Escapees from 9-5, two guys with innate skills for adventure sail to Hawaii for the good life. Robert Wintner chronicles the sweltering challenges in the fantasy chase on a 1-way trip to the secret life some men ponder and some live to regret. WHIRLAWAY is a repellent yet fascinating parable set in a free-booting era, delivering the beauty and the balm, the headwinds and breaking waves, the love and longing of distant shores. Adventure brings wayward souls home when least expected.
WHIRLAWAY is a tale for those who fail to toe the line, who seek a different dream, who roll the bones and go for broke. Martin and Jack know what they’ve been missing. Meant for more than dead-end jobs and withering youth, adrift in fading dreams and graying horizons, they reach a point-a wall facing a yacht harbor, where they smoke a joint to facilitate a vision. A big picture of balmy weather, women and money leaves only two questions: Why not? Why work, when they could be yachting?
Martin knows a guy who wants to fit in with those who don’t. Nuel is a brain surgeon, fairy godfather with a laser wand and an itch of his own. Nuel agrees to back a loan for a sailing yacht. It’s named for a racehorse, after all. Doctors do well on racehorses, so friends might as well embark on the tropical phase of their destiny. This vision too is facilitated.
Martin and Jack never had more than the wits between them, and though they ache from liquor and drug, they surge inside, casting off for open seas and a blue-sky promise. They inherit the wind and nothing more or less.
Tag: Review
Review: The Deep, Deep Snow
Deputy Shelby Lake was abandoned as a baby, saved by a stranger who found her in the freezing cold. Now, years later, a young boy is missing – and Shelby is the one who must rescue a child.
The only evidence of what happened to 10-year-old Jeremiah Sloan is a bicycle left behind on a lonely road. After a desperate search fails to locate him, the close bonds of Shelby’s hometown begin to fray under the weight of accusations and suspicion. Everyone around her is keeping secrets. Her adoptive father, her best friend, her best friend’s young daughter – they all have something to hide. Even Shelby is concealing a mistake that could jeopardize her career and her future.
Unearthing the lies of the people in Jeremiah’s life doesn’t get the police and the FBI any closer to finding him. As time passes and the case grows cold, Shelby worries that the mystery will stay buried forever under the deep, deep snow. But even the deepest snow melts in the spring.
When a tantalizing clue finally comes to light, Shelby must confront the darkest lie of all. Exposing the truth about Jeremiah will leave no one’s life untouched – including her own.
Review: Emergency Skin (Forward collection)
What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.
An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.
N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
Review: Curtain Call (Short Stories From Antaloor)
A traveling theater company and an actor with a dark secret. This explosive mixture meets the scheming aristocratic world in New Ashos – and misfortune takes its course.
Review: The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm: Eragon
It’s been a year since Eragon departed Alagaësia in search of the perfect home to train a new generation of Dragon Riders.
Now he is struggling with an endless sea of tasks: constructing a vast dragonhold, wrangling with suppliers, guarding dragon eggs and dealing with belligerent Urgals and haughty elves. Then a vision from the Eldunarí, unexpected visitors and an exciting Urgal legend offer a much-needed distraction and a new perspective.
This volume features three original stories set in Alagaësia, interspersed with scenes from Eragon’s own unfolding adventure. Included is an excerpt from the memoir of the unforgettable witch and fortune-teller Angela the herbalist, penned by Angela Paolini, the inspiration for the character, herself!
Relish the incomparable imagination of Christopher Paolini in this thrilling new collection of stories based in the world of the Inheritance Cycle.
Review: Great Illustrated Classics: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles
For generations, readers have enjoyed classic literature. They have delighted in the romance of Jane Austen, thrilled at the adventures of Jules Verne, and pondered the lessons of Aesop. Introduce young readers to these familiar volumes with Great Illustrated Classics. In this series, literary masterworks have been adapted for young scholars. Large, easy-to-read type and charming pen-and-ink drawings enhance the text. Students are sure to enjoy becoming acquainted with traditional literature through these well-loved classics.
Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Could the sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville have been caused by the gigantic ghostly hound that is said to have haunted his family for generations? Arch-rationalist Sherlock Holmes characteristically dismisses the theory as nonsense. And immersed in another case, he sends Watson to Devon to protect the Baskerville heir and observe the suspects close at hand. With its atmospheric setting on the ancient, wild moorland and its savage apparition, The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the greatest crime novels ever written. Rationalism is pitted against the supernatural, good against evil, as Sherlock Holmes seeks to defeat a foe almost his equal.
Review+: Minion: Special Huntress Edition, The Awakening & Audiobooks
All Damali Richards ever wanted to do was create music and bring it to the people. Now she is a Spoken Word artist and the top act for Warriors of Light Records. But come nightfall, she hunts vampires and demons—predators that people tend to dismiss as myth or fantasy. But Damali and her Guardian team cannot afford such delusions, especially now, when a group of rogue vampires have been killing the artists of Warriors of Light and their rival, Blood Music. Strange attacks have also erupted within the club drug-trafficking network and drawn the attention of the police. These killings are a bit out of the ordinary, even for vampires. No neat puncture marks in the neck to show where the life’s blood has been sucked from the body. These bodies have been mutilated beyond recognition, indicating a blood lust and thirst for destruction that surpasses any Damali has encountered before. Damali soon discovers that behind these brutal murders is the most powerful vampire she has ever met, and this seductive beast is coming for her next. But his unholy intentions have also drawn the focus of other hellish dark forces. Soon Damali finds herself being pulled deeper into the vast and horrifying vampire world.
Review: Sharing Violet: A Steamy Student-Teacher Relationship Story
Imagine me, single, middle-aged and content, spending my days teaching English Literature at a university in Southern California. I had created a perfect life for myself, and had every reasonable expectation that it would go on forever. And then Violet showed up.
I’m Violet’s first love. She’s my last.
The stories in this volume are an explicit account of the sex adventures we have had during our first ten years together. They are stories about The Lifestyle, about sex clubs and swinging, about sensual excess and experimentation, about multi-partner and anonymous sexual encounters. More than anything, they are stories that expose my intoxicating and shameful need to see Violet’s beautiful young body handled, pleasured and penetrated by strangers. I have always been deeply aroused when somebody else gives Violet her orgasm – and when she gives theirs to them.
Because I’m an English teacher and a bodybuilder, these stories are peppered with reflections on the body, on fitness and conditioning, and on literature. I catch myself reporting on the politics of couple swaps on the dance floor, and brooding over Tolkien and Saint Augustine in the middle of three-way sex.
These stories also involve another kind of Sharing Violet. We have shared these sexual experiences with each other, and they have for the most part involved sharing her body with other lovers, men and women.
Now, we’re sharing them with you.
Review: The Man on the Mountaintop
dapted from Susan Trott’s best-selling novels, The Holy Man and The Holy Man’s Journey, The Man on the Mountaintop tells the story of Holy Man Joe, a humble and unassuming 72-year-old man who lives in a hermitage at the top of a mountain. Thousands of hopefuls line the single-file path leading to his door, seeking his wisdom. The pilgrims bring a multitude of modern-day problems, sorrows, and grievances. From the arrogant and wealthy man intent on cheating his way to the front of the line to the alcoholic who gradually builds the physical and mental strength needed to quit his addiction, The Man on the Mountaintop is an uplifting parable full of life lessons, powerfully told with compassion, wit, and humor.