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In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat, returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz. Her beautiful illustrations, printed in full-color, accompany the text throughout. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.


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Can fear kill? There are those who believe so--but Amelia Peabody is skeptical. A respected Egyptologist and amateur sleuth, Amelia has foiled felonious schemes from Victoria's England to the Middle East. And she doubts that it was a Nineteenth-Dynasty mummy's curse that caused the death of a night watchman in the British Museum. The corpse was found sprawled in the mummy's shadow, a look of terror frozen on the guard's face. What--or who--killed the unfortunate man is a mystery that seems too intriguingly delicious for Amelia to pass up, especially now that she, her dashing archaeologist husband, Emerson, and their precocious son, Ramses, are back on Britain's shores. But a contemporary curse can be as lethal as one centuries old--and the foggy London thoroughfares can be as treacherous as the narrow, twisting alleyways of Cairo after dark--when a perpetrator of evil deeds sets his murderous sights on his relentless pursuer...Amelia Peabody! Can fear kill? There are those who believe so--but Amelia Peabody is skeptical. A respected Egyptologist and amateur sleuth, Amelia has foiled felonious schemes from Victoria's England to the Middle East. And she doubts that it was a Nineteenth-Dynasty mummy's curse that caused the death of a night watchman in the British Museum. The corpse was found sprawled in the mummy's shadow, a look of terror frozen on the guard's face. What--or who--killed the unfortunate man is a mystery that seems too intriguingly delicious for Amelia to pass up, especially now that she, her dashing archaeologist husband, Emerson, and their precocious son, Ramses, are back on Britain's shores. But a contemporary curse can be as lethal as one centuries old--and the foggy London thoroughfares can be as treacherous as the narrow, twisting alleyways of Cairo after dark--when a perpetrator of evil deeds sets his murderous sights on his relentless pursuer...Amelia Peabody!


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Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature -- a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.   In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes. Seriously funny, stunning, and tragic, eternally fresh, imaginative, and altogether remarkable, A Canticle for Leibowitz retains its ability to enthrall and amaze. It is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.


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The kingdom of God is a beautiful revolution. Marked by the radical life, love, servanthood, and humility of Jesus, it stands in stark contrast to the values and ways of the world. Regrettably, many who profess to follow Christ have bought into the world's methods, seeking to impose a sort of Christianized ethical kingdom through politics and control. In this illuminating sequel to his bestselling book The Myth of a Christian Nation, Dr. Gregory Boyd points us to a better way-a way of seeing and living that is consistent with the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom. Between the extremes of passivity on the one hand and political holy war on the other lies the radical, revolutionary path of imitating Jesus. In twelve areas ranging from racial and social issues to stewardship of the planet, this book will convince and inspire you to live a Christlike life of revolt and beauty-and it will help you attain a practical lifestyle of kingdom impact.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The church was established to serve the world with Christ-like love, not to rule the world. It is called to look like a corporate Jesus, dying on the cross for those who crucified him, not a religious version of Caesar. It is called to manifest the kingdom of the cross in contrast to the kingdom of the sword. Whenever the church has succeeded in gaining what most American evangelicals are now trying to get -- political power -- it has been disastrous both for the church and the culture. Whenever the church picks up the sword, it lays down the cross. The present activity of the religious right is destroying the heart and soul of the evangelical church and destroying its unique witness to the world. The church is to have a political voice, but we are to have it the way Jesus had it: by manifesting an alternative to the political, 'power over,' way of doing life. We are to transform the world by being willing to suffer for others -- exercising 'power under,' not by getting our way in society -- exercising 'power over.'


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The bodies are found in towns and cities around Puget Sound. The young women who are the victims had nothing in common--except the agony of their final moments. But somebody carefully chose them to stalk, capture, and torture.  .  . a depraved killer whose cunning is matched only by the depth of his bloodlust. But the dying has only just begun. And next victim will be the most shocking of all.  .  .

 Praise for Gregg Olsen's Novels

"Grabs you by the throat." --Kay Hooper

"Wickedly clever! Genuinely twisted."--Lisa Gardner

 "As Good As It Gets." --Lee Child

"An Irresistible Page-Turner." --Kevin O'Brien


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In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders even as he was dodging shootouts with feuding Afghan warlords and surviving an eight-day armed abduction by the Taliban. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort.


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**A chilling new tale of literary intrigue from the author of the international sensation *The Oxford Murders*



 When Guillermo Martínez 's novel *The Oxford Murders* was first published in the United States, *The New York Times Book Review* called it "a scholarly whodunit [for] anyone who loves a good mystery." Now Martínez returns with a worthy followup: the mesmerizing *The Book of Murder*. A young writer finds himself unexpectedly tangled up in the story of Luciana, his former assistant and Kloster, bestselling author and rival. What he discovers about the deaths surrounding Luciana will make him question everything he had always believed-and taken for granted-about chance and calculation, cause and effect.


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*Once in nine lives,something extraordinary happens...*****The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight.Everyone warned that Homer would always be an “underachiever,” never as playful or independent as other cats. But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo, a tiny daredevil with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease and leapt five feet into the air to catch flies in mid-buzz. He survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen’s life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer’s unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that inspired Gwen daily and transformed her life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized Homer had taught her the most important lesson of all: Love isn’t something you see with your eyes. **Homer’s Odyssey** is the once-in-a-lifetime story of an extraordinary cat and his human companion. It celebrates the refusal to accept limits—on love, ability, or hope against overwhelming odds. By turns jubilant and moving, it’s a memoir for anybody who’s ever fallen completely and helplessly in love with a pet.*From the Hardcover edition.*


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What The Vatican Doesn't Want You To Know:

The lies. The conspiracies. The cover-ups. The truth.

Deep behind the walls of the world's holiest site is a dense network of lies, corruption, and conspiracies fueling the Vatican's vast and unchecked influence on world events. From the Holy Orders that defied the commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" to the scandals splashed across international headlines, the Vatican is no longer shrouded in mystery, legend, and secrecy. 

It's all here:

The shocking and unsolved murder of the corrupt Vatican financier known as "God's Banker"

Real-life exorcism--and shocking rumors of Satanism

The Vatican's startling views on extraterrestrials and end-of-world prophesies

The Vatican's hidden ties to Nazi Germany and the Mafia

The bizarre rituals of the ultraconservative Opus Dei

The Vatican's ruthless 500-year war with the Freemasons

Pope Pius XII's anti-Semitic indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews and the Holocaust

And much more!

This utterly fascinating, unflinching account is the most definitive exposé ever written about the most secretive institution in the world.

H. Paul Jeffers is the author of The Bilderberg Conspiracy, Freemasons: Inside the World's Oldest Secret Society and Freemasons in America: Inside the Secret Society, among fifty other books. He has appeared on C-SPAN, Fox News, and The History Channel.


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The sword is the most revered of all of man’s weapons. Although the club is older, the knife more universal, and the firearm much more efficient, it is to the sword that most decoration, myth, mysticism and reverence has been given. The katana has been called “The Soul of the Samurai,” the Vikings lavished love, care and attached wonderful names to their weapons. The sword has been the symbol of Justice, of Vengeance, and of Mercy. No one artifact has so captured the imagination as has the sword. As our society has grown more and more advanced, and more reliant on technology, there has been an increased interest in the weapons of the past. The romance of the sword is very much alive—but movies, books and fiction of all types have romanticized the past, and particularly the sword, beyond all recognition of the real thing. Drawing on information from grave excavations, illustrations of battle scenes, and many classical and medieval literary sources, this book discusses how contemporaries showed swords were used. Building on Oakeshott and other authoritative writers on the subject, this volume, representing ten years of writing and a lifetime of experience, will add to the body of knowledge of the history of swords by illustrating not only the beauty of the form of the sword, but also their beauty of function.


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LURED FROM THE SAFETY OF HOME -- INTO THE JAWS OF HELL"America's principal chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers" (The Boston Book Review), Harold Schechter shatters the myth that violent crime is a modern phenomenon -- with this seamless true account of unvarnished horror from the early twentieth century. Journey inside the demented mind of Albert Fish -- pedophile, sadist, and cannibal killer -- and discover that bloodlust knows no time or place....On a warm spring day in 1928, a kindly, white-haired man appeared at the Budd family home in New York City, and soon persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Budd to let him take their adorable little girl, Grace, on an outing. The Budds never guessed that they had entrusted their child to a monster. After a relentless six-year search and nationwide press coverage, the mystery of Grace Budd's disappearance was solved -- and a crime of unparalleled gore and revulsion was revealed to a stunned American public. What Albert Fish did to Grace Budd, and perhaps fifteen other young children, caused experts to pronounce him the most deranged human being they had ever seen.


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When you like, live forever, what's there to live for?'About three things I was absolutely certain. First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe. Second, there was a vampire part of him which I assumed was wildly out of his control that wanted me dead. And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me.'And thus Belle Goose falls in love with the mysterious and sparkly Edwart Mullen in this hilarious send-up of Twilight. Pale and klutzy, Belle arrives in Switchblade, Oregon looking for adventure, or at least an undead classmate. She soon discovers Edwart, a super-hot computer nerd with zero interest in girls. After witnessing a number of strange events Edwart leaves his hash browns untouched at lunch! - he saves her from a flying snowball and Belle has a dramatic revelation: Edwart is a vampire. But how can she convince Edwart to bite her and transform her into his eternal bride, especially when he seems to find girls so repulsive?Complete with romance, danger, insufficient parental guardianship, creepy stalker-like behaviour, and a vampire prom, Nightlight is the hysterical tale of a vampire-obsessed girl, looking for love in all the wrong places.


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Perhaps the most compelling gangster tale is one that has been, until now, surprisingly well hidden. This is the story of the Outfit: the secret organised crime cartel that began its reign in prohibition era Chicago before becoming the puppet master of Hollywood, Las Vegas and Washington DC. Moving with purpose and panache, the Outfit blended effortlessly with underworld corporate heads, Hollywood moguls, and national political icons. It was only after a fifty-year run that their world started to crumble in the 1970s. With extensive research including recently released FBI files, original interviews with Outfit associates and members of the Fourth Estate (who pursued the Outfit for over forty years) and first ever access to the journals of Humphreys' long-in-hiding widow, veteran investigative journalist Gus Russo uncovers sixty years of corruption and influence.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Killing Is An Art**

In life, they were flawed. In death, they are perfect works of art--killed, preserved, and carefully molded into replicas of Michelangelo's most celebrated creations. Only The Sculptor can bring forth their true beauty and teach the world to appreciate his gift.

**He Is The Master**

FBI Special Agent Sam Markham has a reputation for tracking serial killers, but this artful adversary is meticulous, disciplined, and more ruthless than any he's encountered. The only clue is a note dedicating the latest "statue" to Cathy Hildebrant, an art historian who shares Sam's fear that the killing has just begun.

**And She Is The Perfect Subject**

In a quiet Rhode Island town, The Sculptor shapes his latest macabre creation, waiting for Cathy to draw nearer so that his message can be understood at last. And the only way to save her is for Sam to unlock a psychopath's twisted mind before his final, terrifying masterpiece is revealed. . .

"Funaro provides clever plotting and plenty of suspense." --John Lutz, *New York Times* bestselling author 

"Fast-paced, exciting. . .Funaro delivers gasp-out-loud terror and relentless suspense. A genuine page-turner!" --Kevin O'Brien, *New York Times* bestselling author

"It reminded me of why I loved *Silence of the Lambs* so much." --Gregg Olsen

"A stone cold thrill ride! Unique and unexpected twists make this one a keeper!" --Lisa Jackson, *New York Times * bestselling author


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The Boatwrights just won 318 million dollars in the GeorgiaState lottery. It's going to be the worst day of their lives.When Shaw McBride and Romeo Zderko pull up at a convenience store off I-95 in Georgia, their only thought is to fix a leaky tire and be on their way again to Florida-away from their dull Ohio tech-support jobs. But this happens to be the store from which a 318,000,000 million dollar Jackpot ticket has just been sold -- and when a pretty clerk accidentally reveals to Shaw the identity of the winning family, he hatches a ferociously audacious scheme: He and Romeo will squeeze the family for half their prize. That night, he visits the Boatwright home and takes the family hostage, while Romeo patrols the streets nearby, prepared to murder the Boatwrights' loved ones at any sign of resistance. At first, the family offers none. But Shaw's plot depends on maintaining constant fear-merciless, unfaltering terror-and soon, under the pressure, everyone's sanity begins to unravel . . .  At once frightening, comic, and suspenseful, RAVENS is a wholly original and utterly compelling novel from one of our most talented writers.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

They were four exceptional soldiers, a new generation asked to save an army that had been hollowed out after Vietnam. They survived the military's brutal winnowing to reach its top echelon. They became the Army's most influential generals in the crucible of Iraq. Collectively, their lives tell the story of the Army over the last four decades and illuminate the path it must travel to protect the nation over the next century. Theirs is a story of successes and failures, of ambitions achieved and thwarted, of the responsibilities and perils of command. The careers of this elite quartet show how the most powerful military force in the world entered a major war unprepared, and how the Army, drawing on a reservoir of talent that few thought it possessed, saved itself from crushing defeat against a ruthless, low-tech foe. In *The Fourth Star*, you'll follow:•Gen. John Abizaid, one of the Army's most brilliant minds. Fluent in Arabic, he forged an unconventional path in the military to make himself an expert on the Middle East, but this unique background made him skeptical of the war he found himself leading. •Gen. George Casey Jr., the son of the highest-ranking general to be killed in the Vietnam War. Casey had grown up in the Army and won praise for his common touch and skill as a soldier. He was determined not to repeat the mistakes of Vietnam but would take much of the blame as Iraq collapsed around him. •Gen. Peter Chiarelli, an emotional, take-charge leader who, more than any other senior officer, felt the sting of the Army's failures in Iraq. He drove his soldiers, the chain of command, and the U.S. government to rethink the occupation plans–yet rarely achieved the results he sought.•Gen. David Petraeus, a driven soldier-scholar. Determined to reach the Army's summit almost since the day he entered West Point, he sometimes alienated peers with his ambition and competitiveness. When he finally got his chance in Iraq, he–more than anyone–changed the Army's conception of what was possible. Masterfully written and richly reported, *The Fourth Star* ranges far beyond today's battlefields, evoking the Army's tumultuous history since Vietnam through these four captivating lives and ultimately revealing a fascinating irony: In an institution that prizes obedience, the most effective warriors are often those who dare to question the prevailing orthodoxy and in doing so redefine the American way of war.


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**Now in paperback—the “amazing”( James Bradley, *New York Times* bestselling author of *Flags of Our Fathers*) never-before-told story of the greatest escape of the Second World War.**



In 1944 the OSS set out to recover more than 500 downed airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time.


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Every year, NPR asks a writer to compose an original story with a Christmas theme. In 2008, Gregory Maguire reinvented the Hans Christian Andersen classic "The Little Match Girl" for a new time and new audiences.  When it was first translated from Danish and published in England in the mid-nineteenth century, audiences likely interpreted the Little Match Girl′s dying visions of lights and a grandmother in heaven as metaphors of religious salvation. Maguire′s new piece, entitled "Matchless," reilluminates Andersen′s classic, using his storytelling magic to rekindle Andersen′s original intentions, and to suggest transcendence, the permanence of spirit, and the continuity that links the living and the dead.


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In his first book of stories since The Bridegroom was published in 2000 (“Finely wrought . . . Every story here is cut like a stone.”–Chicago Sun-Times), National Book Award-winning Ha Jin gives us a collection that delves into the experience of Chinese immigrants in America. With the same profound attention to detail that is a hallmark of his previous acclaimed works of fiction, Ha Jin depicts here the full spectrum of immigrant life and the daily struggles–some minute, some grand–faced by these men, women, and children. A lonely composer takes comfort in the songs of his girlfriend’s parakeet; a group of young children declare their wish to change their names so that they might sound more “American,” unaware of how deeply this will sadden their grandparents; a Chinese professor of English attempts to defect with the help of a reluctant former student. All of Ha Jin’s characters struggle in situations that stir within them a desire to remain attached to their native land and traditions, as they also explore and take advantage of the newfound freedom, both social and economic, that life in a new country offers. In these deeply moving, acutely insightful, and often strikingly humorous stories we are reminded again of the storytelling prowess of this superb writer.


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Internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Henning Mankell will be published for the first time in Canada by Knopf Canada with **Depths**.October 1914: the destroyer Svea emerged from the Stockholm archipelago bearing south-southeast. On board was Lars Tobiasson-Svartman, a naval engineer charged with making depth soundings to find a navigable channel for the Swedish navy. As a child Tobiasson-Svartman was fascinated by measurement; nothing is as magical as exact knowledge. His instinct for his profession is reflected in the comfortable domesticity he enjoys with his wife – herself meticulous in every detail.Close to the waters where soundings are taken Tobiasson-Svartman alights on a barren skerry, presumed uninhabited, and is surprised to discover there a young woman, Sara Fredrika. Despite her almost feral appearance, something about her strikes him to the core. The mission is a success and the Svea returns to Gothenburg. Tobiasson-Svartman, however, remains haunted by this chance encounter; his equilibrium has been disturbed, and he is now compelled to find any pretence to return to the remote islet.In **Depths** Mankell confirms his status as a writer deserving acclaim beyond the crime genre. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel as tense and compelling in every way as the Wallander series, but also powerful, moving and ultimately tragic.*From the Hardcover edition.*


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A haunting and powerful story about war-torn Africa, a mystical orphan boy, and the power of narrative to give a chaotic world order. In the hot African night a single gunshot cracks the silence. Jose Antonio traces the sound to the stage of the local theatre company, where he finds Nelio, the young prophetical leader of the city's street kids, crumpled in blood. Nelio refuses to be taken to the hospital but instead tells Jose his life's story: how bandits raided his village, his daring escape, and his struggle to survive on the streets. Jose is irrevocably changed. He becomes the Chronicler of the Winds, revealing Nelios's magical tale to all who will listen.


