“Why do you always write magic in the sand of every beach you go to?” he asked as he watched her finger move through the sand in a rhythm writing the word. She smiled and said, “Because there is magic in the sand.” “What do you mean?” he further asked. “When you feel the sand under your feet,” she scrunched up her toes in the sand as she spoke. “And feel every granule of it, the noise of your thoughts suddenly sound like the waves. Just like magic.” Me

Longlisted for the National Book Award "Mind-blowing." —Kim Gordon DEADPAN, EPIC, AND SEARINGLY CHARISMATIC, A Sand Book chronicles climate change and climate grief, gun violence and bystanderism, state violence and complicity, mourning and ecstasy, sex and love, and the transcendent shock of prophecy, tracking new dimensions of consciousness for our strange and desperate times.

Four young misfits find themselves living in a strictly disciplined temple community where they become friends while also learning to do crafts and to use their powers, especially magic

A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.

Amber Sand is not a witch. The Sand family magical gene somehow leapfrogged over her. But she did get one highly specific bewitching talent: she can see true love. As a matchmaker, Amber's pretty far down the sorcery food chain (even birthday party magicians rank higher), but after five seconds of eye contact, she can envision anyone's soul mate. Amber works at her mother's magic shop -- Windy City Magic -- in downtown Chicago, and she's confident she's seen every kind of happy ending there is: except for one--her own. (The Fates are tricky jerks that way.) So when Charlie Blitzman, the mayor's son and most-desired boy in school, comes to her for help finding his father's missing girlfriend, she's distressed to find herself falling for him. Because while she can't see her own match, she can see his -- and it's not Amber. How can she, an honest peddler of true love, pursue a boy she knows full well isn't her match? The Best Kind of Magic is set in urban Chicago and will appeal to readers who long for magic in the real world. With a sharp-witted and sassy heroine, a quirky cast of mystical beings, and a heady dose of adventure, this novel will have you laughing out loud and questioning your belief in happy endings.

The Anatomy of Waves is a love letter to all the versions of myself that I never was and to my home made of waves and lava.This poetry collection is divided into five chapters forming a story of loss, trauma, joy, ocean waves, islands, finding a home and oneself. They sing from breaking and healing, from running and arriving. Inspired by the nature of the Azores and the wonders of the soul, these poems will take you on a journey deep inside yourself. Be careful, you might get lost in your own wilderness.

A boy befriends a wave at the seashore and brings her home.

In this wry and exhilarating coming-of-age story, a prizewinning poet poignantly looks back at his adolescent surfing years. As a disenchanted, unemployed English professor, Thad Ziolkowski decides one day to sneak away from his temp job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. In the meager cold waves, he contemplates how he could have possibly become a semidepressed, chain-smoking, aimless man when, for a few shining years of his boyhood, he was invincible. His lapsed love affair with the ocean begins amid the late-sixties counterculture in coastal Florida. After his parents’ divorce, nine-year-old Thad escapes from his difficult family—notably a new brooding and explosive stepfather—by heading for the thrilling, uncharted waters of the local beach. In the embrace of the surf, he is able to stay offshore for years, until his life is upended once again, this time by a double tragedy that deposits him at a crossroads between a life in the waves and a life on land. Lyrical and disarmingly funny, On a Wave is a glorious portrait of youth that reminds readers of Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time. “A sharp, self-conscious portrait of the artist as a young grommet.” —The New Yorker

A 'big-book' edition of Alison Lester's all-time favourite Australian beach book, perfect for library and classroom storytimes.

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