Free Online Reading The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen

An epic tale of one man’s courage in the face of genocide and his granddaughter’s quest to tell his story

In the heart of the Ottoman Empire as World War I rages, Stepan Miskjian’s world becomes undone. He is separated from his family as they are swept up in the government’s mass deportation of Armenians into internment camps. Gradually realizing the unthinkable—that they are all being driven to their deaths—he fights, through starvation and thirst, not to lose hope. Just before killing squads slaughter his caravan during a forced desert march, Stepan manages to escape, making a perilous six-day trek to the Euphrates River carrying nothing more than two cups of water and one gold coin. In his desperate bid for survival, Stepan dons disguises, outmaneuvers gendarmes, and, when he least expects it, encounters the miraculous kindness of strangers.

The Hundred-Year Walk alternates between Stepan’s saga and another journey that takes place a century later, after his family discovers his long-lost journals. Reading this rare firsthand account, his granddaughter Dawn MacKeen finds herself first drawn into the colorful bazaars before the war and then into the horrors Stepan later endured. Inspired to retrace his steps, she sets out alone to Turkey and Syria, shadowing her resourceful, resilient grandfather across a landscape still rife with tension. With his journals guiding her, she grows ever closer to the man she barely knew as a child. Their shared story is a testament to family, to home, and to the power of the human spirit to transcend the barriers of religion, ethnicity, and even time itself. Read Online Book The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen Full Free

Review :

A "Must read" from the New York Post

"Gripping."
—Outside

"Harrowing."
—Us Weekly

"MacKeen weaves multiple historical sources for corroboration and context, but her main material, Stepan’s unpublished memoir, lands the emotional punch of personal narrative. MacKeen’s added perspective is what makes this book though. A moving portrait of one family’s relationship to the past that offers surprising hope for reconciliation."
—Toronto Globe & Mail

"MacKeen doesn’t shirk from recounting the grisly details of genocide, describing brutal beatings, hunger to the point of cannibalism, and thirst to the point of urine-drinking. With a health-care reporter’s deft touch, she manages to play down the utter pathos, but her dedication to baring gruesome facts is as unfailing as her loyalty to the mission thrust upon her."
—Barron's

"Investigative journalist MacKeen always knew her grandfather escaped the Armenian Genocide before building a new life in the United States, but much of her family’s incredible origins were masked by time, cultural boundaries, and systematic government denial. The author set out to bring her family’s past into the present by translating her grandfather Stepan Miskjian’s exhaustive personal journals, researching archival documents, and traveling to Turkey and Syria to retrace his steps and meet the Muslim family that saved him and other Armenians from certain death. The narrative alternates perspectives between MacKeen’s quest and her grandfather’s odyssey. Through his journals, Stepan came alive. He was no longer solely the victim of a holocaust, but clever, hard-working, and even a prankster. He was a peddler, an entrepreneur, a soldier for the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and a highly valued servant of a powerful Sheikh. VERDICT This previously untold story of survival and personal fortitude is on par with Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken. Further, this is a tale of tracing your family roots and learning about who you are. It will have broad appeal for a wide range of readers."
—Library Journal, STARRED review

"Readers will find themselves drawn into the whirlpool of events, soon forgetting the author's presence . . . powerful, terrible stories about what people are willing to do to other people—but leavened with hope and, ultimately, forgiveness.” —Kirkus Reviews
—Kirkus Reviews

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Free Online Reading The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth

A sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885

In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch.

Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.

With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life. Read Online Book The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer by Skip Hollandsworth Full Free

Review :

“Skip Hollandsworth knows his way around a crime scene…Fans of Erik Larson’s 2003 hit, The Devil in the White City…will find similar pleasures here. This is true crime of high quality. . . Mr. Hollandsworth handles gruesome details with a smart, restrained touch…Chilling."―The New York Times

"Gripping and atmospheric...This true crime page-turner is a balanced and insightful examination of one of the most stirring serial killing sprees in American history, and certainly one of the least well-known."―Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Readers who loved The Devil in the White City now have the pleasure of reading The Midnight Assassin. It paints a compelling portrait of a culture at a turning point – that is, the capitol of Texas at the end of the 19th Century, when the barbarism of the frontier was giving way to the savagery of urban life.”―Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author The Looming Towerand Thirteen Days in September

“As a magazine journalist, Skip Hollandsworth has forged a reputation as one of the best storytellers in the country. The Midnight Assassin takes his singular narrative skills to a thrilling new level. Reading this book is like cracking open a time capsule and breathing the air of a vanished era. In Hollandsworth's hands, one of the ghastliest and most inscrutable crimes in American history becomes hair-raisingly immediate, and the mystery at its center grows ever more mysterious with every page.”―Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln