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A beautifully illustrated novel about a mouse, her friendship with Audubon's apprentice, and her search for home.   Beneath the crackled and faded painting of a horse, underneath the worn and dusty floorboards of the dining room, lives Celeste, a mouse who spends her days weaving baskets, until one day she is thrust into the world above. Here Celeste encounters danger—and love—unlike any she's ever imagined. She dodges a hungry cat and witnesses the brutality of hunting for the first time. She makes friends with a singing thrush named Cornelius, a talkative osprey named Lafayette, and Joseph, Audubon's young apprentice. All the while, Celeste is looking for a new home. Is her home in the toe of a worn boot? Nestled in Joseph's pocket? Or in the dollhouse in the attic, complete with mouse-size furniture perfect for Celeste? In the end, Celeste discovers that home is really the place deep inside her heart, where friendships live.


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This book is the perfect gift for the discriminating linguist. Unleash your inner gladiator with hundreds of modern putdowns and comebacks -- all with the superiority and anonymity of the ancient tongue. For example, it features classical kiss-offs such as żYou want a part of me? Bring it on!żż: żVisne partem mei capere? Comminus aganus!.ż Spice up your snowboarding speak -- żSuper rad! Iżm Stoked!: żMaxime radicitus! Flagro!ż Thanks to this little book, you too can tap the awesome power of Latin to dismay the ignorant multitudes. And, best of all, youżll be able to insult and abuse one and all in perfect safety, using a language that everyone respects but practically no one understands. żAnd have a nice day!ż: żEt futue te ipsum!ż Illustrations.


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Self-published in 2003, Hilary Thayer Hamann’s Anthropology of an American Girl touched a nerve among readers, who identified with the sexual and intellectual awakening of its heroine, a young woman on the brink of adulthood.  A moving depiction of the transformative power of first love, Hamann’s first novel follows Eveline Auerbach from her high school years in East Hampton, New York, in the 1970s through her early adulthood in the moneyed, high-pressured Manhattan of the 1980s. Centering on Evie’s fragile relationship with her family and her thwarted love affair with Harrison Rourke, a professional boxer, the novel is both a love story and an exploration of the difficulty of finding one’s place in the world.  As Evie surrenders to the dazzling emotional highs of love and the crippling loneliness of heartbreak, she strives to reconcile her identity with the constraints that all relationships—whether those familial or romantic, uplifting to the spirit or quietly detrimental—inherently place on us. Though she stumbles and strains against social conventions, Evie remains a strong yet sensitive observer of the world around her, often finding beauty and meaning in unexpected places. Newly edited and revised since its original publication, Anthropology of an American Girl is an extraordinary piece of writing, original in its vision and thrilling in its execution.       From the Hardcover edition.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

It will soon be close to a century since the outbreak of the First World War, yet as   military historian Hew Strachan argues in this brilliant and authoritative one-volume   history, the legacy of the "war to end all wars" is with us still. Written in crisp,   compelling prose and enlivened with vivid photographs—including early color   photographs—*The First World War* re-creates this world-altering conflict both on   and off the battlefield. Strachan offers a fresh and truly global perspective on how the   Great War not only redrew the map of the world but also set in motion the most   dangerous conflicts of today, especially in such hot spots as the Middle East and the   Balkans. Deeply learned and powerfully written, *The First World War* is a   landmark work of contemporary history.


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In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power. England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.


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Chapter OneWar: "Now or Never"War is . . . an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.—carl von clausewitzSince i have been at the foreign office," arthur nicolson noted at Whitehall in May 1914, "I have not seen such calm waters."1 Europe had, in fact, refused to tear itself to pieces over troubles in faraway lands: Morocco in 1905-06 and in 1911; Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908-09; Libya in 1911-12; and the Balkans in 1912-13. The Anglo- German naval arms race had subsided, as had the fears about the Berlin- to-Baghdad Railway, since Berlin had run out of money for such gargantuan enterprises. Russia had overcome its war with Japan (1904-05), albeit at a heavy price in terms of men and ships lost and domestic discontent. Few desolate strips of African or Asian lands remained to be contested, and Berlin and London were preparing to negotiate a "settlement" of the Portuguese colonies. France and Germany had not been at war for forty-three years and Britain and Russia for fifty-eight.Partition of the Continent by 1907 into two nearly equal camps-the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy, and the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia-seemed to militate against metropolitan Europe being dragged into petty wars on its periphery. Kurt Riezler, foreign-policy adviser to German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, cagily argued that given this model of great-power balance, future wars "would no longer be fought but calculated."2 Guns would no longer fire, "but have a voice in the negotiations." In other words, no power would risk escalating minor conflicts into a continental war; instead, each would "bluff" the adversary up the escalatory ladder, stopping just short of war in favor of diplomatic settlement. Peace seemed assured.Domestically, for most well-off and law-abiding Europeans, the period prior to 1914 was a golden age of prosperity and decency. The "red specter" of Socialism had lost much of its threat. Real wages had shot up almost 50 percent between 1890 and 1913. Trade unions had largely won the right to collective bargaining, if not to striking, and their leaders sat in parliaments. Many workers had embraced social imperialism, believing that overseas trade and naval building translated into high-paying jobs at home. Germany had paved the path toward social welfare with state-sponsored health insurance, accident insurance, and old-age pensions. Others followed. Women were on the march for the vote. To be sure, there was trouble over Ireland, but then official London hardly viewed Ireland as a European matter.Paris, as usual, was the exception. The capital had been seething with political excitement since January 1914, when Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro, had launched a public campaign to discredit Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux-ostensibly over a new taxation bill.3 When Calmette published several letters from Caillaux's personal correspondence, Henriette Caillaux became alarmed. First, that correspondence could make public her husband's pacifist stance vis-à- vis Germany during the Second Moroccan Crisis in 1911; second, she knew that it included love letters from her to Joseph that showed she had conducted an affair with him at a time when he was still married. The elegant Madame Caillaux took matters into her own hands: On 16 March she walked into Calmette's office, drew a revolver from her muff, and shot the editor four times at point-blank range. Her trial on charges of murder dominated Paris in the summer of 1914. Two shots fired by a Serbian youth at Sarajevo on 28 June paled in comparison.Gavrilo Princip's murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Habsburg throne, and his morganatic wife, Sophie Chotek, caused no immediate crisis in the major capitals. The dog days of summer were upon Europe. There ensued a mad rush to escape urban heat for cooler climes.4 French president Raymond Poincaré and prime minister René Viviani were preparing to board the battleship France for a leisurely cruise through the Baltic Sea to meet Tsar Nicholas II at St. Petersburg. Kaiser Franz Joseph took the waters at Bad Ischl. Wilhelm II was about to board the royal yacht Hohenzollern for his annual cruise of the Norwegian fjords. Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg was off to the family estate at Hohenfinow to play Beethoven on the grand piano and to read Plato (in the original Greek). Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow saw no need to curtail his honeymoon at Lucerne.Nor were military men much concerned. German chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke struck out for Karlsbad, Bohemia, to meet his Austro-Hungarian counterpart, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf. War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn was off to vacation in the East Frisian Islands. Navy Secretary Alfred von Tirpitz left Berlin for St. Blasien, in the Black Forest. Habsburg war minister Alexander von Krobatin took the cure at Bad Gastein.Even the less prominent escaped the July heat. Sigmund and Martha Freud, like Moltke and Conrad, vacationed at Karlsbad. V. I. Lenin left Cracow to hike in the Tatra Mountains. Leon Trotsky took solace in a small apartment in the Vienna Woods. Adolf Hitler was back in Munich after a military court-martial at Salzburg had found the draft dodger unfit for military service ("too weak; incapable of bearing arms").5But had the exodus of European leaders been all that innocent? Or had some deeper design lain at its root? The first move in what is popularly called the July Crisis rested with Vienna. Few in power lamented the passing of Franz Ferdinand. He was too Catholic; he detested the Czechs, Magyars, and Poles within the empire; and he distrusted the ally in Rome. But the spilling of royal blood demanded an official response.for more than half a dozen years prior to 1914, Conrad von Hötzendorf had pressed war on his government as the only solution to the perceived decline of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Daily, the frail, thin, crew-cut chief of the General Staff had stood at his desk and drafted contingency war plans against "Austria's congenital foes" Italy and Serbia as well as against Albania, Montenegro, and Russia, or against combinations of these states. Each year, he had submitted them to Kaiser Franz Joseph and to Foreign Minister Aloys Lexa Count Aehrenthal. And each year, these two had steadfastly refused to act.Why, then, was July 1914 different?6 Conrad saw the murders at Sarajevo as a Serbian declaration of war. He cared little about the high school lads who had carried out the plot and about the secret organization "Union or Death," or the "Black Hand," that had planned it; his real enemy was Belgrade. He was determined not to let the last opportunity pass by "to settle accounts" with Serbia. He was haunted by the empire's failure to use the annexationist crisis over Bosnia- Herzegovina in 1908-09 to crush Serbian annexationist aspirations. There was also a personal motive: He informed his mistress Virginie "Gina" von Reininghaus that he was anxious to return from a war "crowned with success" so that he could "claim" her "as my dearest wife." Honor was at stake as well. While the war might be a "hopeless struggle" against overwhelming odds, Conrad informed Gina on the day of the Sarajevo killings, it had to be fought "because such an ancient monarchy and such an ancient army cannot perish ingloriously."7 In a nutshell, Conrad's position in July 1914, in the words of the new foreign minister, Leopold Count Berchtold, was simply: "War, war, war."8By 1914, Franz Joseph shared Conrad's "war at any price" mind-set. Serbian arrogance had to be rooted out, by force if necessary. The kaiser was plagued by nightmares-of Solferino, where in 1859 he had led Austrian armies to defeat at the hands of France and Piedmont- Sardinia; and of Königgrätz, where in 1866 his forces had been routed by those of King Wilhelm I of Prussia. Thus in July 1914, Franz Joseph was prepared to draw the sword. Honor demanded no less. "If we must go under," he confided to Conrad, "we better go under decently."9That left the foreign minister. In the past, Berchtold, like Aehrenthal, had resisted Conrad's demands for war. But diplomacy had brought no security. Thus, Berchtold, emboldened by the hard-line stance of a small cohort of hawks at the Foreign Office, endorsed military measures. Just two days after the Sarajevo murders, he spoke of the need for a "final and fundamental reckoning" with Serbia.10 And he worked out a set of assumptions to underpin his decision: Early and decisive action by Berlin would deter possible Russian intervention and "localize" the war in the Balkans.But would Berlin play the role of gallant second? During past Balkan crises, Wilhelm II and his advisers had refused to back Habsburg initiatives with military force. Would July 1914 confirm that pattern? Berchtold, knowing that he needed diplomatic and military backing from Berlin, on 4 July dispatched Alexander Count Hoyos, his chef de cabinet, to sound out what the German position would be in the event that Vienna took actions to "eliminate" Serbia as a "political power factor in the Balkans."11 It was a clever move, given the kaiser's well-known propensity for personal diplomacy. In meetings the next two days with Wilhelm II, Bethmann Hollweg, Falkenhayn, and Undersecretary of the Foreign Office Arthur Zimmermann, Hoyos and Habsburg ambassador László Count Szögyény-Marich obtained promises of "full German backing" for whatever action Vienna took against Belgrade. There was no time to lose. "The present situation," the kaiser noted, "is so favorable to us." Diplomats and soldiers "considered the question of Russian intervention and accepted the risk of a general war."12 Austria-Hungary could count on "Germany's full support" even if "serious European complications"-war-resulted. And in the apparent interest of "localizing the war" in the Balkans, Berlin was ready to point to the soon-to-be-vacationing Wilhelm II, Moltke, and Falkenhayn as "evidence" that Germany would be "as surprised as the other powers" by any aggressive Austro-Hungarian action against Serbia.13Having obtained what is often referred to as a blank check from Germany, Austria-Hungary was free to plot its actions. On 7 July, Berchtold convened a Common Council of Ministers at Vienna and apprised those present of Berlin's staunch support, "even though our operations against Serbia should bring about the great war."14 War Minister von Krobatin favored war "now better than later." Austrian premier Karl Count Stürgkh demanded "a military reckoning with Serbia." Conrad von Hötzendorf as always was set on war. Only Hungarian premier István Tisza demurred. He desired no more Slavic subjects, given that his Magyars were already a minority within their half of the empire. And he feared that an attack on Serbia would bring on "the dreadful calamity of a European war." But within a week he joined the majority view-on condition that Belgrade be handed a stringent ultimatum that would allow Habsburg officials to enter Serbia to hunt down the assassins.The final decision for war was made at a special Common Council of Ministers convened at Berchtold's residence on 19 July. It was quickly decided to hand the ultimatum, carefully crafted by the foreign minister's staff to assure rejection, to Belgrade on 23 July and to demand acceptance within forty-eight hours. The day after the Common Council, Berchtold advised Conrad and Krobatin to begin their planned summer holidays "to preserve the appearance that nothing is being planned."15 Tisza's countryman István Count Burián laconically noted: "The wheel of history rolls."16 Serbia rejected the ultimatum on 25 July. Sir Maurice de Bunsen, Britain's envoy to Vienna, informed Whitehall: "Vienna bursts into a frenzy of delight, vast crowds parading the streets and singing patriotic songs till the small hours of the morning."17Berchtold visited Franz Joseph at Bad Ischl. He informed the kaiser that Serbian gunboats had fired on Habsburg troops near Temes-Kubin (Kovin). It was a lie, but it served its purpose. "Hollow eyed," the aged Franz Joseph signed the order for mobilization. His only recorded comment, delivered "in a muffled, choked voice," was "Also, doch!" ("So, after all!") Was it said in conviction? Or in relief? The next day, mobilization began and civil liberties were suspended. Vienna, in the words of historian Samuel R. Williamson Jr., "clearly initiated the violence in July 1914" and "plunged Europe into war."18 It had set the tempo, defined the moves, and closed off all other options. In doing so, it was motivated by fear-of Pan-Slavic nationalism, of losing the military advantage to Serbia (and Russia), and of forfeiting Germany's promised support.why war in 1914? Why had Germany not drawn the sword during crises in 1905, 1908, 1911, 1912, or 1913? What made 1914 different? The answer lies in the seriousness of the Austro-Hungarian request for backing and in the changed mind-set at Berlin. First, a few myths need to be dispelled. Germany did not go to war in 1914 as part of a "grab for world power" as historian Fritz Fischer19 argued in 1961, but rather to defend (and expand) the borders of 1871. Second, the decision for war was made in late July 1914 and not at a much-publicized "war council" at Potsdam on 8 December 1912.20 Third, no one planned for a European war before 1914; the absence of financial or economic blueprints for such an eventuality speaks for itself. And Germany did not go to war with plans for continental hegemony; its infamous shopping list of war aims was not drawn up by Bethmann Hollweg21 until 9 September, when French and German forces had squared off for their titanic encounter at the Marne River.This having been said, Berlin issued Vienna the famous blank check on 5 July. Why? Neither treaty obligations nor military algebra demanded this offer. But civilian as well as military planners were dominated by a strike-now-better-than-later mentality. Time seemed to be running against them. Russia was launching its Big Program of rearmament, scheduled to be completed by 1917. Could one wait until then? Wilhelm II mused on the eve of the Sarajevo murders.22 The Anglo-French- Russian Entente Cordiale encircled Germany with what it perceived to be an iron ring of enemies. More, there circulated in public and official circles dire prognostications of what Bethmann Hollweg summarized for the Reichstag in April 1913 as the "inevitable struggle" between Slavs and Teutons-what historian Wolfgang J. Mommsen called the classical rhetoric of "inevitable war."23On 3 July, when Ambassador Heinrich von Tschirschky cabledVienna's decision to avenge the Sarajevo killings, Wilhelm II noted "now or never" on the report.24 Three days later, the kaiser promised Austria-Hungary "Germany's full support" even if "serious European complications" resulted from this-and advised Vienna not to "delay the action" against Belgrade. Pilloried in the press for having been too "timid" and for having postured like a "valiant chicken" during past crises, Wilhelm on 6 July three times assured his dinner guest, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, that this time he would not "cave in."From the Hardcover edition.


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Mysteriously summoned to Quantico to help re-create the face of a murdered, mutilated young woman, FBI forensic artist Special Agent Sydney Fitzpatrick knows immediately this is no ordinary crime. The hit-and-run death of the forensic anthropologist assisting her—a close friend—and Sydney's abrupt dismissal from the case by covert government investigators only strengthen her need for answers. Now her hunt for a killer is carrying her from Washington to Rome to the hidden chamber of a legendary tomb—on the trail of a fabled treasure of the Knights Templar . . . and a curse. For buried deep in the mysteries of the Freemasons and the Vatican's Holy See is a secret that could rock the world. Suddenly an ancient map is pointing Sydney toward something the Templars wished to hide away forever—something that could unleash an unstoppable tide of blood and devastation.


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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past.There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs the Concern is a different matter.


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It is 1943, and the German Army has been defeated at Stalingrad. The Russians have taken 91,000 prisoners; 145,000 German soldiers have been killed. The tide is beginning to turn. But on Guernsey and the rest of the Channel Islands, the only British territory to have been occupied by German troops, such a reversal is unimaginable. Here, in idyllic surroundings, the reality of war seems a lifetime away. While resentment runs high, life goes on, parties are held, love affairs blossom and the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Players can still stage productions of Private Lives, Babes in the Wood and Peter Pan--albeit with suspiciously jackbooted pirates. But when a young local woman is found murdered, both the islanders and the occupiers are forced to acknowledge that this most civilized of wars conceals a struggle that is darker and more bitter than anyone cares to recognize.


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Before the events of Blake Crouch’s horror novels DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS...

Before the events of Jack Kilborn's and Blake Crouch's #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller SERIAL...

