Which Faulkner Novel Is Most Essential For Understanding His Style?

"You could have chosen anyone. Women throw themselves at you, I'm certain of it. Women who would die to be your chosen… your mate. Why take me, someone unwilling?" "I did not choose you," he said, with a shrug. "Alexandros and Nikolaos did." "Then what's stopping you from setting me free? From choosing another?" I challenged. "I don't want another." ***** Becoming the bride of the most desired and dangerous Alpha is no fairytale, but a bloody nightmare. Lyla Gray, a young human woman, is taken from a life of poverty and dumped into a world of wealth and Lycans... sold into an arranged union with a man she neither trusts nor desires. Her marriage to Zephyrus Wrath, the fearsome and filthy-rich Alpha of a dominant Lycan pack, is not born out of love, but forced by his pack’s traditions. He never wanted a mate. But when duty calls, he bends to take a bride. What he doesn’t expect is to want her. Uncontrollably. Madly. Yet even as the desire is evident between them, he refuses to force the bond. He wants Lyla to choose him willingly. But Lyla is no calm, submissive woman. She challenges him at every turn, determined to frustrate him enough to make him back down and send her away. Yet in doing so, she draws dangerous attention to herself. Eyes that see her as ungrateful, as someone who should feel honored to be Zephyr’s 'Chosen'.

His hands were everywhere, and I let them be. “You know this is wrong,” he murmured against my throat. “I know.” I tilted my head back anyway. He pulled back, eyes dark. “Tell me to stop, Zella.” I looked at the silver in his hair, the jaw that could cut glass, my best friend’s father, twenty years too old and a thousand reasons too dangerous. “Don’t stop,” I whispered. Seven days before my Christmas wedding, I caught my fiancé with my cousin. By morning I had lost everything, my relationship, my job, my future. I walked into the London rain with nothing left. A stranger stopped his car. Offered an umbrella. Gave me a drink instead of the mistake I begged for. Then disappeared before dawn. I never expected to find him again in a darkened hotel room on New Year’s Eve… or to give him the one thing I’d never given anyone. The next morning, when my best friend introduced me to her father, Evander Ashford looked me in the eye and said, “Nice to meet you,” as if he hadn’t already ruined me the night before. He is forbidden. He is twice my age. He is the one man I was never supposed to want. But he is the first person who ever made me feel worth keeping, and the only place this broken heart has ever felt safe. Where Sin Feels Like Home — because sometimes the wrongest man is the only home you’ve ever known.

At the Halloween Carnival, my younger brother and I got separated. Not long after, the headless body of a teenage boy was found in an alley. My father was consumed with rage—he blamed me entirely. He locked me in the chapel and forced me to chant prayers and light candles for my brother's soul for eighty-one days and nights. After that, he had me sold to a brothel in the city's red-light district, so I could spend the rest of my life atoning for my brother. He instructed the brothel manager there to give me only the most depraved clients—and to make sure I was left barely breathing. The brothel manager, paid to follow orders, assigned me to women with twisted tastes. Night after night, I was tormented. When I came down with consumption, I was denied any care. The hands I'd once used to turn pages—the hands of a scholar—were deliberately broken, crushing whatever hope I had left for the future. Eventually, one client went too far, and I died on the bed. The brothel manager had my body rolled up in a straw mat and dumped in a mass grave outside town. A year later, on New Year's Eve, my brother came back.

In the 1860s, Hunter Eldridge is a military veteran with a tumultuous home life and a fraught relationship with his father. When he returns to London, Hunter reluctantly visits the family bookstore, dreading an encounter with his loathsome father. Upon entering he sets eyes on the enchanting Eliza Carlisle. They fall deeply in love—soul mates to the core—and spend fifteen years happily married before tragedy strikes. On Hunter’s birthday, after enjoying a wonderful night with family, he and Eliza are out for a leisurely stroll when a horrific creature of the night attacks them. Eliza is murdered, while Hunter is transformed into a vampire. In this new state, he finds a mentor in his father’s peculiar business partner Garret Wilkins. Hunter also eyes a suspect in his tragic attack and vows revenge. Over the next century, Hunter must rebuild his life as an immortal. He is lucky enough to find love again after years of loneliness and despair. Endless time allows him to unravel the mystery of reincarnation while struggling with a darker side of himself. In Hunter’s continued thirst for vengeance, he realizes death is only the beginning as he reveals a small piece of a bigger event that is about to grip the country.

The novel is mainly about the forgotten British poet/writer named C. J Richards who lived in Burma/Myanmar in colonial times and he believed himself as a Burmophile. He served as I.C.S (Indian Civil Servant) and when he retired from I.C.S service, he was a D.C (District Commissioner) and he left for England a year before Burma gained its independence in 1948. He came to Burma in 1920 to work in civil service after passing the hardest I.C.S examination. He wrote several books on Burma and contributed many monthly articles to Guardian Magazine published in Burma from 1953 to 1974 or 1975. Though he wrote several books which had much literary merit to both communities, Britain and Burma (Myanmar), people failed to recognize him. The story has two parts: one part is set in the contemporary Yangon (then called Rangoon) in 2016 context and a young literary enthusiast named “Lin” found out unexpectedly the forgotten writer’s poetry book and there is surely a good deal of time gap that led him into a quest to know more about the author’s life. The setting is quite different comparing to colonial Burma and independence Myanmar (Burma), early twentieth century and 2016 which is a transitional period in Myanmar. The writer’s life is fictionalized in the novel and most of the facts are taken from his personal stories and other reference books. It is a kind of historical novel with a twist and it has comparatively constructed the two different periods in Myanmar history to convince readers, locally and abroad more about history, authorship, humanity, colonialism, and transitional development in Myanmar today.

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing