Swan Song

Swan Song
Author: Robert McCammon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 928
Release: 2016-07-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501131427

In a nightmarish, post-holocaust world, an ancient evil roams a devastated America, gathering the forces of human greed and madness, searching for a child named Swan who possesses the gift of life.

Swan Songs

Swan Songs
Author: Lee Scott
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-12-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1913462633

An experimental and humorous modern satire about Leonard Swanson, a hip-hop visionary from the north-west of England, as he works in factories and tries to make the greatest rap album of all time. "Unfortunately making the greatest rap album of all time was to be put on hold as the insidious Job Centre advisors had finally had enough of my shit. I would be forced to sign up to one of the town's two recruitment agencies, or I would be starved of weed money." Leonard Swanson lives in an obscure north-western town — the kind that "has a knack for swallowing you whole". He is supposed to be making the greatest rap album of all time, Swan Songs, but instead is forced to work in one of the town's factories, "picking things up and putting them down for twelve hours in a giant white room". Swan Songs follows Leonard as he works, quits, signs on, and travels the country, playing in small capacity venues for even smaller capacity audiences, for which he gets "paid in booze, drugs and a night on a bed bug-ridden mattress somebody dragged in from the street", all the while making the album he thinks will change hip-hop forever. Part Alan Sillitoe and part William Burroughs, UK rapper Lee Scott's debut novel, partially based on his own experiences of becoming a rapper in Runcorn, is an experimental and humorous modern satire about the perils of being a hip-hop visionary far from the beaten track...

The Stand

The Stand
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 1474
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307743683

A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.

Swan Song

Swan Song
Author: Gill Lewis
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2021-02-04
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1800900309

Dylan is struggling but when he's out on the water with his Grandad his mind clears and everything seems simpler. But his Grandad's beloved Whooper swans are under threat and it feels like everything that has made him feel safe is slipping away ... A profoundly moving novel on the redemptive, healing power of nature from bestseller Gill Lewis.

Cairo Swan Song

Cairo Swan Song
Author: Makkāwī Saʻīd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9774163060

Cairo, Mother of the World, embraces millions--but some of her children make their home in the streets, junked up and living in the shadows of wealth and among the monuments that the tourists flock to see. Mustafa, a former student radical who never believed in the slogans, sets out to tell their story, but he has to rely on the help of his American girlfriend, Marcia, who he is not sure he can trust. Meanwhile, his former leftist friends are now all either capitalists or Islamists. Alienated from a corrupt and corrupting society, Mustafa watches as the Cairo he cherishes crumbles around him. The men and women of the city struggle to find lovers worthy of their love and causes worthy of their sacrifice in a country that no longer deserves their loyalty. The children of the streets wait for the adults to take notice. And the foreigners can always leave.

Swan Song

Swan Song
Author: Armen Davoudian
Publisher:
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781949344172

Poetry. California Interest. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Winner of the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. A swan song is a song of departure: after a lifetime of silence, the legend goes, the mute swan breaks into song just before leaving this world for good. Armen Davoudian's SWAN SONG chronicles what it's like to take leave of a home, a country, a past life. In their search for a home in language, these poems combine the formal resources of English and Persian poetry, turning the immigrant's permanent sense of loss and rootlessness, the gay person's sense of alienation, into artistic assets--positions of outsiderhood from which to witness and record.

Capote's Women

Capote's Women
Author: Laurence Leamer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-08-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593328108

DON’T MISS FX’s FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS—THE ORIGINAL SERIES BASED ON THE BESTSELLING BOOK—NOW AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON HULU! New York Times bestselling author Laurence Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote's never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote's ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans." "There are certain women," Truman Capote wrote, "who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich." Barbara "Babe" Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy's sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and shocking way possible. Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer's block. While enjoying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel...one based on the remarkable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends. For years, Capote attempted to write what he believed would have been his magnum opus, Answered Prayers. But when he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his swans were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer recreates the lives of these fascinating women, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Mystery Walk

Mystery Walk
Author: Robert McCammon
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 609
Release: 2011-10-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453231501