The year is 1995, and a young girl with psychopathic tendencies named Lucy (the sweetheart from SERIAL) has run away from home to a mystery convention to see her favorite author in the world: Andrew Z. Thomas. 

But Lucy has problems, and not just the psychopathic kind…to start with, the hotel won’t rent a room to a 15-year-old girl. So she does a bad, bad thing, which only gets worse when a couple of horrifying killers, Orson Thomas, and his protégé, Luther Kite, catch her trying to cover up a nasty mess.

BAD GIRL is a thriller novella that brings all of Crouch’s most terrifying villains to the same hotel.

A prequel to SERIAL, which has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, BAD GIRL is not for the faint of heart. Let the reader beware.

BAD GIRL also contains a bonus interview with Blake, plus excerpts from all four of his novels. 

*Note: BAD GIRL is fully contained in SERIAL UNCUT. BAD GIRL + TRUCK STOP + SERIAL = SERIAL UNCUT.


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He ordered his uncle to be beheaded, and usurped his father's throne. Yet under his rule, England experienced its longest period of domestic peace in the Middle Ages. In this first full biography of Edward III (1327-77), he emerges as the father of the English nation and the English people.


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The first in a series of novels set in one of the most extraordinary fantasy settings since Gormenghast ' the vertical city of Thaiburley.From its towering palatial heights to the dregs who dwell in The City Below, it's an incredible creation. When Tom, a teenage street thief from the depths, ventures into the uppermost levels to impress a girl, the last thing he expects to do is witness a murder.Accused of the crime, he must use all of his knowledge of the ancient city to flee certain death.File under: Fantasy [ Tall City / Class Divide / Murder Witness / Assassination ]


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A best seller in Africa, Ecological Intelligence defines a new way of thinking about the unprecedented environmental pressures of our day. Ian McCallum offers a compelling argument: that we must think differently about ourselves and the earth if we are to take seriously the survival of wilderness areas, wild animals, and the human race. He explores the relationship between humans and nature from both a biological and poetic perspective, articulating a wild and ethical imperative - an urgent reminder that we are inextricably linked to the land and that we must not be the creatures of our own undoing. ''A profound and necessary book about an important idea. Something like this had to be done.'' - Lyall Watson, best-selling author of Supernature.


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AFTER THE FALL OF NIGHT Jet and Iridium—best friends turned bitter enemies—teamed up to foil the evil plans of the rogue superhero known as Night, but in defeating him they inadvertently destroyed the secret Corp-Co transmitter whose frequency kept the metapowered heroes of the Squadron in line. Now these heroes have turned against New Chicago, ransacking the city they once protected.Even worse, the powerful antisuperhero group known as Everyman has taken advantage of the chaos to fan the flames of prejudice against all superpowered men and women. Just when New Chicago needs them most, Jet and the small band of heroes who have remained on the right side of the law find themselves the targets of suspicion and outright hatred.Things aren’t going much better for Iridium. When she springs her father, a notorious supervillain, from prison to help her fight the marauding ex-superheroes, she finds that Corp-Co still has some nasty tricks up its sleeve.But when the most dangerous man alive, the sociopath known as Doctor Hypnotic, suddenly surfaces, Jet and Iridium will once again be called upon to set aside their differences. Yet in the process, deeply buried secrets will come to light that will change everything the former best friends think they know about each other and themselves.


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One Man's Obsession. . .

Pharmacy clerk William Dremmel is hooked--on drugging pretty young women and lulling them into slow, blissfully quiet deaths. Then he packs his victims in luggage--a nod to the cops that he works alone. Dremmel's no fool, he's also a college professor. He just likes using his intellect for darker purposes. . ..

Is Another Man's Anguish. . .

Haunted by his own daughter's unsolved disappearance, Detective John Stallings is committed to finding runaways and busting their abductors. When a series of girls is found dead and stuffed into duffle bags, he's consumed with capturing "The Bagman"--at the risk of his marriage, his career, and possibly his tough-as-nails partner, Patty Levine. . .

And Neither Intends To Give Up

As The Bagman grows more brazen in his crimes, the clues line up. But when he draws terrifyingly close to Patty, Stallings is determined to play by his own rules--and they won't be pretty--or quiet. . .

"One of the best cop novels to come along in years. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, yet heart-felt, *Perfect Woman* gives us a portrayal of policing as gritty and realistic as the best nonfiction. And what a great hero, Det. John Stallings. . . . We need more cops (and thriller characters) like him!" --Jeffery Deaver, *New York Times *bestselling author

"This book moves with deadly speed and the assured hand of a writer who knows his stuff." --Michael Connelly, *New York Times* bestselling author

"An insider's view of how a true police investigation unfolds. It's as close a look at police work as you can get." --Elmore Leonard, *New York Times* bestselling author

"A perfect thriller for Hollywood to grab. The author's police experience and knowledge of the turf keeps the police action highly visual and at a boiling point throughout." --Joseph Wambaugh

*"The Perfect Woman* delivers perfect suspense. You won't be able to put this book down!" --Kevin O'Brien, *New York Times* bestselling author

"One of the best cop novels to come along in years. Hard-hitting, fast-paced, yet heart-felt, *Perfect Woman* gives us a portrayal of policing as gritty and realistic as the best nonfiction. And what a great hero, Det. John Stallings. . . . We need more cops (and thriller characters) like him!" --Jeffery Deaver, *New York Times* bestselling author


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The Raven travel to a new continent in search of mages to help the ruined college of Julatsa rebuild . . . and find themselves in the midst of an ancient curse - a curse that has unleashed a plague that threatens to wipe out the elven race.


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From the sugar plantations of Saint-Domingue to the lavish parlours of New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century, Isabel Allende's latest novel tells the story of a mulatta woman, a slave and concubine, determined to take control of her own destiny in a society where that would seem impossible.Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarité - known as Tété - is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tété finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.When twenty-year-old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it's with powdered wigs in his trunks and dreams of financial success in his mind. But running his father's plantation, Saint Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy.Against the merciless backdrop of sugar cane fields, the lives of Tété and Valmorain grow ever more intertwined. When the bloody revolution of Toussaint Louverture arrives at the gates of Saint Lazare, they flee the island that will become Haiti for the decadence and opportunity of New Orleans. There, Tété finally forges a new life - but her connection to Valmorain is deeper than anyone knows and not so easily severed.Spanning four decades, Island Beneath the Sea is the moving story of one woman's determination to find love amid loss, to offer humanity though her own has been so battered, and to forge her own identity in the cruellest of circumstances.


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**The first book of *Day by Day Armageddon* took us deep into the mind of a military officer and survivor as he made a New Year's resolution to start keeping a journal. The man kept his resolution and brought to us the fall of humanity, *day by day*. We see the man transition from the life that you and I live to the prospect of fighting for his very survival against the overwhelming hordes of the dead. We see him bleed, we see him make mistakes, we witness him evolve. The highly anticipated sequel to the bestselling underground cult classic, *Day by Day Armageddon* begins where the first novel left off.**BEGIN INTERCEPT******Armies of undead have risen up across the U.S. and around the globe;there is no safe haven from the diseased corpses hungering for human flesh. But in the heat of a Texas wasteland, a small band of survivors attempt to counter the millions closing in around them.**INTERCEPT COMPLETE**Day by day, the handwritten journal entries of one man caught in a worldwide cataclysm capture the desperation--and the will to survive--as he joins forces with a handful of refugees to battle soulless enemies both human and inhuman from inside an abandoned strategic missile facility.But in the world of the undead, is mere survival enough?** *(edited by author)*


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START INTERCEPT   

 SPORADIC NEW REPORTS INDICATE CHAOS AND VIOLENCE SPREADING THROUGH U.S. CITIES. AN UNKNOWN EVIL IS SWEEPING THE PLANET. THE DEAD ARE RISING TO CLAIM THE EARTH AS THE NEW DOMINANT SPECIES IN THE FOOD CHAIN.  

  INTERCEPT COMPLETE   

 SURVIVOR,  

 In your hands is the handwritten journal depicting one man's struggle for survival. Trapped in the midst of global disaster, he must make decisions; choices that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them.  

  **ENTER IF YOU WILL INTO HIS WORLD. THE WORLD OF THE UNDEAD.**


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Det. Roland March is a homicide cop on his way out. But when he's the only one at a crime scene to find evidence of a missing female victim, he's given one last chance to prove himself. Before he can crack the case, he's transferred to a new one that has grabbed the spotlight--the disappearance of a famous Houston evangelist's teen daughter.    

With the help of a youth pastor with a guilty conscience who navigates the world of church and faith, March is determined to find the missing girls while proving he's still one of Houston's best detectives.


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It's the ultimate battle of good versus good. They were best friends at an elite academy for superheroes in training, but now Callie Bradford, code name Iridium, and Joannie Greene, code name Jet, are mortal enemies. Jet is a by-the-book hero, using her Shadow power to protect the citizens of New Chicago. Iridium, with her mastery of light, runs the city's underworld. For the past five years the two have played an elaborate, and frustrating, game of cat and mouse. But now playtime's over. Separately Jet and Iridium uncover clues that point to a looming evil, one that is entwined within the Academy. As Jet works with Bruce Hunter--a normal man with an extraordinary ability to make her weak in the knees--she becomes convinced that Iridium is involved in a scheme that will level the power structure of America itself. And Iridium, teaming with the mysterious vigilante called Taser, uncovers an insidious plot that's been a decade in the making...a plot in which Jet is key. They're both right. And they're both wrong. Because nothing is as simple as Black and White.


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Dear Reader:Every now and then, we come across a novel that moves us like no other, that seems like a miracle of the imagination, and that haunts us long after the book is closed. James Levine’s The Blue Notebook is that kind of book. It is the story of Batuk, an Indian girl who is taken to Mumbai from the countryside and sold into prostitution by her father; the blue notebook is her diary, in which she recalls her early childhood, records her life on the Common Street, and makes up beautiful and fantastic tales about a silver-eyed leopard and a poor boy who fells a giant with a single gold coin. How did Levine, a British-born doctor at the Mayo Clinic, manage to conjure the voice of a fifteen-year-old female Indian prostitute? It all began, he told me, when, as part of his medical research, he was interviewing homeless children on a street in Mumbai known as the Street of Cages, where child prostitutes work. A young woman writing in a notebook outside her cage caught Levine’s attention. The powerful image of a young prostitute engaged in the act of writing haunted him, and he himself began to write.The Blue Notebook brings us into the life of a young woman for whom stories are not just entertainment but a means of survival. Even as the novel humanizes and addresses the devastating global issue of child prostitution, it also delivers an inspiring message about the uplifting power of words and reading–a message that is so important to hold on to, especially in difficult times. Dr. Levine is donating all his U.S. proceeds from this book to help exploited children. Batuk’s story can make a difference.Sincerely,Celina SpiegelPublisherFrom the Hardcover edition.


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Mysteriously rich and desperately lonely, George Smith appears to be under attack from all quarters. His former wife and four horrible children are suing to get his money, and someone is sending him threatening letters. Despite some very elaborate precautions, he remains worried. So he builds a mausoleum in which to live.


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Jason Tardin is trapped within a virtual world. He is sure of this- because he has seen the program. But if this is a computer generated world, how can he reconcile the complexity of its strange inhabitants, people capable of frustration, joy, and pain? Are they computer simulations- or more? And what about the power which allows him to create or control whatever he wishes? Is he a god, as the people of Vrin believe? Caught up in the politics of this mysterious world, haunted by a conversation with scientists on the outside, and stalked by a mad god, Jason Tardin must unravel the mystery to save a world- that is not his own. Woven with rich characters, and inextricably filled with secrets about dreams and the afterlife, ten mortal gods is a glimpse into the complex nature of human suffering, and the inescapable reality of eternal truth.


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The small island of Malaz and its city gave the great empire its name, but now it is little more than a sleepy, backwater port. Tonight, however, things are different. Tonight the city is on edge, a hive of hurried, sometimes violent activity; its citizens bustle about, barring doors, shuttering windows, avoiding any stranger’s stare. Because tonight there is to be a convergence, the once-in-a-generation appearance of a Shadow Moon – an occasion that threatens the good people of Malaz with demon hounds and other, darker things … It was also prophesied that this night would witness the return of Emperor Kellanved, and there are those prepared to do anything to prevent this happening. As factions within the greater Empire draw up battle lines over the imperial throne, the Shadow Moon summons a far more ancient and potent presence for an all-out assault upon the island. Witnessing these cataclysmic events are Kiska, a young girl who yearns to flee the constraints of the city, and Temper, a grizzled, battle-weary veteran who seeks simply to escape his past. Each is to play a part in a conflict that will not only determine the fate of Malaz City, but also of the world beyond … Drawing on events touched on in the prologue of Steven Erikson’s landmark fantasy Gardens of the Moon, Night of Knives is a momentous chapter in the unfolding story of the extraordinarily imagined world of Malaz.


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Walker Brown was born with a genetic mutation so rare that doctors call it an orphan syndrome: perhaps 300 people around the world also live with it. Walker turns twelve in 2008, but he weighs only 54 pounds, is still in diapers, can't speak and needs to wear special cuffs on his arms so that he can't continually hit himself. 'Sometimes watching him,' Brown writes, 'is like looking at the man in the moon - but you know there is actually no man there. But if Walker is so insubstantial, why does he feel so important? What is he trying to show me?'In The Boy in the Moon, Brown sets out to answer that question, a journey that takes him into deeply touching and troubling territory. 'All I really want to know is what goes on inside his off-shaped head,' he writes, 'But every time I ask, he somehow persuades me to look into my own.'


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One Man, one day, and a novel bursting with drama, comedy, and humanity. Kevin Quinn is a standard-variety American male: middle-aged, liberal-leaning, self-centered, emotionally damaged, generally determined to avoid both pain and responsibility. As his relationship with his girlfriend approaches a turning point, and his career seems increasingly pointless, he decides to secretly fly to a job interview in Austin, Texas. Aboard the plane, Kevin is simultaneously attracted to the young woman in the seat next to him and panicked by a new wave of terrorism in Europe and the UK. He lands safely with neuroses intact and full of hope that the job, the expansive city, and the girl from the plane might yet be his chance for reinvention. His next eight hours make up this novel, a tour-de-force of mordant humor, brilliant observation, and page-turning storytelling.


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On the success of his two bestselling books about World War II, James Bradley began to wonder what the real catalyst was for the Pacific War. What he discovered shocked him. In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his daughter Alice, and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea with the intent of forging an agreement to divide up Asia. This clandestine pact lit the fuse that would-decades later-result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, and the communist revolution in China. In 2005, James Bradley retraced that epic voyage and discovered the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past. Full of fascinating characters brought brilliantly to life,The Imperial Cruisewill powerfully revise the way we understand U.S. history.


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Beautiful, damaged, the ultimate sex symbol, publicly celebrated, privately unhappy - Marilyn Monroe's tumultuous life and untimely death continue to fascinate us. When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was not true. In fact, her mentally ill mother was very much present in Marilyn's world and the complex family dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes is a story that has never been told - until now. In this groundbreaking book, Taraborrelli draws complex and sympathetic portraits of the women so influential in the actress' life, including her mother, her foster mother and her legal guardian. He also reveals, for the first time, the shocking scope of Marilyn's own mental illness, the identity of Marilyn's father and the half-brother she never knew, and new information about her relationship with the Kennedys - Bobby, Jack and Pat Lawford Kennedy. Explosive, revelatory and surprisingly moving, this is the final word on the life of one of the most fascinating and elusive icons of the twentieth century.


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For Ty Buchanan, defending a suspected drunk driver named Carl Richess seems routine enough. But when his client ends up dead, an apparent suicide, there's nothing routine about it. Because the cops suspect it's murder, and arrest Eric Richess, Carl's brother, for the crime. Now Ty, at the desperate urging of Eric's mother, agrees to defend him. But it won't be easy. Because there's DNA on the gun that matches Eric's, and a history of conflict between the brothers.Then Ty, assisted by Sister Mary Veritas, begins to uncover tentacles of corruption that reach into the citadels of city power. But he's being watched. Because somewhere in the dark labyrinth of LA is someone who will do anything to keep from being found out, someone who believes that when warnings don't work, try fear.


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How can love survive a brutal time?  

 In 1946 in North America, a child makes a grisly find in a deserted field—a discovery that opens a shuttered window on a secret dating back to the beginning of the turbulent decade.  

 In 1941 in occupied France, Adele Georges's fruitless attempts to learn the whereabouts of her father, captured by the Nazis, lead her to a lonely young German soldier far from home. A spark between them becomes a fire—and a dangerous love affair blooms across enemy lines, dooming Adele to a grim postwar existence as a despised outcast, one of the infamous "horizontal collaborators." Ostracized, tortured, tormented, she chooses a desperate escape, accompanying a war-damaged yet optimistic Allied soldier across an ocean to a new land. But there is no refuge from the past, as Adele's broken heart and shameful secret drive her deeper into despair...and toward a shocking outcome.  

 Part mystery and part love story—an unforgettable and beautifully written novel of secrets, passions, and consequences—*Transgression* is an exceptional work of power and strange beauty.


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When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he’s not alone. When the lift’s doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him to the Glade—a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls.Just like Thomas, the Gladers don’t know why or how they got to the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they’ve closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift.Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up—the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more surprising yet is the message she delivers. Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.


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**An ancient code.

 A sinister secret. 

 A deadly chase for the truth... ** 


 In Morocco, an English couple discovers a clay tablet covered in ancient writing. One day later, they are dead. 


 Called to North Africa to investigate, detective Chris Bronson follows a trail of clues that plunge him into a mystery that has gone unsolved since biblical times. For the stone he must find is older and far more dangerous than he could ever have imagined...