"Skip Hollandsworth has achieved a literary miracle with The Midnight Assassin. With haunting granularity, Hollandsworth breathes vivid life into a forgotten, century-old tale of the hunt for America's first diabolical serial murderer―set in, of all places, the quaint but upwardly mobile town of Austin, Texas. To read The Midnight Assassin is to experience the lost innocence of a 19th-century capital city set on edge by the unseen monster in its midst."―Robert Draper, The New York Times Magazine and author of Dead Certain 

"Skip Hollandsworth, one of the great true-crime writers of our era, has brought his remarkable talent to bear on one of the most fascinating untold criminal stories in American history. The Midnight Assassin captures a time, a place, and a feeling―booming Texas in the latter 19th century―in a way no nonfiction account I have read has done. A jewel of a book."―S.C. Gwynne, author of Empire of the Summer Moon and Rebel Yell

“Skip Hollandsworth has a bloodhound's nose for a great tale. With The Midnight Assassin, he's found the perfect subject for his many talents. Through scrupulous research and a finely tuned sense of the gothic, Hollandsworth has brought this Texas-sized true-crime story, more than a century old, to vivid, chilling life on the page.”―Hampton Sides, author of Hellhound On His Trail and In the Kingdom of Ice

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Read Online Book Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild by James Campbell

The powerful and affirming story of a father's journey with his teenage daughter to the far reaches of Alaska
 
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell’s cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his fifteen-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him: Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs? 

But once there, Aidan embraced the wild. She even agreed to return a few months later to help the Korths work their traplines and hunt for caribou and moose. Despite windchills of 50 degrees below zero, father and daughter ventured out daily to track, hunt, and trap. Under the supervision of Edna, Heimo’s Yupik Eskimo wife, Aidan grew more confident in the woods. 

Campbell knew that in traditional Eskimo cultures, some daughters earned a rite of passage usually reserved for young men. So he decided to take Aidan back to Alaska one final time before she left home. It would be their third and most ambitious trip, backpacking over Alaska’s Brooks Range to the headwaters of the mighty Hulahula River, where they would assemble a folding canoe and paddle to the Arctic Ocean. The journey would test them, and their relationship, in one of the planet’s most remote places: a land of wolves, musk oxen, Dall sheep, golden eagles, and polar bears.

At turns poignant and humorous, Braving It is an ode to America’s disappearing wilderness and a profound meditation on what it means for a child to grow up—and a parent to finally, fully let go. Read Online Book Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild by James Campbell Full Free

Review :

“With humor and honesty, Campbell brings readers along for the adventure, which is full of swarms of hungry mosquitoes, the fear of grizzly bears, and the push-pull relationship between a teenage girl and her father… Campbell expertly blends facts on the flora, fauna, and general life in the Alaskan bush with his reflections on being middle-aged, with many adventurous years behind him, as opposed to his daughter, whose quest for adventure has only just begun. Informative, humorous, and full of a love of nature.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Some parents will doubtless think the adventure James Campbell took his daughter on was irresponsibly dangerous or just plain crazy. But as a father myself, I’m in envious awe of the bold decision he made and the clarity with which he made it. As Braving It poignantly demonstrates, there is no better teacher than deep wilderness. Here is the essence of good writing—and good parenting, too.”
—Hampton Sides, author of In the Kingdom of Ice
 
“Braving It, the book, is a metaphor for the wilderness—the call of the wild—that James Campbell evokes in this masterfully told story. Every time I set the book down, I pondered the lessons learned, and couldn’t wait for my next sojourn into its pages. When it ended, I longed for the adventure to continue and pined for the beauty of Alaska. So I picked it up and read it again, savoring every page.”
—Eric Blehm, author of The Last Season, Fearless, and Legend
 
“Braving It—tender, wise, translucent—is not just an Alaskan classic, but a parenting classic. I read it with great fondness, hunger, and a deep satisfaction.”
—Rick Bass, author of The Lives of Rocks and Why I Came West
 
“This is a guide book for the heart, step-by-step instructions on how to fall in love with Alaska—the hard work and fear, the thrilling adventure and awe. Along the way, we are given an honest and touching portrait of a middle-aged man coming to terms with his own limitations even as he learns to set his adolescent daughter free from the confines of childhood. A wonderful book for any mental traveler who has yearned to experience Alaska.”
—Eowyn Ivey, author of The Snow Child
 
“Any of us who’ve watched daughters grow up to be strong and capable in the backcountry will delight in this book—it’s a wonderful new world in many ways!”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Wandering Home
 
