Embark on a journey through time while learning about Afghan culture, history, and politics. The unforgettable story of Masih, a teenage boy, who struggles to find his place amidst a chaotic atmosphere of war and political upheaval during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. -Kabul, Afghanistan -- On a winter night in 1980, intelligence officers of the Marxist regime raid Dr. Sharif's house and arrest him. They accuse Sharif of having ties with the mujahidin, anti-government forces. After his arrest, his fourteen-year-old son Masih aspires to quit school and join his mujahidin cousins in Deh Darya, The River Village near Kabul in order to fight against the invading Soviet army. However, Nadia, his mother and a strong-minded woman, opposes his decision. She is determined to keep her son, her only child alive

In early summer, when the sun rises over Hahoe village, its beams dance on the dew-laden foliage of the mountain, and pour down over the water of the river. The air becomes particularly clear and refreshing. Smoke from breakfast-fires rises straight above each house and disappears into the infinity of blue sky. The mist hovering in valleys and swales gradually fades away. There evolves a quality of mysterious sublimity, tranquility, and serenity to the morning that launches a hopeful day in a beautiful way. Soon the cawing crows break the calmness. This village may be the distinct kind that all the great Oriental sages thought over to be a Utopia.

In 1904, the building of a planned community began, and the Henry River Manufacturing Company started producing fine cotton yarns in 1905. In its time, Henry River Mill Village was a completely self-sustained town: it operated under its own currency, generated its own electricity, and churned its own moonshine. While the mill thrived during its operating years, the 12-hour shifts often proved backbreaking for workers. By the time the 12,000 spindles slowed to a halt in the late 1960s, many workers had hoboed out of town looking for higher wages. The mill itself burned down in 1977, but the two-story company store and many of the workers' houses remain, creating an eerie silhouette--and serving as inspiration to both artists and filmmakers.

Village girls torn between two worlds indulge in sex at a very early age. Teen age pregnancy, drug use, dropping out of school and running away from home have become common. Extended families once dependent on young people for labor are left on their own. Young people escape from the villages. Some will return, to die of HIV, privately, hiding their illness silently, adding more shame to their family’s lives. Fathers and mothers and grandparents, illiterate but hard working and honest, are left wondering - How did all this come about so quickly? Why did village life centuries old break apart? This is a story about “Happy”, a young girl from a rural Thai farming village. She is a happy girl because she escaped the confines of her parent’s rice fields and the restrictions of village life, where everyone knows everyone and everyone contributes to village labor. She is happy because she is liberated from all that is loved by her farmer parents and traditional village people. She is free of farm labor and free from helping her extended family harvest rice. “Happy” is free because she entered the “entertainment industry” of Bangkok, Pattaya and Phuket, free to dance naked to the intoxicating sounds of rap music, free and happy to sell her sex. Poverty and lack of education is the sex trafficker. It is more anonymous, but its face is everywhere. It is the mother of ignorance and the father of futility. This is a story written by the only Western man living in a remote Thai village. He writes what he observes. He writes about the characters in his small village: “Happy”, “The Solder Man” and his wife, “The Pumpui Fat Lady”, “Buddhist Monks” who come to rid a place from bad spirits manifesting themselves as pests; bed bugs, cock roaches and fleas. And he writes about “Kitty” a seven year-old girl infected by HIV, brought to the village by her prostitute mother who hopes to find someone to care for “Kitty” before mama dies. It is a story of dramatic social change and the breakup of traditional Thai village life. Keywords - Thailand, Rural Thai Village Life, Prostitution, Social Change, Issan, Teen Pregnancy

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fiery tour de force... I could not put this book down. It truly was terrifying and unutterably beautiful." -Alison Borden, The Denver Post From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, the story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence Wynn and Jack have been best friends since freshman orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars and cooking on a fire came as naturally to him as breathing. When they decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada, they anticipate long days of leisurely paddling and picking blueberries, and nights of stargazing and reading paperback Westerns. But a wildfire making its way across the forest adds unexpected urgency to the journey. When they hear a man and woman arguing on the fog-shrouded riverbank and decide to warn them about the fire, their search for the pair turns up nothing and no one. But: The next day a man appears on the river, paddling alone. Is this the man they heard? And, if he is, where is the woman? From this charged beginning, master storyteller Peter Heller unspools a headlong, heart-pounding story of desperate wilderness survival.

DIVDIVTwo ancient tribes on the verge of making peace become foes once more when a double murder jeopardizes a storyteller’s mission /divDIV Eighty centuries ago, in the frozen land that is now Alaska, a clubfooted male child had been left to die, when a woman named K’os rescued him. Twenty years later and no longer a child, Chakliux occupies the revered role as his tribe’s storyteller. In the neighboring village of the Near River people, where Chakliux will attempt to make peace by wedding the shaman’s daughter, a double murder occurs that sends him on a harsh, enthralling journey in search of the truth about the tragic losses his people have suffered, and into the arms of a woman he was never meant to love./divDIV /divDIVSong of the River is the first book of the Storyteller Trilogy, which also includes Cry of the Wind and Call Down the Stars./div/div

"The Village by the River" by H. Louisa Bedford. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

In 1960s inner city Boston, Stan Zuray had no future. As the Vietnam war took more and more of his friends, and many of those who returned sank further into drugs and despair, Stan looked for meaning and found nothing. His life's purpose lay thirty-three hundred miles northwest, deep in the Tozitna River Valley in the heart of Alaska's frozen interior. Deadly cold, famine, grizzly bears, and one unruly sled dog with a grudge kept Stan on the knife's edge between survival and death. Humbled by the power of nature, the Boston greaser who was destined for prison found a new life in the wild, where one mistake can prove fatal. This is the true story of Stan Zuray's incredible journey; the reformation of a man's heart and mind in the forbidding darkness of Alaska's endless winter.