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In the enchanting novel Prospero's Children, Jan Siegel introduced an extraordinary heroine and the lushly evocative world of wonders and terrors that quickly enveloped her normal adolescent life. Now Siegel summons us back to the magic with the continuing story of Fern Capel--and the remarkable power of her extraordinary Gift . . . After surviving an amazing, terrifying summer twelve years ago, Fern makes a fateful decision: to deny the mystical powers that pulse through her family's past. Yearning for a simple, quiet life, she decides to marry a man twenty years her senior, a man who insists they wed at the Capels' summer house in Yarrowdale, a place swelling with mood, marvel, and magic. For when Fern returns there with her best friend, Gaynor, ancient, sinister forces reawaken. Yet Fern has had enough: Enough of running from her fate, enough of hiding from her Gift. As she turns to face her destiny, the real world falls away, and Fern is once again swept into another land, removed from Time, void of comfort. It will take all her skill and daring to fight her way back to the present and save the people she loves from the ever-growing danger that threatens to destroy them. And to her utmost surprise, the key to survival is a dragon with the capacity to rule the world . . . but who will relinquish it all to one man. Jan Siegel has created an intense, fascinating world. To surrender yourself under her captivating spell is to remember how remarkably powerful a literary voyage can be. From the Hardcover edition.


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**Jan Siegel has created one of the most compelling fantasy series in recent memory. What began with *Prospero’s Children* and continued with *The Dragon Charmer* now comes to a dazzling conclusion with *of The Witch Queen*. Magnetically gifted Fern Capel has at last come into her own with her magical powers—and just in time. . . .**It is a fearsome world of witches, dragons, and goblins, where a gnarled tree bears fruit of human heads. Fern Capel believes she has left it all behind. But now that world is seeping into modern day England: The witch-queen Morgus, who had imprisoned Fern in the ghostly Otherworld, has returned from countless years of exile beneath the gruesome Eternal Tree. Stalking the twenty-first century in her Prada stilettos, Morgus has the mind-set of the Dark Ages and vows to rule the ancient kingdom of Logrez, now modern Britain.Most of all, Morgus wants revenge on Fern Capel. Rejuvenated through sorcery, neither charm nor weapon can harm the witch-queen. She has planted a cutting from the Eternal Tree in the real world and awaits with impatience the ripening of its terrifying bounty. When Fern learns that her enemy cannot be defeated through conventional means, she turns for help to her best friend, Gaynor, her brother Will, her old mentor, Ragginbone, and Maldo, the goblin-queen. Together, they track Morgus through London’s high-society parties and seedy, sinister contacts, until they finally draw a magic circle in a Soho basement. Fern Capel knows that survival is not enough: This time she must win. But she does not yet understand how high a price she will have to pay.In this thrilling final novel of her acclaimed trilogy, Jan Siegel takes advantage of her greatest strengths as a writer—weaving magic into a modern-day world and bringing vivid life to a host of characters that readers will not soon forget.


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A riveting new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman's life, from the 1880s to World War II. Margaret Mayfield is nearly an old maid at twenty-seven in post-Civil War Missouri when she marries Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early. He's the most famous man their small town has ever produced: a naval officer and a brilliant astronomer--a genius who, according to the local paper, has changed the universe. Margaret's mother calls the match "a piece of luck." Margaret is a good girl who has been raised to marry, yet Andrew confounds her expectations from the moment their train leaves for his naval base in faraway California. Soon she comes to understand that his devotion to science leaves precious little room for anything, or anyone, else. When personal tragedies strike and when national crises envelop the country, Margaret stands by her husband. But as World War II approaches, Andrew's obsessions take a different, darker turn, and Margaret is forced to reconsider the life she has so carefully constructed."Private Life "is a beautiful evocation of a woman's inner world: of the little girl within the hopeful bride, of the young woman filled with yearning, and of the faithful wife who comes to harbor a dangerous secret. But it is also a heartbreaking portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side; a wondrously evocative historical panorama; and, above all, a masterly, unforgettable novel from one of our finest storytellers. "From the Hardcover edition."


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"Sentimental, heartfelt….the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices."***-- Kirkus Reviews***“A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, **Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet **gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you *feel*." ***-- *Garth Stein**, *New York Times* bestselling author of *The Art of Racing in the Rain*“Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love.  An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.”***-- *Lisa See**, bestselling author of *Snow Flower and the Secret Fan*****In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, **Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet**, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, **Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet** is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.


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Cassidy Outlaw left her high-powered legal job-and the unscrupulous lawyer fiance who broke her heart- to return to Texas. Here, life is simpler and the people more authentic. Managing her family's Chili Witches Cafe and protecting the charm of old Austin's landmarks keeps her too busy to care about spending time with Griff Mitchell, the new hottie in town with the Paul Newman blue eyes.When Cass literally stumbles over him on the jogging trail, Griff falls for her in turn-hard. Too bad she's got a problem with big New York City lawyershellip;because he's here to convince her family to sell their historic property. No one told him Cass was the kind of woman who could stand up to any man-a maverick who could break his heart. Will she forgive him when she discovers his secret?


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A stunning historical novel, 'The Book of Fires' is the unforgettable story of Agnes Trussel ' and love, fireworks and redemption.Brought up in rural Sussex, seventeen-year-old Agnes Trussel is carrying an unwanted child. Taking advantage of the death of her elderly neighbour, Agnes steals her savings and runs away to London. On her way she encounters the intriguing Lettice Talbot who promises that she will help Agnes upon their arrival. But Agnes soon becomes lost in the dark, labyrinthine city. She ends up at the household of John Blacklock, laconic firework-maker, becoming his first female assistant.The months pass and it becomes increasingly difficult for Agnes to conceal her secret. Soon she meets Cornelius Soul, seller of gunpowder, and hatches a plan which could save her from ruin. Yet why does John Blacklock so vehemently disapprove of Mr Soul? And what exactly is he keeping from her? Could the housekeeper, Mrs Blight, with her thirst for accounts of hangings, suspect her crime or condition?Historical fiction at its very best, 'The Book of Fires' is utterly intriguing, completely compelling and impossible to put down.


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The incredible rapid rate at which various animals and plants are disappearing from the planet is shocking. Scientists currently believe that habitats across the globe are losing dozens of species every day. Jane Goodall, who has become one of the standard-bearers for animal conservation through her numerous books, television programmes and close work with animals, is nonetheless defiant - 'While there is life there is hope', she states in her introduction to this profound and inspirational book. In demanding natural and political environments conservationists risk their lives to save animals from the brink of extinction. Jane's unique access takes us inside these programmes, meeting first-hand a vast range of animals from Giant Pandas in China to the young generations of Whooping Cranes in Texas that are being taught new migration routes - led by human devotees in flying machines. "Hope For Animals and Their World" is a celebration of the great work being done to protect our wildlife for future generations. Goodall's message rings loud and clear: we must not give up.


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In 2008, Barack Obama lobotomized a generation. 

For an entire year, otherwise clear-thinking members of the most affluent, over-educated, information-drenched generation in American history fell prey to the most expensive, hi-tech, laser-focused marketing assault in presidential campaign history. 

Twitter messages were machine-gunned to cell phones at mach speed. 

Facebook and MySpace groups spread across the Internet like digital fire. 

YouTube videos featuring celebrities ricocheted across the globe and into college students’ in-boxes with devastating regularity. 

All the while, the mega-money-raising engine whirred like a slot machine stuck on jackpot. 

The result: an unthinking mass of young voters marched forward to elect the most radical and untested president in U.S. history. 

Recognized as one of the country’s top young conservative activists by *Human Events, *Jason Mattera created an internet sensation with ambush video interviews that exposed clueless young liberals and cunning Democratic officials. Now he reveals the jaw-dropping lengths Barack Obama and his allies in Hollywood, Washington, and Academia went to in order to transform a legion of iPod-listening, MTV-watching followers into a winning coalition that threatens to become a long-lasting political realignment. 

*Obama Zombies *uncovers the true, behind-the-scenes story of the methods and tactics the Obama campaign unleashed on youth culture. Through personal interviews and meticulous original research, Mattera explains why conservatism’s future rests upon jolting the young masses from their slumber, yanking out their earphones, and sparking a countercultural conservative battle against the rise of the ignorant Left. 



The lesson from 2008 is crystal clear: When true conservatives run away, Obama zombies come out to play.


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In "97 Orchard," Jane Ziegelman explores the culinary life that was the heart and soul of New York's Lower East Side around the turn of the twentieth century--a city within a city, where Germans, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews attempted to forge a new life. Through the experiences of five families, all of them residents of 97 Orchard Street, she takes readers on a vivid and unforgettable tour, from impossibly cramped tenement apartments down dimly lit stairwells where children played and neighbors socialized, beyond the front stoops where immigrant housewives found respite and company, and out into the hubbub of the dirty, teeming streets.  Ziegelman shows how immigrant cooks brought their ingenuity to the daily task of feeding their families, preserving traditions from home but always ready to improvise. While health officials worried that pushcarts were unsanitary and that pickles made immigrants too excitable to be good citizens, a culinary revolution was taking place in the streets of what had been culturally an English city. Along the East River, German immigrants founded breweries, dispensing their beloved lager in the dozens of beer gardens that opened along the Bowery. Russian Jews opened tea parlors serving blintzes and strudel next door to Romanian nightclubs that specialized in goose pastrami. On the streets, Italian peddlers hawked the cheese-and-tomato pies known as "pizzarelli," while Jews sold knishes and squares of halvah. Gradually, as Americans began to explore the immigrant ghetto, they uncovered the array of comestible enticements of their foreign-born neighbors. "97 Orchard" charts this exciting process of discovery as it lays bare the roots of our collective culinary heritage.


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In the wake of Louis XIV's death, France's government teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Enter the reformer in the unlikely guise of John Law -- a supremely charming and attractive Scot whose brilliant financial mind had thus far served only to make himself rich at the gaming tables. In one of the great image makeovers of all time, John Law recharged a devastated French economy, making him one of the most successful men in Europe. When Law founded a New World trading company, the synergistic combination of faith in his ideas and wild reports of the riches to be made in France's vast holdings in America sent the price of its shares through the roof. Investors drunk on dreams of instant wealth gave birth to the first boom-and-bust cycle -- one that created such vast wealth for shareholders that a new term was coined to describe them...millionaires.


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She opened the shagreen box. Couched in gray silk was an emerald necklace, one he had not seen for twenty years. The stones were just as he recalled them: a dozen or more, baguette cut and set in gold links, with a single ruby at the center. Flashes of verdigris, orpiment, and Prussian blue sparkled in the candlelight. The form of this necklace was as disturbing as ever. It had nearly cost him his life.It is the summer of 1765. The renowned and exquisitely dressed portrait painter Joshua Pope accepts a commission to paint the wedding portrait of Herbert Bentnick and his fiancée, Sabine Mercer, to whom Bentnick has become engaged less than a year after the death of his first wife. Joshua has barely begun the portrait when a man's body is found in the conservatory. A few days later, Sabine's emerald necklace disappears, and Bentnick accuses Joshua of theft. The painter is suddenly fighting not only for his reputation but for his life. With a sure understanding of period detail and character, Janet Gleeson creates a richly nuanced tale of greed and revenge that plays out in the refined landscapes and dark streets of eighteenth-century London.


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** "A rare and exquisite story...Transports you out of time, out of place, into a world you can feel on your very skin." -Elizabeth Gilbert **



 In the sweeping tradition of *The English Patient*, Janice Y.K. Lee's debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge-between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and above all, the past.


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The ancient dragons -- of the time of the legendary Saint George and earlier -- have never disappeared entirely. Instead, they've moved undercover -- and into human society. Now one lonely schoolboy is about to learn where the dragons have gone ... 

Educated at boarding schools, Simon St. George has never met his parents. When a ragged-looking man shows up claiming to be his father, Simon is skeptical, and when the man kidnaps him, he's indignant to say the least. 

Then the man claims to be a descendant of England's Saint George and a career dragon fighter. Why should Simon believe any of this nonsense? But what if the man is telling the truth? What if the dragons know he's out there? 

Rich with the dragon lore of legend, the saint of dragons continues and enlarges on the tale of the centuries-old conflict between dragons and humans that rages even today.


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Dragons. They masquerade as their victims, unrecognizable to all but a select few. In the West, Simon St. George and his father are the last living descendants of a legendary clan of dragon hunters. In the Far East, fierce Samurai warriors are bound by an oath to defeat the dragons. Now, faced with an apocalyptic dragon plot, East and West must join forces to save mankind.   Brimming with unforgettable dragon lore and exotic adventure, Jason Hightman's riveting sequel to The Saint of Dragons delves deeper into the raging war between humans and dragons.


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Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker—with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers' League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: She can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she'd be used as a human weapon against her own people.   Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?


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A fascinating look at the real Jeff Corwin! From growing up in an urban community near Boston, to falling in love with snakes, to traveling to exotic places, to becoming a beloved Emmy Awardwinning television host of Animal Planet, this authorized biography will give readers a first-hand look at Jeffs amazing and adventurous life. Based on extensive research and one-on-one interviews with Jeff, kids will get an honest telling of Jeff Corwins incredible journey from child nature enthusiast to naturalist and animal specialist.


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When our hero finds himself in the path of a serial killer, he somehow manages to defend himself, and give the blood-thirsty madman a taste of his own medicine. But when he goes through the dead man's wallet, he finds a mysterious personal ad inviting him to join a party hosted by Errol Flynn. What begins with passing curiosity soon becomes uncontrollable obsession, as our hero becomes acquainted with 18 killers. Their game: to share the thrill of the hunt and to make sure no two members choose the same two victims. To protect their identities, they have all chosen names of old Hollywood stars, and before long, our hero becomes Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. But he has no intention of following the rules. With a government special agent on his trail who will soon become his partner in crim, "Dougie" plans to knock off the killers one by one, from Carole Lombard to Chuck Norris, to Laurence Olivier and Cher. But what happens when the "stars" notice their numbers dropping?


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Evidence of the Afterlife shares the firsthand accounts of people who have died and lived to tell about it. Through their work at the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long and his wife, Jody, have gathered thousands of accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) from all over the world. In addition to sharing the personal narrative of their experiences, visitors to the website are asked to fill out a one hundred–item questionnaire designed to isolate specific elements of the experience and to flag counterfeit accounts.   The website has become the largest NDE research database in the world, containing over 1,600 NDE accounts. The people whose stories are captured in the database span all age groups, races, and religious affiliations and come from all over the world, yet the similarities in their stories are as awe-inspiring as they are revealing. Using this treasure trove of data, Dr. Long explains how medical evidence fails to explain these reports and why there is only one plausible explanation—that people have survived death and traveled to another dimension.


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For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life. Combining a passionate, doomed love story, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and a poignant mother/daughter drama, Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.


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Jen, Holly, and Amanda are at a crossroads. They're feeling the pressure to hit certain milestones—scoring a big promotion, finding a soul mate, having 2.2 kids—before they reach their early thirties. When personal challenges force them to reevaluate their lives, they decide it's now or never to do something daring. Unable to gain perspective in fast-paced Manhattan, the three twentysomethings quit their coveted media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to travel the globe. Dubbing themselves the Lost Girls, they embark on an epic yearlong search for inspiration and direction.  

 As they journey 60,000 miles across four continents and more than a dozen countries, Jen, Holly, and Amanda step far outside of their comfort zones, embracing every adventure and experience the world has to offer—shooting blowguns with Yagua elders in the Amazon, learning capoeira on the beaches of Brazil, volunteering with preteen girls at a school in rural Kenya, hiking with Hmong villagers in Vietnam, and driving through Australia in a psychedelic camper van. Along the way, the Lost Girls find not only themselves but also a lifelong friendship. Ultimately, theirs is a story of true sisterhood—a bond forged by sharing beds and backpacks, enduring exotic illnesses, fending off aggressive street vendors, trekking across rivers and over mountains, and standing by one another through heartaches, whirlwind romances, and everything in the world in between.  

 This candid and compelling memoir will speak to anyone who has ever felt the desire to spread her wings and discover the world with her best friends by her side.


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Five months ago, Valerie Leftman's boyfriend, Nick, opened fire on their school cafeteria. Shot trying to stop him, Valerie inadvertently saved the life of a classmate, but was implicated in the shootings because of the list she helped create. A list of people and things she and Nick hated. The list he used to pick his targets.Now, after a summer of seclusion, Val is forced to confront her guilt as she returns to school to complete her senior year. Haunted by the memory of the boyfriend she still loves and navigating rocky relationships with her family, former friends and the girl whose life she saved, Val must come to grips with the tragedy that took place and her role in it, in order to make amends and move on with her life.


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From the writer whose first novel,Bright Lights, Big City, defined a generation, a collection of twenty-six stories, new and old, that trace the arc of his career for nearly three decades.


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**National Bestseller New York Times Notable Book  *Chicago Tribune*, *Christian Science Monitor*, *The Washington Post* and *Los Angeles Times* Best Book of the YearLark and Termite** is a rich, wonderfully alive novel about seventeen year old Lark and her brother, Termite, living in West Virginia in the 1950s. Their mother, Lola, is absent, while their aunt, Nonie, raises them as her own, and Termite’s father, Corporal Robert Leavitt, is caught up in the early days of the Korean War. Award-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips intertwines family secrets, dreams, and ghosts in a story about the love that unites us all.


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**Introducing a fresh, exciting Chinese-American voice, an inspiring debut about an immigrant girl forced to choose between two worlds and two futures. ** 



 When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. 



 Through Kimberly's story, author Jean Kwok, who also emigrated from Hong Kong as a young girl, brings to the page the lives of countless immigrants who are caught between the pressure to succeed in America, their duty to their family, and their own personal desires, exposing a world that we rarely hear about. Written in an indelible voice that dramatizes the tensions of an immigrant girl growing up between two cultures, surrounded by a language and world only half understood, *Girl in Translation* is an unforgettable and classic novel of an American immigrant-a moving tale of hardship and triumph, heartbreak and love, and all that gets lost in translation.