“In this wonderful book, James Campbell and his teenage daughter set off on a great adventure to one of the most beautiful, and often perilous, places on earth—the Arctic wilderness of Alaska. They face many challenges—whitewater rapids, grizzly bears, bone-numbing cold—but none as daunting for Campbell as guiding his daughter across the great divide between childhood and maturity. Set against a primal landscape of mountains and fast-flowing rivers, Braving It is as simple and powerful as any fairy tale.”
—John Hildebrand, author of Reading the River and The Heart of Things
 
“As a father of daughters and lover of adventure, I found Braving It to be spot on—riveting, profound, open-eyed, and deeply touching. Campbell’s struggle to understand and measure up to the stark and stunning Alaskan wilderness and, more importantly, to his teenage daughter—to find his place in the lives of both—becomes our struggle, too. A must-read for every striving parent and every teen striving to understand his or her parents.”
—Dean King, author of Skeletons on the Zahara and The Feud


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Read Online Book My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth by Wendy E. Simmons

Most people want out of North Korea. Wendy Simmons wanted in.
In My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth, Wendy shares a glimpse of North Korea as it’s never been seen before. Even though it’s the scariest place on Earth, somehow Wendy forgot to check her sense of humor at the border.

But Wendy’s initial amusement and bewilderment soon turned to frustration and growing paranoia. Before long, she learned the essential conundrum of “tourism” in North Korea: Travel is truly a love affair. But, just like love, it’s a two-way street. And North Korea deprives you of all this. They want you to fall in love with the singular vision of the country they’re willing to show you and nothing more.

Through poignant, laugh-out-loud essays and 92 never-before-published color photographs of North Korea, Wendy chronicles one of the strangest vacations ever. Along the way, she bares all while undergoing an inner journey as convoluted as the country itself. Read Online Book My Holiday in North Korea: The Funniest/Worst Place on Earth by Wendy E. Simmons Full Free

Review :

“A death-defying adventure, filled with despair and tiny pieces of hope, and beautiful ― I wish I was as brave as Wendy.” (James Altucher Bestselling author, entrepreneur, podcaster)

“Wendy Simmons traveled to a place few of us will ever go and found herself in the ultimate Potemkin Village. Her intrepid desire to discover the reality behind the stagecraft escorts the reader through My Holiday in North Korea with words and pictures that render this mysterious country both knowable and unknowable, and always fascinating. Simmons’ insightful and funny storytelling evocatively captures the deception, corruption, humor and, ultimately, anguished humanity of a bizarre nation. It’s a wild trip.” (Jon Reiner James Beard Award-winning author of The Man Who Couldn’t Eat)
“My Holiday In North Korea by the very funny Wendy Simmons is a must-read for anyone who wants to lift the veil and spy on the real North Korea. But more than that, it is Ms. Simmons ease at being a traveler to distant and strange lands that gives this book its unusual insight into what people behind a real iron curtain think, and yes, feel.” (Maria T. Lemmon Novelist, a screenwriter, and the author of Confessions of a So-Called Middle Child, and Making It Up as I go Along)

“Wendy Simmons gives a glimpse into NoKo in this humorous and entertaining book. Through her eyes we see the sometimes absurd, yet always aching existence of a country under the thumb of oppressive rule.” (Myles Kennedy Singer/Songwriter Alter Bridge/Slash & The Conspirators)

"Writer and photographer Wendy Simmons shares a personal account of her vacation to one of the most reclusive nations on the planet, North Korea. During her journey she finds herself caught between an international crisis sparked by the release of the Sony Pictures film The Interview and accidentally crashing the ‘wedding’ of a North Korean bride to be." (Gabriel Sanchez Buzzfeed)

“…an irresistible read…. Simmons presents a rare and fascinating look at the tourist's North Korea in a work that is humorous, appalling, and very sad. A highly recommended and revealing glimpse into a secretive land.” -Library Journal


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Read Online Book Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

A summer in Italy turns into a road trip across Tuscany in this sweeping debut novel filled with romance, mystery, and adventure.

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.

But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept from Lina for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and even herself.

People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more. Read Online Book Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch Full Free

Review :

"Lina’s capacity for and understanding of love transform beautifullyover the course of the novel; the book is not solely about her personal romance but also other characters’ interwoven love stories. A good addition for teens with wanderlust." (School Library Journal)

"Lina narrates in a breezy style, her mother's journal entries interwoven to provide revelations at carefully paced intervals.Seasoned with luscious descriptions of Renaissance architecture and Italianfood, a sure bet for fans of romance fiction and armchair travel." (Kirkus)

"Readers will be caught up in this story of romance, family, and what it really means to be loved." (Booklist Online)

"The reader will find it difficult to put this book down." (VOYA starred review)


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