women immigrants, but, within days, she discovers that the job is much more complicated than perfect stitches and even hems. San Francisco has a dark side, one where a powerful underground organization - the criminal tong - brings Chinese young women to America to sell them as slaves. With the help of Chinese interpreters and the Chinatown police squad, Donaldina becomes a tireless social reformer to stop the abominable slave and prostitution trade.

What does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you’ve never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by “rotten girls,” swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden age of Chinese science fiction.