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**The latest in a series with "all the right ingredients-fresh characters, a dash of humor and a sizzling romance."(*Elaine Viets*)**



 Part-time student Chloe Carter is planning her best friend's wedding, working for her parents-and glued to her chef boyfriend, Josh, as he competes to star in a new TV series. The premise: Josh hijacks unsuspecting grocery shoppers and prepares them gourmet dinners. Everything's going great-until one shopper drops dead.



 With the cameras on him from the beginning, Josh is obviously innocent, but Chloe wonders: Was it one of Josh's competitors? Or the deceased's husband? Or someone on the crew?



 Sifting through suspects, Chloe deals with wedding chaos and Josh's erratic behavior. She'll have to balance her plate while trying to catch a food felon...


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Nell Golightly is living out her widowhood in Cambridgeshire when she receives a strange request: a Tahitian woman, claiming to be the daughter of the poet Rupert Brooke, writes to ask what he was like: how did he sound, what did he smell like, how did it feel to wrap your arms around him? So Nell turns her mind to 1909 when, as a seventeen-year-old housemaid, she first encountered the young poet. He was already causing a stir - not only with his poems and famed good looks, but also by his taboo-breaking behaviour and radical politics. Intrigued, she watched as Rupert skilfully managed his male and female admirers, all of whom seemed to be in love with him. Soon Nell realised that despite her good sense, she was falling for him too. But could he love a housemaid? Was he, in fact, capable of love at all? In a dazzling act of imagination, Jill Dawson gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in a dual narrative that unfolds in both his own words and those of her spirited fictional character, Nell. A memorable tale of love in many guises, of heartbreak and loss, the novel brings Brooke vividly to life as it shows him to have been a far more interesting, complex and troubled figure than the romanticised version allows.


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Things aren t going well for Joseph Geist. He s broke. His graduate school advisor won t talk to him. And his girlfriend has kicked him out of her apartment, leaving him homeless and alone. It s a tough spot for a philosopher to be in, and he s ready to give up all hope of happiness when an ad in the local paper catches his eye. 'Conversationalist wanted', it reads. Which sounds perfect to Joseph. After all, he s never done anything in his life except talk. And the woman behind the ad turns out to be the perfect employer: brilliant, generous, and willing to pay him for making conversation. Before long, Joseph has moved in with her, and has begun to feel very comfortable in her big, beautiful house. So comfortable, in fact, that he would do anything to stay there forever.


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In her first novel since her widely praised debut, The Invisible Circus, Jennifer Egan demonstrates once again her virtuosity at weaving a spellbinding story with language that dazzles. In this boldly ambitious and symphonic novel, she captures the tenor of our times and offers an unsettling glimpse of the future. Fashion model Charlotte Swenson returns to Manhattan, having just recovered from a catastrophic car accident in her hometown of Rockford, Illinois. The skin of her face is perfect, but behind it lie eighty titanium screws that hold together the bones that were shattered when she hit the unbreakable windscreen of her car. Unrecognizable to her peers and colleagues, Charlotte finds it impossible to resume her former life. Instead, she floats invisibly through a world of fashion nightclubs and edgy Internet projects, where image and reality are indistinguishable. During her recovery in Rockford, she had met another Charlotte, the plain-looking teenage daughter of her former best friend. Young Charlotte, alienated from parents and friends, has come under the sway of two men: her uncle, a mentally unstable scholar of the Industrial Revolution, and an enigmatic high school teacher whom she seduces. In following these tales to their eerie convergence, Look at Me is both a send-up of image culture in America and a mystery of human identity. Egan illuminates the difficulties of shaping an inner life in a culture obsessed with surfaces and asks whether "truth" can have any meaning in an era when reality itself has become a style. Written with powerful intelligence and grace, Look at Me clearly establishes Jennifer Egan as one of the most daring and gifted novelists of her generation. From the Hardcover edition.


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Jessilyn Lassiter never knew that hatred could lurk in the human heart until the summer of 1932 when she turned 13. When her best friend, Gemma, loses her parents in a tragic fire, Jessilyn's father vows to care for her as one of his own, despite the fact that Gemma is black and prejudice is prevalent in their southern Virginia town. Violence springs up as a ragtag band of Ku Klux Klan members unite and decide to take matters into their own hands. As tensions mount in the small community, loyalties are tested and Jessilyn is forced to say good-bye to the carefree days of her youth. *Fireflies in December* is the 2007 winner of the Christian Writers Guild's Operation First Novel contest, and a 2010 Christy Award winner.


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In the plague-wracked and devil-haunted darkness of Medieval Europe, an elite few enjoy opulent lives while the majority eke out a miserable existence in abject poverty. Hungry creatures stalk the deep woods and desolate mountains, and both sea and sky teem with unspeakable horrors. For those ill-fated masses not born into wealth, life is but a vicious trial to be endured before the end of days.Hegel and Manfried Grossbart could give a toss. Being of low birth means little, after all, when the riches of the mighty wait just inside the next crypt. The grave-robbing twins know enough about crusading to realise that if one is to make a living from the dead, what better destination than the fabled tomb-cities of Egypt?But the Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy . . .


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The war between humanity and Faerie devastated both sides. Or so 15-year-old Liza has been told. Nothing has been seen or heard from Faerie since, and Liza’s world bears the scars of its encounter with magic. Trees move with sinister intention, and the town Liza calls home is surrounded by a forest that threatens to harm all those who wander into it. Then Liza discovers she has the Faerie ability to see—into the past, into the future—and she has no choice but to flee her town. Liza’s quest will take her into Faerie and back again, and what she finds along the way may be the key to healing both worlds.Janni Lee Simner’s first novel for young adults is a dark fairy-tale twist on apocalyptic fiction—as familiar as a nightmare, yet altogether unique.


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Women should be sweet, mild manneredhellip;docile. Unfortunately, Lady Gwendolyn, a rich Saxon widow, is none of those things.And Viking warrior Wulf Geirsson wants her desperately! One glimpse of the brazen beauty scrambling over the castle ramparts, and he knows he has to have her. Especially when she takes a tumble and lands at his feet.But Wulf quickly finds that taking Gwendolyn and keeping her are two different things. And once she decides to engage in a seductive assault of her own, he's the one captivatedhellip;.


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In the tradition of Murder on the Orient Express, Jim Lehrer brings together a cast of characters as fascinating as the historic train that will carry them from Chicago to Los Angeles. In its heyday, the Santa Fe railroad’s famous Super Chief was so replete with wealth and celebrity that it became known as “The Train of the Stars.” And so we find it in April of 1956, embarking from the Windy City for its trip across the Plains to the West Coast.    Climbing aboard is an amazing spectrum of passengers. There’s Darwin Rinehart, a once great Hollywood producer whose most recent movie was a total flop and who now faces bankruptcy and shame. In a dark recess of a train car hides a mysterious, disheveled, sickly man who has not paid for a ticket, smuggled inside by an unscrupulous porter. Millionaire Otto Wheeler arrives in a wheelchair; deathly ill, he knows that this will be his last trip on the great train. Clark Gable causes a stir when he steps aboard, and though he’s ridden these rails for years, indulging in booze and women with equal fervor, those around him sense that this time, something is different. And finally there’s former President Harry Truman, distinguished, congenial, and constantly accompanied, for his protection, by a railroad detective.     As the Super Chief pulls out of Dearborn Station, the passengers—famous and infamous, anonymous and enigmatic—can’t possibly imagine what lies ahead. For as the train gains speed, a series of deadly events unfolds.   Full of remarkable detail and passion for a lost world of opulence and all its intrigue and delights, Jim Lehrer’s** Super** spins a complex web of suspense. The twists and turns will keep readers turning the pages at top speed to finish one of the most captivating stories of Lehrer’s prolific career.


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By the acclaimed author of The Highest Tide, a story of contrary destinies that are further complicated by the border that separates them.Brandon Vanderkool’s extreme dyslexia and height give him a peculiar perspective, which proves handy once his father pushes him off their Washington dairy farm into the Border Patrol. Though he used to just jump over the ditch into British Columbia, he’s uncomfortable in this uniformed role and instead indulges his obsession with birds and art while incidentally spotting smugglers and illegal immigrants who are provoking an already paranoid society. Drug mansions in the Canadian highlands peer down into berry farms that might offer convenient routes into the American market, where politicians clamor for increased security. Closer to home, Brandon’s father battles disease in his herd and his mother something far worse. Madeline Rousseau, who grew up right across the ditch, has seen her gardening skills turn lucrative, while her father replicates great past inventions and rails against imperialism. And overseeing everything is a mysterious masseuse who knows everybody’s secrets.Rich in characters contending with a swiftly changing world and their own elusive hopes and dreams, Border Songs is at once comic, tender, and momentous—a riveting portrait of a distinctive community, an inventive love story, and fiction of the highest order.


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Jimmy Buffett, bestselling author of "Tales from Margaritaville" and hero to "parrotheads" everywhere, flies back into view with a novel set in the Caribbean, involving a lighthouse, a mystery, a wild cast of characters, and more than a few bottles of tequila. Raucous, wise, and familiar with the world's wonderful strangeness, "A Salty Piece of Land" is the escapism at its best.


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When Southern belle Ellie McBride moves her twins from Vertigo, Tennessee, to New York City, they wouldn't dream of leaving behind the family pig Rumpy. But the posh hotel where Ellie has found work (and living space) has "No Pets" writ large on its portal. So hiding Rumpy from the hotel staff--especially the ultra-carnivorous hotel chef, who would like nothing better than to transform their pet into pork roast--becomes imperative.Can a talented, sensitive pig survive the claustrophobic, neurotic stresses of life in the Big Apple? Can the McBride twins keep their precious pet from becoming the chef's favorite entree? Get ready for a wonderful ride as master storyteller Jimmy Buffett takes readers on a brilliantly funny romp through Manhattan and beyond. From spoiled rock stars to highly caffeinated football coaches, Buffett's satirical view of American culture never ceases to bite and delight.


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A man lies hidden in an abandoned boat. Stifling his own screams, he draws a knife across his arm, letting the blood flow free. Soon he’ll be dead – and life can begin again.  Three decades later, small-town newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is experiencing a cold, bitter Christmas on the Fens. Dryden’s wife, Laura, is emerging from years in a coma, unsure if she wants to go on living. Meanwhile, people are freezing to death, among them Declan McIlroy, a 39 year old loner found dead in his flat with the windows thrown open. The police rule the death a suicide, but Dryden has his doubts – especially when he finds the body of Declan’s best friend Joe frozen within a shell of ice on the doorstep of his secluded farmhouse.  At the same time, Dryden is investigating allegations of abuse laid against a Catholic orphanage – a touchy subject, due to his own Catholic upbringing. The incidents seem unrelated until Dryden discovers that Declan was one of the victims. Could his death have been part of a cover-up? Soon, Dryden is picking his way along a disturbing trail of cruelty and betrayal to a brilliantly executed crime, and to a chilling, half-remembered mystery from his own childhood.


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Rookie detective Peter Shaw, along with his chain-smoking, hard-as-nails, veteran partner, is confronted with a baffling crime that stretches him to the breaking point.


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Time is running out for Philip Dryden...In the snowbound landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens, a body is discovered, locked in a block of ice. High on Ely Cathedral a second corpse is found, grotesquely 'riding' a stone gargoyle. Journalist Philip Dryden knows he's onto a great story when forensic evidence links both victims to one terrifying event in 1966. But the murders also offer Dryden the key to a very personal mystery. Who saved his life two years ago? And, more importantly, who left his wife to die? The answer will bring Dryden face to face with his own guilt, his own fears - and a cold and ruthless killer...


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In the stifling heat wave of June 1976, an American plane crashes on the Cambridgeshire Fens, the point of impact the remote Black Bank Farm. Out of the flames walks a young woman, Maggie Beck, clutching a baby in her arms.Twenty-seven years later, Maggie is dying. Journalist Philip Dryden knows this because Maggie is lying in the hospital ward next to his wife Laura. As Maggie prepares to leave this world, Laura---locked in a coma for four years---appears to be slowly returning to it. And for the last few days, she has listened to Maggie's death-bed confession surrounding events on the night of the crash all those years ago.It's a confession that will blow open the murder story that Dryden is covering. But can Laura somehow communicate to her husband the shocking secrets she has learned?


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Crawling on elbows and knees, a man slowly inches forward, making his way through a cramped space and suffocating darkness. He doesn’t know that someone is watching, and in a flash of light, his journey is over. Now, fifty years later, small-town newspaper reporter Philip Dryden is on-site at a former World War II POW camp observing an archeological dig. The archeologists are looking for buried Anglo-Saxon treasure, but the excavators have found something even more interesting---the skeletal remains of a man trapped in an underground tunnel. The dead man’s intent seems obvious, but there are two things no one can explain: The bullet hole in his forehead and the direction of the body. This prisoner was crawling in, not out.It’s a puzzle that intrigues Dryden far more than it does the archeologists or the police. Meanwhile, he continues his nightly visits to the hospital where his wife, Laura, is emerging from five years in a coma. Laura can sometimes communicate through a computer now, though the process is painfully slow and erratic. When it turns out that Laura’s father was involved with the POWs during the war, Dryden begins to wonder if the key may lie in long-buried family secrets. And then a second, more recent, body is discovered….


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Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman's noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet.   

*I will "sell" my stepfather's ghost to the highest bidder. . . .*  

 For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn't afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What's one more?  

 But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost, no benign conversation piece. It's the real thing.  

 And suddenly the suit's previous owner is everywhere: behind the bedroom door . . . seated in Jude's restored vintage Mustang . . . standing outside his window . . . staring out from his widescreen TV. Waiting—with a gleaming razor blade on a chain dangling from one bony hand. . . .  

 A multiple-award winner for his short fiction, author Joe Hill immediately vaults into the top echelon of dark fantasists with a blood-chilling roller-coaster ride of a novel, a masterwork brimming with relentless thrills and acid terror.


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In a suspense novel of astounding power and depth, Jodi Compton unleashes a haunting tale of secrets and betrayal...and of one woman's search for her missing husband that spirals into a dark journey strewn with bitter truths and damged lives.  Here debut novelist Compton introduces an extraordinary character: Detective Sarah Pribek, a woman of strength, complexity, and instinct, a woman caught in an unimaginable nightmare...**The 37th Hour**On a chilly Minnesota morning, Sarah comes home to the house she shares with her husband and fellow cop, Michael Shiloh.  Shiloh was supposed to be in Virginia, starting his training with the FBI.  A seasoned missing-persons investigator, Sarah is used to anxious calls from wives and parents.  She's used to the innocent explanations that resolve so many of her cases.  But from the moment she learns that he never arrived at Quantico, she feels a terrible foreboding.  Now, beneath the bed in which they make love, Sarah finds Shiloh's neatly packed bag.  And in that instant the cop in her knows: Her husband has disappeared.Suddenly Sarah finds herself at the beginning of the kind of investigation she has made so often.  The kind that she and her ex-partner, Genevieve, solved routinely -- until a brutal crime stole Genevieve's daughter and ended her career.  The kind that pries open family secrets and hidden lives.  For Sarah this investigation will mean going back to the beginning, to Shiloh's religion-steeped childhood in Utah, the rift that separated him from his family -- and the one horrifying case that struck them both too close to home.  As Sarah turns over more and more unknown ground in her husband's past, she sees her lover and friend change into a stranger before her eyes.  And as she moves further down a trail of shocking surprises and bitter revelations, Sarah is about to discover that her worst fear -- that Shiloh is dead -- may be less painful than what she will learn next...In a novel of runaway tension, Jodi Compton masterfully weaves together the quiet details of everyday life with the moments that can shatter them forever.  At once a beguiling mystery and a powerful rumination on family, friendship, and loss, **The 37th Hour** is a thriller that will catch you off guard at every turn -- instantly compelling and utterly impossible to put down.*From the Hardcover edition.*


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Jodi Compton’s debut, *The 37th Hour*, was hailed as “compelling” (*San Francisco Chronicle*), “intelligent” (*New York Times Book Review*), and “the debut of a world-class mystery writer” (*Denver Post*).  Now Compton delivers a new novel featuring Detective Sarah Pribek, one of the most singular and complex characters in suspense fiction today.On the streets of Minneapolis, Sarah has worked everything from vice to missing persons.  But six months after the death of a small-town criminal in rural Minnesota, Sarah is still protecting the identity of a killer.  And now a zealous D.A.’s investigator has come to town, determined to make an arrest. With her ex-partner half a world away and her husband in prison, only Sarah remains to face the consequences of last fall. Surrounded by colleagues who know her to be the suspect in a murder, Sarah keeps her demons at bay by involving herself in the troubles of strangers.  Seventeen-year-old Aidan Hennessy was banished from his family by his father. Now Aidan’s twin sister is desperately searching for the brother she hasn’t seen in years.  Although the case is out of Sarah’s jurisdiction, she sees a reflection of herself in the troubled, damaged family, and agrees to investigate.As she probes into their tangled history, Sarah begins to realize that the mystery of the Hennessys runs deeper than it appears.  Then Sarah’s lieutenant gives her a simpler assignment: Track down a doctor rumored to be practicing medicine without a license in a housing project. But in Cicero Ruiz, Sarah finds a tough, wounded survivor whose moral code challenges her own ideas about justice…and whose hard-won life would be destroyed by an arrest.  Now juggling two very different cases, both requiring a delicate balancing act between professional honor and personal feelings, Sarah soon has even more at stake.  Caught up in a cat-and-mouse game with the investigator who wants to end her career, crossing one ethical line after another, Sarah increasingly fears that a misstep on her part will end not only in her disgrace, but in the death of one of those she has promised herself to protect.With its fascinating heroine and its brilliantly interwoven mysteries, **Sympathy Between Humans** is storytelling at its finest from one of the most original and daring writers in suspense fiction today.*From the Hardcover edition.*


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When madness is your inheritance, how do you escape it?Scott Mast thought he got away–first from a family haunted by a dark fate, then from a dull career writing greeting cards in Seattle. But now he has come back to his New Hampshire hometown only to find that his family is in ruins, his nephew needs a home, and a shattering truth is clawing its way into the light.Fifteen years ago, Scott’s mother died in a fire. And now the shadowy circumstances–the bodies buried beneath the ashes, the lives ripped apart that fateful day–are starting to be revealed. The answers unspool in the pages of a peculiar old manuscript–an unfinished ghost story written in his father’s own hand that beckons Scott out to a strange house in the woods with a lightless corridor that cannot be seen from the outside. Here Scott Mast will uncover all that has been hidden–and perhaps finish his father’s unspeakable work.


