Remarkable, sumptuous artwork by top children's illustrator Christian Birmingham enhances this faithful abridgement of the Dickens classic.
First published in 1952, this classic Little Golden Book retelling of the Christmas story was illustrated by beloved artist Eloise Wilkin. Its simple but poetic text gently invites children to hear the story of Jesus' birth in a stable in Bethlehem.
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret.
I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family.
Today the art of Feng Shui, once shrouded in secrecy and superstition, is taking on new life as a powerful, practical method for enhancing one's career, health and personal growth. Unfortunately, these techniques, as taught in the U.S.A., tend to be filled with incomplete, incorrect and unnecessarily complex information.Now Dr. Baolin Wu, renowned Feng Shui practitioner and living master of the complete canon of Taoist arts, presents publicly, for the first time, the inner teachings of the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing, as passed to him from a 1,000-year-old oral tradition.
Unlike other books on Feng Shui, this volume explains the inner reasons behind many common placement techniques, as well as detailing the exceptional meditation and Qi Gong exercises that have until now been held as hereditary secrets of the White Cloud monastery.
When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thought that he and his beautiful wife, Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid off his school loans, arranged a mortgage, and hired the McDeeres a decorator. Mitch should have remembered what his brother Ray–doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail–already knew: You never get nothing for nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch’s firm and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice–if he wants to live.