An “impressive” tale of psychic power, Native American mysticism, and an ancient evil in Alabama, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Swan Song (Associated Press). Born and raised in rural Alabama, Billy Creekmore was destined to be a psychic. His mother, a Choctaw Indian schooled in her tribe’s ancient mysticism, understands the permeable barrier between life and death—and can cross it. She taught the power to Billy and now he helps the dead rest in peace. Wayne Falconer, son of one of the most fervent tent evangelists in the South, travels the country serving his father’s healing ministry. Using his unique powers to cure the flock, Little Wayne is on his way to becoming one of the popular and successful miracle workers in the country. He helps the living survive. Billy and Wayne share more than a gift. They share a dream—and a common enemy. They are on separate journeys, mystery walks that will lead them toward a crossroad where the evil of their dreams has taken shape. One of them will reject the dark. The other will be consumed by it. But neither imagined just how monstrous and far-reaching the dark was, or that mankind’s fate would rest in their hands during an epic showdown of good versus evil. From the author of Gone South, Boy’s Life, and the Matthew Corbett series, a master of suspense who has won the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Awards, Mystery Walk offers “creepy, subtle touches throughout [and] splendid Southern-town atmosphere” (Kirkus Reviews).

Swan Song of a Jewish Diva

Swan Song of a Jewish Diva
Author: Elizabeth B. Splaine
Publisher:
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781949116830

Ursula Becker's operatic star is on the rise in Nazi Berlin...until she discovers that she is one-quarter Jewish, a mischling of the second degree. Although Hitler is aware of her lineage, her popularity and exquisite voice protect her and her family from persecution. As Ursula's violin-prodigy half-sister comes of age, she comes to the attention of the Führer, who welcomes the awestruck teenager into his elite, private circle. When William Patrick Hitler arrives in Germany and is offered employment by his doting Uncle Adolf, a chance encounter with Ursula leads to a romantic relationship that further shields the young diva from mistreatment. But for how long? Restrictions on Hitler's perceived enemies tighten, and Ursula is ordered to sing at Hitler's Berghof estate. There she throws down a gauntlet that unleashes the wrath of the vindictive megalomaniacal leader. Fearing for her life, Ursula and Willy decide to emigrate to England. But as the ship is about to sail, Ursula disappears. Desperately hoping that Ursula is still alive, Willy crosses the globe in an effort to find her, even as his obsessive uncle taunts him, relishing in the horror of the murderous cat-and-mouse game.

Swan Song

Swan Song
Author: Lisa Alther
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525657541

A new novel, funny, wise, moving, true, as only Lisa Alther can write ("she had me laughing at 4 in the morning" --Doris Lessing), set on a cruise ship, about a woman, a doctor in charge of the ship's clinic, recovering from the loss of her longtime female lover, a much-admired writer, and coping with the high-wire madcappery of cruise ship life as she reckons with her past and feels her way into the future. Dr. Jessie Drake, in her mid-sixties, following the sudden deaths of her parents and Kat, her partner of twenty years, has fled the Vermont life she has known for decades. In an effort to escape the oppressive constancy of grief, she accepts a job from an old flame from her residency in New York City's Roosevelt Hospital, and agrees to assist Ben as the ship's doctor on a British liner. Jessie boards in Hong Kong, and, as the Amphitrite sails throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, cruise ship antics ensue. Jessie is lulled back into a long-ago romance with the ship's co-doctor, and both she and her new/old beau become enmeshed with the ship's lead (female) singer/entertainer. Among the passengers who fling socialized behavior aside on the high seas: a former Florida beauty queen (Miss Florida Power and Light) on a second honeymoon with her husband, as she causes high-velocity scandal, while juggling onboard affairs with a suicidal golf pro, and a defrocked priest hired as one of the liner's gentleman hosts, until she vanishes--poof!--from the ship off the coast of Portugal . . . As the ship sails through the Gulf of Aden and into a possible hijacking by Somali pirates, Jessie retreats into her lover's journals, written during her final months, journals filled with sketches of potential characters, observations on life and love--as well as drafts of a long new poem in progress, "Swan Song," that seems to be about being in love with someone else, someone new. As Jessie's grief turns to suspicion about the woman she thought she knew so well, her illumination of the poem's meaning begins to lift the constraints of the past and make clear the way toward the future.