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The launch of a towering new fantasy series introduces an elaborate new world, a strange and dark system of magic, and a cast of compelling characters and monsters. Young Talen lives in a world where the days of a person’s life can be harvested, bought, and stolen. Only the great Divines, who rule every land, and the human soul-eaters, dark ones who steal from man and beast and become twisted by their polluted draws, know the secrets of this power. This land’s Divine has gone missing and soul-eaters are found among Talen’s people. The Clans muster a massive hunt, and Talen finds himself a target. Thinking his struggle is against both soul-eaters and their hunters, Talen actually has far larger problems. A being of awesome power has arisen, one whose diet consists of the days of man. Her Mothers once ranched human subjects like cattle. She has emerged to take back what is rightfully hers. Trapped in a web of lies and ancient secrets, Talen must struggle to identify his true enemy before the Mother finds the one whom she will transform into the lord of the human harvest.


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In 1899 Henry Oades discovers he has two wives ' and many dilemmas'ŚIn 1890, Henry Oades decided to undertake the arduous sea voyage from England to New Zealand in order to further his family's fortunes. Here they settled on the lush but wild coast ' although it wasn't long before disaster struck in the most unexpected of ways.A local Maori tribe, incensed at their treatment at the hands of the settlers, kidnapped Mrs Oades and her four children, and vanished into the rugged hills surrounding the town. Henry searched ceaselessly for his family, but two grief-stricken years later was forced to conclude that they must be dead. In despair he shipped out to San Francisco to start over, eventually falling in love with and marrying a young widow.In the meantime, Margaret Oades and her children were leading a miserable existence, enslaved to the local tribe. When they contracted smallpox they were cast out and, ill and footsore, made their way back to town, five years after they were presumed dead.Discovering that Henry was now half a world away, they were determined to rejoin him. So months later they arrived on his doorstep in America and Henry Oades discovered that he had two wives and many dilemmas 'ŚThis is a darkly comic but moving historical fiction debut about love and family, based on a controversial court case from the early 1900s.


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A tale of a turbulent adolescent trying to break out of the suffocating, prison-like confinements of family, poverty and religion in a small town. This work tells the story of a winter in the childhood of Arturo Bandini, oldest son of Italian immigrants living in Colorado during the Great Depression.


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Sonchai Jitpleecheep—John Burdett’s inimitable Royal Thai Police detective with the hard-bitten demeanor and the Buddhist soul—is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai’s path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he’s been studying The Godfather on DVD): to troubleshoot, babysit, defuse, procure, reconnoiter—do whatever needs to be done in Vikorn’s ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok’s network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars’ worth of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin’s “apocalyptic Buddhism,” he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. Further complicating the challenge is Tara: a Tantric practitioner who captivates Sonchai with her remarkable otherworldly techniques.Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test—as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man—in John Burdett’s most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet.From the Hardcover edition.


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Flannery O'Connor was working onEverything That Rises Must Convergeat the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.


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The Book of the New Sun is unanimously acclaimed as Gene Wolfe's most remarkable work, hailed as "a masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis" by "Publishers Weekly," and "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century" by "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction." "Shadow & Claw "brings together the first two books of the tetralogy in one volume: "The Shadow of the Torturer" is the tale of young Severian, an apprentice in the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession -- showing mercy toward his victim. Ursula K. Le Guin said, "Magic stuff . . . a masterpiece . . . the best science fiction I've read in years!" "The Claw of the Conciliator "continues the saga of Severian, banished from his home, as he undertakes a mythic quest to discover the awesome power of an ancient relic, and learn the truth about his hidden destiny. "Arguably the finest piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced [is] the four-volume Book of the New Sun."--"Chicago Sun-Times" "The Book of the New Sun establishes his preeminence, pure and simple. . . . The Book of the New Sun contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . once into it, there is no stopping.""--The New York Times Book Review" Gene Wolfe has been called "the finest writer the science fiction world has yet produced" by "The Washington Post." A former engineer, he has written numerous books and won a variety of awards for his SF writing. "The Book of the New Sun," a series of four novels, is unanimously acclaimed as Wolfe's most memorable work, hailed by "Publishers Weekly" as a "masterpiece of science fantasy comparable in importance to the major works of Tolkien and Lewis"--and by "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" as "one of the most ambitious works of speculative fiction in the twentieth century." "Shadow & Claw" collects the first two novels in this Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning tetralogy: "The Shadow of the Torturer" and "The Claw of the Conciliator." ""The Book of the New Sun" establishes [Wolfe's] pre-eminence, pure and simple . . . "The Book of the New Sun" contains elements of Spenserian allegory, Swiftian satire, Dickensian social consciousness, and Wagnerian mythology. Wolfe creates a truly alien social order that the reader comes to experience from within . . . Once into it, there is no stopping."--"The New York Times Book Review" "Arguably the best piece of literature American science fiction has yet produced."--"Chicago Sun-Times"


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I Master of the House of Chains “It was in my hair, Severian,” Dorcas said. “So I stood under the waterfall in the hot stone room—I don’t know if the men’s side is arranged in the same way. And every time I stepped out, I could hear them talking about me. They called you the black butcher, and other things I don’t want to tell you about.”“That’s natural enough,” I said. “You were probably the first stranger to enter the place in a month, so it’s only to be expected that they would chatter about you, and that the few women who knew who you were would be proud of it and perhaps tell some tales. As for me, I’m used to it, and you must have heard such expressions on the way here many times; I know I did.”“Yes,” she admitted, and sat down on the sill of the embrasure. In the city below, the lamps of the swarming shops were beginning to fill the valley of the Acis with a yellow radiance like the petals of a jonquil, but she did not seem to see them.“Now you understand why the regulations of the guild forbid me from taking a wife—although I will break them for you, as I have told you many times, whenever you want me to.”“You mean that it would be better for me to live somewhere else, and only come to see you once or twice a week, or wait till you came to see me.”“That’s the way it’s usually done. And eventually the women who talked about us today will realize that sometime they, or their sons or husbands, may find themselves beneath my hand.”“But don’t you see, this is all beside the point. The thing is…” Here Dorcas fell silent, and then, when neither of us had spoken for some time, she rose and began to pace the room, one arm clasping the other. It was something I had never seen her do before, and I found it disturbing.“What is the point, then?” I asked.“That it wasn’t true then. That it is now.”“I practiced the Art whenever there was work to be had. Hired myself out to towns and country justices. Several times you watched me from a window, though you never liked to stand in the crowd—for which I hardly blame you.”“I didn’t watch,” she said.“I recall seeing you.”“I didn’t. Not when it was actually going on. You were intent on what you were doing, and didn’t see me when I went inside or covered my eyes. I used to watch, and wave to you, when you first vaulted onto the scaffold. You were so proud then, and stood just as straight as your sword, and looked so fine. You were honest. I remember watching once when there was an official of some sort up there with you, and the condemned man and a hieromonach. And yours was the only honest face.”“You couldn’t possibly have seen it. I must surely have been wearing my mask.”“Severian, I didn’t have to see it. I know what you look like.”“Don’t I look the same now?”“Yes,” she said reluctantly. “But I have been down below. I’ve seen the people chained in the tunnels. When we sleep tonight, you and I in our soft bed, we will be sleeping on top of them. How many did you say there were when you took me down?”“About sixteen hundred. Do you honestly believe those sixteen hundred would be free if I were no longer present to guard them? They were here, remember, when we came.”Dorcas would not look at me. “It’s like a mass grave,” she said. I could see her shoulders shake.“It should be,” I told her. “The archon could release them, but who could resurrect those they’ve killed? You’ve never lost anyone, have you?”She did not reply.“Ask the wives and the mothers and the sisters of the men our prisoners have left rotting in the high country whether Abdiesus should let them go.”“Only myself,” Dorcas said, and blew out the candle.* * *Thrax is a crooked dagger entering the heart of the mountains. It lies in a narrow defile of the valley of the Acis, and extends up it to Acies Castle. The harena, the pantheon, and the other public buildings occupy all the level land between the castle and the wall (called the Capulus) that closes the lower end of the narrow section of the valley. The private buildings of the city climb the cliffs to either side, and many are in large measure dug into the rock itself, from which practice Thrax gains one of its sobriquets—the City of Windowless Rooms.Its prosperity it owes to its position at the head of the navigable part of the river. At Thrax, all goods shipped north on the Acis (many of which have traversed nine tenths of the length of Gyoll before entering the mouth of the smaller river, which may indeed be Gyoll’s true source) must be unloaded and carried on the backs of animals if they are to travel farther. Conversely, the hetmans of the mountain tribes and the landowners of the region who wish to ship their wool and corn to the southern towns bring them to take boat at Thrax, below the cataract that roars through the arched spillway of Acies Castle.As must always be the case when a stronghold imposes the rule of law over a turbulent region, the administration of justice was the chief concern of the archon of the city. To impose his will on those without the walls who might otherwise have opposed it, he could call upon seven squadrons of dimarchi, each under its own commander. Court convened each month, from the first appearance of the new moon to the full, beginning with the second morning watch and continuing as long as necessary to clear the day’s docket. As chief executor of the archon’s sentences, I was required to attend these sessions, so that he might be assured that the punishments he decreed should be made neither softer nor more severe by those who might otherwise have been charged with transmitting them to me; and to oversee the operation of the Vincula, in which the prisoners were detained, in all its details. It was a responsibility equivalent on a lesser scale to that of Master Gurloes in our Citadel, and during the first few weeks I spent in Thrax it weighed heavily upon me.It was a maxim of Master Gurloes’s that no prison is ideally situated. Like most of the wise tags put forward for the edification of young men, it was inarguable and unhelpful. All escapes fall into three categories—that is, they are achieved by stealth, by violence, or by the treachery of those set as guards. A remote place does most to render escapes by stealth difficult, and for that reason has been favored by the majority of those who have thought long upon the subject.Unfortunately, deserts, mountaintops, and lone isles offer the most fertile fields for violent escape—if they are besieged by the prisoners’ friends, it is difficult to learn of the fact before it is too late, and next to impossible to reinforce their garrisons; and similarly, if the prisoners rise in rebellion, it is highly unlikely that troops can be rushed to the spot before the issue is decided.A facility in a well-populated and well-defended district avoids these difficulties, but incurs even more severe ones. In such places a prisoner needs, not a thousand friends, but one or two; and these need not be fighting men—a scrubwoman and a street vendor will do, if they possess intelligence and resolution. Furthermore, once the prisoner has escaped the walls, he mingles immediately with the faceless mob, so that his reapprehension is not a matter for huntsmen and dogs but for agents and informers.In our own case, a detached prison in a remote location w


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In Jilly Cooper'S Third Rutshire Chronicle We Meet Ricky France-Lynch, Who Is Moody, Macho, And Magnificent. He Had A Large Crumbling Estate, A Nine-Goal Polo Handicap, And A Beautiful Wife Who Was Fair Game For Anyone With A Cheque Book. He Also Had The Adoration Of Fourteen-Year-Old Perdita Macleod. Perdita Couldn'T Wait To Leave Her Dreary School And Become A Polo Player.The Polo Set Were Ritzy, Wild, And Gloriously Promiscuous.Perdita Thought She'D Get Along With Them Very Well.But Before She Had Time To Grow Up, Ricky'S Life Exploded Into Tragedy, And Perdita Turned Into A Brat Who Loved Only Her Horses - And Ricky France-Lynch.Ricky'S Obsession To Win Back His Wife, And Perdita'S To Win Both Ricky And A Place As A Top Class Polo Player, Take The Reader On A Wildly Exciting Journey - To The Estancias Of Argentina, To Palm Beach And Deauville, And On To The Royal Polo Fields Of England And The Glamorous Pitches Of California Where The Most Heroic Battle Of All Is Destined To Be Fought - A Match That Is About Far More Than Just The Winning Of A Huge Silver Cup...


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Scott Freeman is a man of reason–a college professor grounded in the rational and practical. But he becomes uneasy after finding an anonymous love letter hidden in his daughter’s room: “No one could ever love you like I do. No one ever will. We will be together forever. One way or another.” But the reality of Ashley’s plight far exceeds Scott’s worst suspicions. One drink too many had led Ashley, a beautiful, bright art student, into what she thought was just a fling with a blue-collar bad boy. But now, no amount of pleading or reasoning can discourage his phone calls, ardent e-mails, and constant, watchful gaze. Michael O’Connell is but a malignant shadow of a man. His brash, handsome features conceal a black and empty soul. Control is his religion. Cunning and criminal skill are his stock-in-trade. Rage is his language. The harder Ashley tries to break free, the deeper Michael burrows into every aspect of her life, so she turns in desperation to her divorced parents and her mother’s new partner–three people still locked in a coldly civilized triangle of resentment. But their fierce devotion to Ashley is the common bond that will draw them together to face down a predator. For Ashley’s family, it is a test of primal love that will drive them to the extreme edge–and beyond–in a battle of wills that escalates into a life-or-death war to protect their own. From the bestselling master of suspense, John Katzenbach, TheWrong Manis an elegantly crafted and breathtakingly intense read that asks the question, “How far would you go to save the child you love?” From the Hardcover edition.


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"This shit would be really interesting if we weren't in the middle of it."—Barack Obama, September 2008   In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment. Everyone was watching as the race for the White House unfolded like something from the realm of fiction. The meteoric rise and historic triumph of Barack Obama. The shocking fall of the House of Clinton—and the improbable resurrection of Hillary as Obama's partner and America's face to the world. The mercurial performance of John McCain and the mesmerizing emergence of Sarah Palin. But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage of this spellbinding drama, remarkably little of the real story behind the headlines has yet been told.   In Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, two of the country's leading political reporters, use their unrivaled access to pull back the curtain on the Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Palin campaigns. How did Obama convince himself that, despite the thinness of his rÉsumÉ, he could somehow beat the odds to become the nation's first African American president? How did the tumultuous relationship between the Clintons shape—and warp—Hillary's supposedly unstoppable bid? What was behind her husband's furious outbursts and devastating political miscalculations? Why did McCain make the novice governor of Alaska his running mate? And was Palin merely painfully out of her depth—or troubled in more serious ways?   Game Change answers those questions and more, laying bare the secret history of the 2008 campaign. Heilemann and Halperin take us inside the Obama machine, where staffers referred to the candidate as "Black Jesus." They unearth the quiet conspiracy in the U.S. Senate to prod Obama into the race, driven in part by the fears of senior Democrats that Bill Clinton's personal life might cripple Hillary's presidential prospects. They expose the twisted tale of John Edwards's affair with Rielle Hunter, the truth behind the downfall of Rudy Giuliani, and the doubts of those responsible for vetting Palin about her readiness for the Republican ticket—along with the McCain campaign staff's worries about her fitness for office. And they reveal how, in an emotional late-night phone call, Obama succeeded in wooing Clinton, despite her staunch resistance, to become his secretary of state.   Based on hundreds of interviews with the people who lived the story, Game Change is a reportorial tour de force that reads like a fast-paced novel. Character driven and dialogue rich, replete with extravagantly detailed scenes, this is the occasionally shocking, often hilarious, ultimately definitive account of the campaign of a lifetime.


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On December 21, 2012, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, a 5,125- year cycle calendar system pioneered by the Maya, will come to an end. At the same time, the earth, the sun, and the center of the galaxy will come together in an extremely rare cosmic alignment. More and more people believe that the world as we know it will experience a transformation in 2012, but few are aware of the complete history or significance of the date. John Major Jenkins, among the most authoritative voices of the 2012 movement, has written a definitive explanation of one of the most thought-provoking phenomena of our time. Drawing from his own groundbreaking research (including his involvement in the modern reconstruction of Mayan 2012 cosmology) and more than two decades of extensive study of Mayan culture, Jenkins has created the crucial guide to understanding the story of 2012an essential overview of the history, theory, cultures, and personalities that have brought this extraordinary idea into modern awareness. Jenkins provides illuminating answers to some of the most-asked questions about 2012, including:  - How did the early Maya devise the calendar that gives us the cycle ending in 2012, and how does it work?  - How did the calendar come to be rediscovered and reconstructed in our era?  - What controversies and intrigues surround the topic, and what do scholars and researchers have to say about them?  - How can we cut through all the noise about 2012 and gain true wisdom from the Mayan teachings about this moment?


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

70 color illustrations & 80 b/w illustrations! The social changes and political changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution transformed everything from the balance of power between nations to the manufacture of armaments to battlefield tactics and strategy. Using three wars as examples--most dramatically the American Civil War, perhaps the greatest struggle of the 19th century--trace the development of land fighting and the effects of higher command during this period of tumultuous technological change. Unlike histories that downplay the connection between the outcome in the United States and the conflicts in Europe, this one reveals their interconnection. Trim size: 7 3/4 x 10 3/8.


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In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County–to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto–pursued by the implacable constable. Their lone protector is a fiercely libertarian logger, once a river driver, who befriends them.In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River–John Irving’s twelfth novel–depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” From the novel’s taut opening sentence–“The young Canadian, who could not have been more than fifteen, had hesitated too long”–to its elegiac final chapter, Last Night in Twisted River is written with the historical authenticity and emotional authority of The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany. It is also as violent and disturbing a story as John Irving’s breakthrough bestseller, The World According to Garp.What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice–the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller. Near the end of this moving novel, John Irving writes: “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”From the Hardcover edition.


