Böcker av David Rotenberg

The first book in the Shanghai Tetralogy - City Rising - starts on the Hua Shan (the Holy Mountain) 250 years before Christ where the First Emperor, the most powerful man the world to that time had ever known, bequeaths a talisman to his three trusted followers: the BodyGuard, his favorite Courtesan, and his Head Confucian - a narwhal tusk with carvings depicting the growth for the next 2500 years of a city at the Bend in the River, Shanghai. The warning from the First Emperor before he commits suicide is to watch for the White Ships on Water - and so the progeny of the three who are entrusted with the Tusk do, and then in 1841, they arrive. British Men of War ships - and Opium.City Rising tells the story of two destitute Baghdadi boys who become opium lords - and the battles against the powerful British Opium companies - and the boys' eventual love of the City at the Bend in the River - Shanghai.

One of the world''s foremost acting teachers - who taught such actors as Rachel McAdams, Tatiana Maslany, Scott Speedman, and Sarah Gadon to name but a few - shares 30-plus years of insight into the art of acting.

It's a future time. A time of extremely long life spans, almost perfect health, human colonization of planets throughout the galaxy-and dreamlessness. It has been over three hundred years since any human being's sleep has been disturbed by the anarchy of dreams. Centuries earlier, at the time of the first alien contacts, humanity made the proverbial trade with the devil-its basic freedoms in exchange for security and safety. An unexpected side effect of this swap was the gradual cessation of dreaming. Then an S3 fully armed starship disappears through a hole in space-A GATEWAY. All that remains of the huge vessel is a scattercast message heard throughout the galaxy:YOUR MACHINES ARE USELESS HERE. YOUR WAY OF THINKING IS OF NO VALUE HERE. FOR BEYOND HERE LIE DREAMS!!The Dreamers are in trouble. Cas never made it off of Moscovy and is shortly going to be a prisoner of a powerful Russo matriarch. The other four dreamers are dealing with Mama (the AIU) who seems to have lost her mind. They land in order to get Mama a "doctor" and stumble across cave drawings-and a blind painter- who is clearly one of them. Meanwhile back on New Omaha Beach, Danazir Yi Qal breaks out of the ether dome and tries to find the Outlanders-the only ones not infiltrated by Cyrus Malone and his S3 thugs. Slowly it's coming into view for Mickelmast that Homer's great poem The Iliad somehow holds the secret to all of this-to the Gateway-to Dreaming-to everything.

"Rotenberg tells the tale in short, action-packed chapters that go down like chilled vodka shots." -Toronto Life-Must Reads review for Murder of Crows"This novel heats up and never stops." -Globe and Mail review for Placebo EffectTHE DREAM CHRONICLES envisions a potential future for humankind as security keeps trumping individual freedom. It is a warning and a celebration of the human spirit. It is adventure on the high seas of space: pirates and slavers and huge governments are in hot pursuit of the Dreamers; The ENTREPREN TRADERS (who control all interplanetary commerce and the life-extension drug Kiltrin) watch carefully, aware that stability is the greatest asset their business has and these Dreamers are a new chaotic reality in the galaxy; and then there is the ever powerful S3 with its head offices in New Omaha Beach on planet Earth-scheming, spinning the webs of its ancient spy master CYRUS MALONEY III. With each new encounter the intrepid dreamers learn more about their abilities and seek out more of their kind. But the galaxy is a dangerous place. Everyone they meet could be a member of S3, could turn them in for the huge rewards offered for them by the REBEL COLONIES or the UNITED DOMINION OF PLANETS. Even the pirates from whom they took the starship are in hot pursuit.But before the young adventurers is the possibility of glory. Of completion. Of dreams. Of human kind's shared destiny.