Night Stalkers: 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) (Power)

The place: a future New York City torn by racial tension and ripe for rebellion. The revolutionaries have high technology and careful planning on their side, their soldiers are well trained and sworn to secrecy, and their plans are unsuspected . . . until the Night of Power. Caught in the middle of the insurrection are Russell and Dena Grant and their daughter Jennifer, a 13-year-old whose genius-level intelligence saves her lifer more than once after insurrection breaks out. As an interracial couple, the Grants face the problems every couple does-but the Night of Power becomes the ultimate test, of their loyalty to each other and to their separate races.

Understanding our dreams can give us a huge advantage in all facets of life, including work, love, health, and spirituality. Providing practical, step-by-step techniques for gaining access to our dream lives, dream expert Cynthia Richmond charts the landscape of dreams and their rich, perplexing meanings. Analyzing more than 200 real-life dreams that fall into certain important categories -- dreams of departed loved ones, schools and tests, flying, water, public nudity, and sex -- Richmond reveals their common themes, symbols, and significance.

She also takes traditional dream interpretation an important step further, showing us how to transform our insights into life-changing opportunities. To understand our dreams fully, we must look deep into ourselves and ask: What do I want? What am I afraid of? What is my gift? What can I share with the world? The answers will come to us in our sleep, helping us to make powerful changes in our lives. As Richmond shows us with authority and inspiration, the path to a better life is only a dream away.

Hailed by The New York Times as a "formidable young writer ... one who unpacks her characters' emotions with a firm, graceful hand," Nani Power garnered impressive acclaim for her profound debut last year. A darkly lyrical, charged exploration of the double-edged sword of urban anonymity, her novel was deemed "daring" and "one-of-a-kind" by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Crawling at Night is a searing, unforgettable portrait of New York City and of the appetites and self-sabotaging patterns of its displaced inhabitants. Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labors over shopping lists, which at once define and confine him. Alone, he dreams of Mariane, a lost alcoholic waitress who works with him at the Chelsea sushi bar. Ito can't help but live part of every waking day reliving the tragedy he left behind in Japan, and across town Mariane yearns for the baby girl she abandoned almost fifteen years before. In the spinning haze of two nights in Manhattan, Ito and Mariane find themselves careening on a downward spiral through the dark streets of the city. As they navigate a sea of alcohol, sex, and exotic food, we are taken inside the minds of other scarred people they encounter, whose paths, like the streets of the city itself, crisscross and overlap, skimming one another for some sort of connection. Crawling at Night is a dazzling evocation of the way people draw each other in to absorb the shock of loneliness, and how they then either drift out of orbit or are pushed away. With heartbreaking intimacy, Power shows that the dark side of the city and its struggling inhabitants is but an extension of the purest longings and intentions of those very same, very human people. "... profound and thrilling ... Crawling at Night will not only be a sensation of the season, it will also endure." -- Robert Olen Butler "A formidable young writer ... one who can put you in mind of both Mary Gaitskill and Denis Johnson." -- Dwight Garner, the New York Times Book Review "... an effective exploration of the lies we tell ourselves to help us handle the business of living." -- Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World "[Power] has an astonishing talent ... deeply affecting...." -- Bookforum

A challenging read that leaves the reader wondering about the characters.......2005-10-07

Set in Manhattan, Crawling at Night is the story of Ito and Mariane -- a tormented sushi chef and the woman of his dreams. Painful pasts, loneliness and the cruel anonymity of the city nights bind these two together -- and the result is a powerful and literary tale of love and loss.

The characterization is flawless... Nani Power has created two protagonists that touch the reader's soul. Also, Manhattan is the perfect backdrop for this book, for it illustrates the darkness and piercing loneliness the characters endure. This is one of the best dark reads I've had all year. Nani Power is a wonderful new voice in fiction and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future.

The book jacket informs us, in the kind of bio all publicists dream of, that before she wrote this, her debut novel, Nani Power was a caterer in Manhattan, a sandwich seller on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, a chef in a Japanese restaurant, and a nanny to a family living in a trailer. All of these experiences seem relevant when taking into account Crawling At Night but one title is missing; sensualist.

Two discordant protagonists paint the narrative alive in this nihilistic and self-destructive tale of loss and decay. Ito is a Japanese sushi chef with a dark past who runs to New York City to escape his demons, but, as Walden once said, "you cannot run from your past. Wherever you may go, the giant goes with you." Mariane is a raging alcoholic with a similar attachment to her past failings who loses her job when her boss attempts, and fails, to rape her. Ito discovers that he cannot save Mariane from herself, and her past, where she longs to reclaim the daughter she gave up, and therefore he cannot forgive himself for abandoning his violent son.

Told largely in flashbacks blended with the present bitterness, Crawling At Night seethes with sexuality and desire, utilizing it as a means of temporary escape until reality comes crashing back in. Unfortunately, without the sex, and the naked woman on the cover, this story would have lost me in the first five pages. I particularly enjoyed the passages where Ito recalls his time in Japan spent in a whorehouse where he fell in love with a girl named Xiu-xiu while his wife was being eaten alive by cancer at home alone. It was there that I found Nani's real power coming through, in the subtle sifting of sex and death, which is what, at its core, all great literature is about.

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