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Jackson Workman Pickens—known to most as “Work”—mindlessly holds together his disintegrating life: a failing law practice left to him when his father, Ezra, mysteriously disappeared, a distant wife who shares their loveless marriage, and an estranged sister who bore the brunt of their childhood trauma. And then Ezra’s body is discovered. Set to inherit his father’s fortune, Work becomes a prime suspect.  But so does his sister, Jean.  As much as Work’s life was overshadowed by his domineering father, Jean’s life was nearly destroyed by him. But does that make her capable of a vicious murder?  Fearing the worst, Work launches his own investigation, crossing paths with a power-hungry detective, a string of damning evidence, and the ugly rumors that swirl within his small, moneyed Southern town. Desperate for the redemption that has eluded him for so many years and stripped of everything he once valued, he fights to save his sister and clear his name—in this poignant and thrilling anatomy of a murder and its ripple effect within a family and a community.


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Acclaimed author John Burnside delivers a profound, page-turning novel about innocence, evil, morality, and the dark corners of the human psyche. Mysterious illnesses affect the inhabitants of the post-industrial village of Innertown, and a pervasive sense of malaise hangs everywhere. So when teenage boys disappear into the poisoned woods surrounding the villagers"s abandoned chemical plant, no one notices, or if they do, they donrs"t say a thing. Not even the townrs"s only cop, whose leads have long since died. To one boy, however, the chemical plant is beautiful, and it is there he will enact a plan to change the fate of the children of Innertown. To do so he will have to confront the blinding reality that burns in the chemical plantrs"s cavernous center.


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WINNER OF SWEDEN'S BEST CRIME NOVEL AWARD On the idyllic island of Oland, off the coast of northern Sweden, a young couple from Stockholm tries to start life afresh. For Joakim and Katrine Westin, reclaiming a long-neglected family manor will be a labor of love, as they slowly bring the sprawling home back to life and introduce their two children to the island's woodlands, glens, and beaches. But in the Westins' new home, there are things that cannot be repaired, lives that have gone wrong, and secrets that have followed them. When the family is struck by tragedy, it's up to grief-stricken Joakim to put together a puzzle of inexplicable loss, unbearable suspicion, and tangled lives. In this powerhouse of suspense-at once a crime novel and a searing family drama-a home built as a shelter from the sea becomes a human storm of murder.


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Cohen the Barbarian.He's been a legend in his own lifetime.He can remember the good old days of high adventure, when being a Hero meant one didn't have to worry about aching backs and lawyers and civilization.But these days, he can't always remember just where he put his teeth...So now, with his ancient (yet still trusty) sword and new walking stick in hand, Cohen gathers a group of his old -- very old -- friends to embark on one final quest. He's going to climb the highest mountain of Discworld and meet the gods.It's time the Last Hero in the world returns what the first hero stole. Trouble is, that'll mean the end of the world, if no one stops him in time.


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Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestsellers in England, where they have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.In The Light Fantastic only one individual can save the world from a disastrous collision. Unfortunately, the hero happens to be the singularly inept wizard Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world...


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Although they may feature witches and wizards, vampires and dwarves, along with the occasional odd human, Terry Pratchett's bestselling Discworld novels are grounded firmly in the modern world. Taking humorous aim at all our foibles, each novel reveals our true character and nature.It's a dreamy midsummer's night in the Kingdom of Lancre. But music and romance aren't the only things filling the air. Magic and mischief are afoot, threatening to spoil the royal wedding of King Verence and his favorite witch, Magrat Garlick. Invaded by some Fairie Trash, soon it won't be only champagne that's flowing through the streets ...


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The Ankh-Morpork Post Office is running like . . . well, not at all like a government office. The mail is delivered promptly; meetings start and end on time; five out of six letters relegated to the Blind Letter Office ultimately wend their way to the correct addresses. Postmaster General Moist von Lipwig, former arch-swindler and confidence man, has exceeded all expectations—including his own. So it's somewhat disconcerting when Lord Vetinari summons Moist to the palace and asks, "Tell me, Mr. Lipwig, would you like to make some *real* money?"  

 Vetinari isn't talking about wages, of course. He's referring, rather, to the Royal Mint of Ankh-Morpork, a venerable institution that haas run for centuries on the hereditary employment of the Men of the Sheds and their loyal outworkers, who *do* make money in their spare time. Unfortunately, it costs *more* than a penny to *make* a penny, so the whole process seems somewhat counterintuitive.  

 Next door, at the Royal Bank, the Glooper, an "analogy machine," has scientifically established that one never has quite as much money at the end of the week as one thinks one should, and the bank's chairman, one elderly Topsy (née Turvy) Lavish, keeps two loaded crossbows at her desk. Oh, and the chief clerk is probably a vampire.  

 But before Moist has time to fully consider Vetinari's question, fate answers it for him. Now he's not only making money, but enemies too; he's got to spring a prisoner from jail, break into his own bank vault, stop the new manager from licking his face, and, above all, find out where all the gold has gone—otherwise, his life in banking, while very exciting, is going to be really, really short. . . .


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The Ghost in the bone-white mask who haunts the Ankh-Morpork Opera House was always considered a benign presence -- some would even say lucky -- until he started killing people. The sudden rash of bizarre backstage deaths now threatens to mar the operatic debut of country girl Perdita X. (nee Agnes) Nitt, she of the ample body and ampler voice. Perdita's expected to hide in the chorus and sing arias out loud while a more petitely presentable soprano mouths the notes. But at least it's an escape from scheming Nanny Ogg and old Granny Weatherwax back home, who want her to join their witchy ranks.  Once Granny sets her mind on something, however, it's difficult -- and often hazardous -- to dissuade her. And no opera-prowling phantom fiend is going to keep a pair of determined hags down on the farm after they've seen Ankh-Morpork.


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A Young Dwarf's Dream Corporal Carrot has been promoted!He's now in charge of the new recruits guarding Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's greatest city, from Barbarian Tribes, Miscellaneous Marauders, unlicensed Thieves, and such. It's a big job, particularly for an adopted dwarf. But an even bigger job awaits. An ancient document has just revealed that Ankh-Morpork, ruled for decades by Disorganized crime, has a secret sovereign! And his name is Carrott... And so begins the most awesome epic encounter of all time, or at least all afternoon, in which the fate of a city--indeed of the universe itself!--depends on a young man's courage, an ancient sword's magic, and a three-legged poodle's bladder.


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War has come to Discworld ... again. And, to no one's great surprise, the conflict centers around the small, arrogantly fundamentalist duchy of Borogravia, which has long prided itself on its unrelenting aggressiveness. A year ago, Polly Perks's brother marched off to battle, and Polly's willing to resort to drastic measures to find him. So she cuts off her hair, dons masculine garb, and -- aided by a well-placed pair of socks -- sets out to join this man's army. Since a nation in such dire need of cannon fodder can't afford to be too picky, Polly is eagerly welcomed into the fighting fold—along with a vampire, a troll, an Igor, a religious fanatic, and two uncommonly close "friends." It would appear that Polly "Ozzer" Perks isn't the only grunt with a secret. But duty calls, the battlefield beckons. And now is the time for all good ... er ... "men" to come to the aid of their country.


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Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels are consistent number one bestseller in England, where they have catapulted him into the highest echelons of parody next to Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.In this Discworld installment, Death comes to Mort with an offer he can't refuse -- especially since being, well, dead isn't compulsory. As Death's apprentice, he'll have free board and lodging, use of the company horse, and he won't need time off for family funerals. The position is everything Mort thought he'd ever wanted, until he discovers that this perfect job can be a killer on his love life.


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Discworld's pesky alchemists are up to their old tricks again. This time, they've discovered how to get gold from silver -- the silver screen that is. Hearing the siren call of Holy Wood is one Victor Tugelbend, a would-be wizard turned extra. He can't sing, he can't dance, but he can handle a sword (sort of), and now he wants to be a star. So does Theda Withel, an ambitious ingénue from a little town (where else?) you've probably never heard of.But the click click of moving pictures isn't just stirring up dreams inside Discworld. Holy Wood's magic is drifting out into the boundaries of the universes, where raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas are beginning to ferment into a really stinky brew. It's up to Victor and Gaspode the Wonder Dog (a star if ever one was born!) to rein in the chaos and bring order back to a starstruck Discworld. And they're definitely not ready for their close-up!


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One moment, Sir Sam Vimes is in his old patrolman form, chasing a sweet-talking psychopath across the rooftops of Ankh-Morpork. The next, he's lying naked in the street, having been sent back thirty years courtesy of a group of time-manipulating monks who won't leave well enough alone. This Discworld is a darker place that Vimes remembers too well, three decades before his title, fortune, beloved wife, and impending first child. Worse still, the murderer he's pursuing has been transported back also. Worst of all, it's the eve of a fabled street rebellion that needlessly destroyed more than a few good (and not so good) men. Sam Vimes knows his duty, and by changing history he might just save some worthwhile necks -- though it could cost him his own personal future. Plus there's a chance to steer a novice watchman straight and teach him a valuable thing or three about policing, an impressionable young copper named Sam Vimes.


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It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun.First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the myriad administrative duties, such as dealing with mad priests, sacred crocodiles, and marching mummies. And to top it all off, the adolescent pharaoh discovers deceit, betrayal -- not to mention aheadstrong handmaiden -- at the heart of his realm.


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They say there are only two things you can count on ...But that was before DEATH started pondering the existential. Of course, the last thing anyone needs is a squeamish Grim Reaper and soon his Discworld bosses have sent him off with best wishes and a well-earned gold watch. Now DEATH is having the time of his life, finding greener pastures where he can put his scythe to a whole new use.But like every cutback in an important public service, DEATH's demise soon leads to chaos and unrest -- literally, for those whose time was supposed to be up, like Windle Poons. The oldest geezer in the entire faculty of Unseen University -- home of magic, wizardry, and big dinners -- Windle was looking forward to a wonderful afterlife, not this boring been-there-done-that routine. To get the fresh start he deserves, Windle and the rest of Ankh-Morpork's undead and underemployed set off to find DEATH and save the world for the living (and everybody else, of course).


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Lost in the chill deeps of space between the galaxies, it sails on forever, a flat, circular world carried on the back of a giant turtle--DISCWORLD--a land where the unexpected can be expected. Where the strangest things happen to the nicest people. Like Brutha, a simple lad who only wants to tend his melon patch. Until one day he hears the voice of a god calling his name. A small god, to be sure. But bossy as Hell.


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When last seen, the singularly inept wizard Rincewind had fallen off the edge of the world. Now magically, he's turned up again, and this time he's brought the Luggage. But that's not all.... Once upon a time, there was an eighth son of an eighth son who was, of course, a wizard. As if that wasn't complicated enough, said wizard then had seven sons. And then he had an eighth son -- a wizard squared (that's all the math, really). Who of course, was a source of magic -- a sorcerer.


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Everybody wants more time, which is why on Discworld only the experts can manage it -- the venerable Monks of History who store it and pump it from where it's wasted, like underwater (how much time does a codfish really need?), to places like cities, where busy denizens lament, "Oh where does the time go?"While everyone always talks about slowing down, one young horologist is about to do the unthinkable. He's going to stop. Well, stop time that is, by building the world's first truly accurate clock. Which means esteemed History Monk Lu-Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd have to put on some speed to stop the timepiece before it starts. For if the Perfect Clock starts ticking, Time -- as we know it -- will end. And then the trouble will really begin...


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Once, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, trolls and dwarfs met in bloody combat. Centuries later, each species still views the other with simmering animosity. Lately, the influential dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive citizens—a volatile situation made far worse when the pint-size provocateur is discovered bashed to death . . . with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.   Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch is aware of the importance of solving the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's second most-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to always being home at six p.m. sharp to read Where's My Cow? to Sam, Jr.) But more than one corpse is waiting for Vimes in the eerie, summoning darkness of a labyrinthine mine network being secretly excavated beneath Ankh-Morpork's streets. And the deadly puzzle is pulling him deep into the muck and mire of superstition, hatred, and fear—and perhaps all the way to Koom Valley itself.


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Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too). As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football u the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football. Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!


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Be careful what you wish for...Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother named Desiderata who had a good heart, a wise head, and poor planning skills--which unforunately left the Princess Emberella in the care of her other (not quite so good and wise) godmother when DEATH came for Desiderata. So now it's up to Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax, and Nanny Ogg to hop on broomsticks and make for far-distant Genua to ensure the servant girl doesn't marry the Prince.But the road to Genua is bumpy, and along the way the trio of witches encounters the occasional vampire, werewolf, and falling house (well this is a fairy tale, after all). The trouble really begins once these reluctant foster-godmothers arrive in Genua and must outwit their power-hungry counterpart who'll stop at nothing to achieve a proper "happy ending"--even if it means destroying a kingdom.


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Witches Are Not By Nature Gregarious, And They Certainly Don T Have Leaders.Granny Weatherwax Was The Most Highly-Regarded Of The Leaders They Didn T Have.But Even She Found That Meddling In Royal Politics Was A Lot More Difficult Than Certain Playwrights Would Have You Believe&Wyrd Sisters Is The Sixth Novel In The Discworld Sequence The Funniest Fantasy Series Ever.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**  Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal  ** 

 

*One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, and taking a bath in the cream, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazing when the rats followed hint out of town.

They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere outside of town and solemnly counted out the money.*

The Amazing Maurice runs the perfect Pied Piper scam. This streetwise alley cat knows the value of cold, hard cash and can talk his way into and out of anything. But when Maurice and his cohorts decide to con the town of Bad Blinitz, it will take more than fast talking to survive the danger that awaits. For this is a town where food is scarce and rats are hated, where cellars are lined with deadly traps, and where a terrifying evil lurks beneath the hunger-stricken streets....

Set in Terry Pratchett's widely popular Discworld, this masterfully crafted, gripping read is both compelling and funny. When one of the world's most acclaimed fantasy writers turns a classic fairy tale on its head, no one will ever look at the Pied Piper -- or rats -- the same way again!


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It is rare and splendid event when an author is elevated from the underground into the international literary establishment. In the case of England's best-known and best-loved modern satirist, that event has been long overdue.  

 Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent Discworld novels satirize and celebrate every aspect of life, modern and ancient, sacred and profane. Consistent number-one bestsellers in England, they have garnered him a secure position in the pantheon of humor along with Mark Twain, Douglas Adams, Matt Groening, and Jonathan Swift. 

 Even so distinguished an author as A. S. Byatt has sung his praises, calling Pratchett's intricate and delightful fictional Discworld "more complicated and satisfying than Oz." 

 His latest satiric triumph, * Carpe Jugulum,* involves an exclusive royal snafu that leads to comic mayhem. In a fit of enlightenment democracy and ebullient goodwill, King Verence invites Uberwald's undead, the Magpyrs, into Lancre to celebrate the birth of his daughter. But once ensconced within the castle, these wine-drinking, garlic-eating, sun-loving modern vampires have no intention of leaving. * Ever.* 

 Only an uneasy alliance between a nervous young priest and the argumentative local witches can save the country from being taken over by people with a cultivated bloodlust and bad taste in silk waistcoats. For them, there's only one way to fight. 

 Go for the throat, or as the * vampyres* themselves say...

 Carpe Jugulum


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The Discworld is flat, and rides through space on the backs of Berilia, Tubul, Great P'Thon and Jerakeen, the four elephants who stand in turn on the back of Great A'Tuin, the giant turtle. And this is where it all starts, with the naive tourist Twoflower and his incompetent and cynical guide, the wizard Rincewind, forced to flee from the proud and pestilent twin city of Ankh-Morpork. When they meet the barbarian thieves Bravd and Weasel, things that are already bad turn inevitably to the worst . . .This is the second of Terry Pratchett's Discworld movies for SKY ONE, made by the team who brought THE HOGFATHER to you and featuring The Discworld Players, an ensemble cast including Sir David Jason as Rincewind.


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Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels, consistent number one bestsellers in England, have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody along with Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen. In Equal Rites, a dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to an eighth son of an eighth son, who is just at that moment being born. The fact that the son is actually a daughter is discovered just a little too late...


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

It starts with whispers.  

Then someone picks up a stone.  

 Finally, the fires begin.

When people turn on witches, the innocents suffer. . . .  

 Tiffany Aching has spent years studying with senior witches, and now she is on her own. As the witch of the Chalk, she performs the bits of witchcraft that aren’t sparkly, aren’t fun, don’t involve any kind of wand, and that people seldom ever hear about: She does the unglamorous work of caring for the needy.  

 But someone—or something—is igniting fear, inculcating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Aided by her tiny blue allies, the Wee Free Men, Tiffany must find the source of this unrest and defeat the evil at its root—before it takes her life. Because if Tiffany falls, the whole Chalk falls with her.  

 Chilling drama combines with laughout-loud humor and searing insight as beloved and bestselling author Terry Pratchett tells the high-stakes story of a young witch who stands in the gap between good and evil.


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Discworld's only demonology hacker, Eric, is about to make life very difficult for the rest of Ankh-Morpork's denizens. This would-be Faust is very bad...at his work, that is. All he wants is to fulfill three little wishes:to live forever, to be master of the universe, and to have a stylin' hot babe.But Eric isn't even good at getting his own way. Instead of a powerful demon, he conjures, well, Rincewind, a wizard whose incompetence is matched only by Eric's. And as if that wasn't bad enough, that lovable travel accessory the Luggage has arrived, too. Accompanied by his best friends, there's only one thing Eric wishes now -- that he'd never been born!


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It's murder in Discworld! -- which ordinarily is no big deal. But what bothers Watch Commander Sir Sam Vimes is that the unusual deaths of three elderly Ankh-Morporkians do not bear the clean, efficient marks of the Assassins' Guild. An apparent lack of any motive is also quite troubling. All Vimes has are some tracks of white clay and more of those bothersome "clue" things that only serve to muck up an investigation. The anger of a fearful populace is already being dangerously channeled toward the city's small community of golems -- the mindless, absurdly industrious creatures of baked clay who can occasionally be found toiling in the city's factories. And certain highly placed personages are using the unrest as an excuse to resurrect a monarchy -- which would be bad enough even if the "king" they were grooming wasn't as empty-headed as your typical animated pottery.


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Everyone knows that the world is flat, and supported on the backs of four elephants. But weren't there supposed to be five? Indeed there were. So where is it?...When duty calls. Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork constabulary answers. Even when he doesn't want to. He's been "invited" to attend a royal function as both detective and diplomat. The one role he relishes; the other requires, well, ruby tights. Of course where cops (even those clad in tights) go, alas, crime follows. An attempted assassination and a theft soon lead to a desperate chase from the low halls of Discworld royalty to the legendary fat mines of Uberwald, where lard is found in underground seams along with tusks and teeth and other precious ivory artifacts. It's up to the dauntless Vimes -- bothered as usual by a familiar cast of Discworld inhabitants (you know, trolls, dwarfs, werewolves, vampires and such) -- to solve the puzzle of the missing pachyderm. Which of course he does. After all, solving mysteries is his job.


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Arch-swindler Moist Van Lipwig never believed his confidence crimes were hanging offenses - until he found himself with a noose tightly around his neck, dropping through a trapdoor, and falling into ... a government job? By all rights, Moist should have met his maker. Instead, it's Lord Vetinari, supreme ruler of Ankh-Morpork, who promptly offers him a job as Postmaster. Since his only other option is a nonliving one, Moist accepts the position - and the hulking golem watchdog who comes along with it, just in case Moist was considering abandoning his responsibilities prematurely. Getting the moribund Postal Service up and running again, however, may be a near-impossible task, what with literally mountains of decades-old undelivered mail clogging every nook and cranny of the broken-down post office building; and with only a few creaky old postmen and one rather unstable, pin-obsessed youth available to deliver it. Worse still, Moist could swear the mail is talking to him. Worst of all, it means taking on the gargantuan, money-hungry Grand Trunk clacks communication monopoly and its bloodthirsty piratical head, Mr. Reacher Gilt. But it says on the building neither rain nor snow nor glo m of ni t ... Inspiring words (admittedly, some of the bronze letters have been stolen), and for once in his wretched life Moist is going to fight. And if the bold and impossible are what's called for, he'll do it - in order to move the mail, continue breathing, get the girl, and specially deliver that invaluable commodity that every human being (not to mention troll, dwarf, and, yes, even golem) requires - hope.


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Here there be dragons . . . and the denizens of Ankh-Morpork wish one huge firebreather would return from whence it came. Long believed extinct, a superb specimen of draco nobilis ("noble dragon" for those who don't understand italics) has appeared in Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, in rather short order it is crowned King (it is a noble dragon, after all . . .).Meanwhile, back at Unseen University, an ancient and long-forgotten volume -- The Summoning of Dragons -- is missing from the Library's shelves. To the rescue come Captain Vimes, Constable Carrot, and the rest of the Night Watch who, along with other brave citizens, risk everything, including a good roasting, to dethrone the flying monarch and restore order to Ankh-Morpork (before it's burned to a crisp). A rare tale, well done as only Terry Pratchett can.


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Something is coming after Tiffany ... Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic -- not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this! What Tiffany doesn't know is that an insidious, disembodied creature is pursuing her. This time, neither Mistress Weatherwax (the greatest witch in the world) nor the fierce, six-inch-high Wee Free Men can protect her. In the end, it will take all of Tiffany's inner strength to save herself ... if it can be done at all. A Story of Discworld


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Who would want to harm Discworld's most beloved icon? Very few things are held sacred in this twisted, corrupt, heartless -- and oddly familiar -- universe, but the Hogfather is one of them. Yet here it is, Hogswatchnight, that most joyous and acquisitive of times, and the jolly old, red-suited gift-giver has vanished without a trace. And there's something shady going on involving an uncommonly psychotic member of the Assassins' Guild and certain representatives of Ankh-Morpork's rather extensive criminal element. Suddenly Discworld's entire myth system is unraveling at an alarming rate. Drastic measures must be taken, which is why Death himself is taking up the reins of the fat man's vacated sleigh . . . which, in turn, has Death's level-headed granddaughter, Susan, racing to unravel the nasty, humbuggian mess before the holiday season goes straight to hell and takes everyone along with it.


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"May you live in interesting times" is the worst thing one can wish on a citizen of Discworld -- especially on the distinctly unmagical sorcerer Rincewind, who has had far too much perilous excitement in his life. But when a request for a "Great Wizzard" arrives in Ankh-Morpork via carrier albatross from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's he who's sent as emissary. Chaos threatens to follow the impending demise of the Agatean Empire's current ruler. And, for some incomprehensible reason, someone believes Rincewind will have a mythic role in the war and wholesale bloodletting that will surely ensue. (Carnage is pretty much a given, since Cohen the Barbarian and his extremely elderly Silver Horde are busily formulating their own plan for looting, pillaging, and, er, looking wistfully at girls.) However, Rincewind firmly believes there are too many heroes already in the world, yet only one Rincewind. And he owes it to the world to keep that one alive for as long as possible.


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Something new has come up between the ancient rival cities of Ankh-Morpork and Al-Khali. Literally. An island, rising out of Discworld's circular sea. Since it's uninhabited and claimed by both cities, Commander Vimes and his faithful trolls and cops are forced to deal with a crime so awful that there's no law against it. It's called "war." But don't be alarmed. It all happens on faraway Discworld, where greed and ignorance influence politicians, and perfectly normal people occasionally act like raving idiots. A world, in short, totally unlike our own.


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Something is amiss at Unseen Unversity, Ankh-Morpork's most prestigious (i.e., only) institution of higher learning. **A professor is missing--but a search party is on the way!** A bevy of senior wizards will follow the trail wherever it leads--even to the other side of Discworld, where the Last Continent, Fourecks, is under construction. **Imagine a magical land** where rain is but a myth and the ordinary is strange and the past and present run side by side. **experience the terror** as you encounter a Mad Dwarf, the Peach Butt, and the dreaded Meat Pie Floater.

**Feel the passion** as the denizens of the Last Continent learn what happens when rain falls and the rivers fill with water (it spoils regattas, for one thing). **Thrill to the promise* of next year's regatta, in remote, rustic Didjabringabeeralong. It'll be asolutely gujeroo (no worries).


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**Its more than just the debut novel from the acclaimed singer and songwriter-it's "the best messed up love song you'll ever read." (Dan Palladino and Amy Sherman-Palladino, creators of *The Gilmore Girls*) ** 



 Our hero is a talented but floundering musician with no job, no apartment, no wife (anymore), and a six-pack of beer. Stuck between responsibility and freedom, and apathy and success, he's seeking sanctuary at his sister's home in Cape Cod, agreeing to look after his two-year old nephew. Together the unlikely pair attracts the attention of a lovely young woman with a broken past all her own and the ability to shock our hero awake-or shake him to his core.


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One By One...Two decades ago, at a private women's college in upstate New York, a student was brutally attacked in her dorm room. Her assailant was never found...They Disappear...Sue Barlow arrives at Wilbourne College twenty years later. When a classmate disappears, Sue thinks it's an isolated incident. But then two other girls vanish...And Die...As fear grows on campus, Sue begins to sense she's being watched. And as the body count rises, she soon realizes that a twisted psychopath is summoning her to play a wicked game - a game that only will end when she dies.


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The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars.A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties.Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious—not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century’s most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people.John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson’s life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents—particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.


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**An encyclopedia of linguistic biographies: the witty, illustrated stories of the Earl of Sandwich, Charles Boycott, and other historical figures better known as words than people. 

**Eponymous, *adj. *Giving one’s name to a person, place, or thing. 

Anonymous, *adj. *Anonymous. 

Anonyponymous, *adj. *Anonymous and eponymous. 

The Earl of Sandwich, fond of salted beef and paired slices of toast, found a novel way to eat them all together. Etienne de Silhouette, a former French finance minister, was so notoriously cheap that his name became a byword for chintzy practices—such as substituting a darkened outline for a proper painted portrait. Both bequeathed their names to the language, but neither man is remembered. 

In this clever and funny book, John Bemelmans Marciano illuminates the lives of these anonyponymous persons. A kind of encyclopedia of linguistic biographies, the book is arranged alphabetically, giving the stories of everyone from Abu “algorithm” Al-Khwarizmi to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Along with them you'll find the likes of Harry Shrapnel, Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, and many other people whose vernacular legacies have long outlived their memory. 

Accented by amusing line portraits and short etymological essays on subjects like “superhero eponyms,” *Anonyponymous *is both a compendium of trivia and a window into the fascinating world of etymology.  Carefully curated and unfailingly witty, this book is both a fantastic gift for language lovers and a true pleasure to read.


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“John Le Carre meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez...Pérez-Reverte has a huge following...and it’s spreading.” —The Wall Street Journal  Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s latest novel has him poised for true breakout bestsellerdom: The Queen of the South hit multiple bestseller lists and garnered stunning reviews, with raves describing it as his greatest achievement to date. An extraordinary novel, it captivated booksellers, critics and readers almost without exception.  The Queen of the South spans continents, from the dusty streets of Mexico to the sparkling waters off the coast of Morocco, to the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain. Set to the irresistible beat of outlaw ballads, this sweeping story encompasses sensuality and cruelty, love and betrayal, as its heroine’s story unfolds.  “A modern-day epic...bearing the unmistakable ring of authenticity and a slam-bang narrative sure to resonate with legions of appreciative readers...All the core elements, after all, are here: love, violence, betrayal and honor.” —Los Angeles Times  “The Da Vinci Code and The Rule of Four ...pale in comparison with Pérez-Reverte novels...Pérez-Reverte shines in some white-knuckles action sequences...but his greatest triumph is [his] heroine.” —Time Out New York  “Pérez-Reverte’s literary thriller explodes with history, heartbreak [and] determination....An epic suspense story of heart and grit.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor’s Choice)


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At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The 'casting director' told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold, and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties. More than just a sexy read set in an exotic land, Some Girls is also the story of how a rebellious teen found herself-and the courage to meet her birth mother and eventually adopt a baby boy.


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**The second swashbuckling adventure in the internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste   series**  

  Captain Alatriste, Madrid’s most charismatic swashbuckler, returns in Pérez-Reverte’s acclaimed   international bestseller. The fearless Alatriste is hired to infiltrate a convent and rescue a young   girl forced to serve as a powerful priest’s concubine. The girl’s father is barred from legal recourse   as the priest threatens to reveal that the man’s family is "not of pure blood" and is, in fact, of   Jewish descent—which will all but destroy the family name.  As Alatriste struggles to save the   young hostage from being burned at the stake, he soon finds himself drawn deeper and deeper   into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the heart of the Spanish Inquisition.  A literary thriller   that delivers adventure and rich historical detail, *Purity of Blood* captivates to the final   page.


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Acclaimed author Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s internationally bestselling series, the saga of the swordsman-for-hire Captain Alatriste, continues in *The Sun Over Breda*. Fifteen-year-old Iñigo Balboa enlists to serve as his master’s aide, and narrates their further adventures of swordplay and skirmishes, mutiny and wartime honor, as Captain Alatriste rejoins his Cartagena regiment to take part in the battles and siege of Breda. In Spain, Alatriste’s nemesis, Luis de Alquézar, grows more powerful, as Iñigo’s mysterious friend Angélica hints at some plans upon his return. Once again the exploits of the seventeenth-century mercenary will thrill and delight the legions of readers eager to cheer a hero for the ages.


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**From the international bestselling author, the fourth adventure of Captain Alatriste **



 With *The King's Gold*, bestselling author Arturo Pérez-Reverte continues to enthrall readers and critics with his heroic seventeenth-century mercenary, Captain Alatriste. The fourth adventure picks up in Seville in 1626. After serving with honor at the bloody siege of Breda, Alatriste and his protégé, Iñigo Balboa, accept a risky job involving a dozen swordsmen and mercenaries at their command, a dazzling amount of contraband gold, and a heavily guarded Spanish galleon returning from the West Indies. The job offer comes from the king himself, for at stake is nothing less than the Spanish Crown, and its dominion over the wealth of the Americas. But for Alatriste, a very personal surprise awaits him on that galleon.


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**What would you do if the love of your life, and all your memories, were lost- only to reappear, but with such shocking revelations that you wish you had never remembered... ** 



 Emmett Conn is an old man, near the end of his life. A World War I veteran, he's been affected by memory loss since being injured during the war. To those around him, he's simply a confused man, fading in and out of senility. But what they don't know is that Emmett has been beset by memories, of events he and others have denied or purposely forgotten. 



 In Emmett's dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey. A young woman among them, Araxie, captivates and enthralls him. But then the trek ends, the war separates them. He is injured. Seven decades later, as his grasp on the boundaries between past and present begins to break down, Emmett sets out on a final journey, to find Araxie and beg her forgiveness. 



 Mark Mustian has written a remarkable novel about the power of memory-and the ability of people, individually and collectively, to forget. Depicting how love can transcend nationalities, politics, and religion, how racism creates divisions where none truly exist, and how the human spirit fights to survive even in the face of hopelessness, *The Gendarme* is a transcendent novel.


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In this sequel to her* New York Times* bestsellers* Under the Tuscan Sun* and* Bella Tuscany*, the celebrated "bard of Tuscany" (*New York Times*) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany's people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle. Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since* Under the Tuscan Sun* and* Bella Tuscany* appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a "wilder" side of Tuscany--and with it a lively  engagement with Tuscany's mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden.  Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where* Under the Tuscan Sun* began. With more on the pleasures of life at* Bramasole*, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes,* Every Day in Tuscany* is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.


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A major, internationally bestselling novel of extraordinary power about the costs of war from one of Israel's greatest writers. Set in Israel in recent times, this epic yet intimate novel places side by side the trials of war and the challenges of everyday life. Through a series of powerful, overlapping circles backward in time, it tells the story of Ora's relationship with her husband, from whom she is now separated, as well as the tragedy of their best friend Avram, a former soldier - and her son's biological father. When her son Ofer rejoins the army for a major offensive, Ora is devastated and decides to hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the "notifiers" who might deliver the worst news a parent can hear. She phones Avram, whom she has not seen in 21 years, and convinces him to go with her. As they journey together, Ora unfurls the story of her family, and gives Avram the gift of his son - a telling that keeps the boy alive for both his mother and the reader. Never have we seen so vividly the surreality of daily life in Israel, the consequences of living in a society where the burden of war falls on each generation anew. David Grossman's rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great anti-war novels of our time.


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SUMMARY: An American President faces war and finds himself hamstrung by a Congress that will not act. To protect national security, he invokes his powers as Commander-in-Chief and orders actions that seem to violate laws enacted by Congress. He is excoriated for usurping dictatorial powers, placing himself above the law, and threatening to “breakdown constitutional safeguards.” One could be forgiven for thinking that the above describes former President George W. Bush. Yet these particular attacks on presidential power were leveled against Franklin D. Roosevelt. They could just as well describe similar attacks leveled against George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and a number of other presidents challenged with leading the nation through times of national crisis. However bitter, complex, and urgent today’s controversies over executive power may be, John Yoo reminds us they are nothing new. In Crisis and Command, he explores a factor too little consulted in current debates: the past. Through shrewd and lucid analysis, he shows how the bold decisions made by Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR changed more than just history; they also transformed the role of the American president. The link between the vigorous exercise of executive power and presidential greatness, Yoo argues, is both significant and misunderstood. He makes the case that the founding fathers deliberately left the Constitution vague on the limits of presidential authority, drawing on history to demonstrate the benefi ts to the nation of a strong executive office.


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Treachery and corruption lurk at the end of every street, in the holy city of Othir. It's the perfect place for a freelance assassin with no loyalties and even fewer scruples.Caim makes - or perhaps more accurately, takes - his living on the edge of a blade. Murder is a risky business, but so far he reckons he's on the right side of it. Or he was . . . because when a short-notice contract job goes south, Caim finds himself thrust into the middle of a sinister plot in which he seems to be one of the primary marks. Pitted against crooked lawmen, rival killers and the darkest kinds of sorcery, it's going to take more than luck if he's to get through this alive. He may lack scruples, but he's still got his knives, and his instincts, to rely on - and a developed sense of revenge, or should that be justice? - to fall back on. But when his path leads him from the hazardous back streets of Othir and into the highest halls of power, will instincts and weapons alone really be enough? If Caim is really going to unravel the plot which has snared him, to unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he will have to finally claim his birthright as the Shadow's Son . . .


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To Whom It May Concern—I was The Green Ray. Now it can be told—the story which many tried to silence, many refused to believe, and many did not want to hear. In the depths of the Great Depression, the voice of a radio superhero known as The Green Ray entertained America. Forty years later, the man behind the character—two-bit voice actor Ray Green, known to his family as Reuven Agranovsky—is caught in an all-night blackout in the desert town of Mason, New Mexico, where a chain of events is set in motion that forces The Green Ray out of retirement. But at seventy-three, Ray faces a different—and far more terrifying—world. A wildly inventive, raucously funny novel of heroism, neurosis, and transcendence, Further Adventures was ahead of its time when it was first published fifteen years ago. Like Ray Green himself, it now reemerges in a newly revised "author's cut" for a new generation of readers.


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Jonathan Dee is the author of four novels, most recently Palladio. He is a staff writer for "The New York Times Magazine," a frequent contributor to "Harper's," and a former senior editor of "The Paris Review." He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and the New School. "From the Hardcover edition."


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Within the call of Kerberos, lies the destiny of humankind!Silus is a fisherman working the Nurn Coast, a simple man leading a simple life. But there is more to Silus than even he himself realises. When a mysterious man on the run from the Final Faith tries to persuade Silus on an extraordinary voyage, his world begins to change. And when an ancient and evil race burts from the sea to try and claim Silus as one of their own, he is forced to flee his home. Soon Silus becomes a pawn in a deadly game played between ancient races. On the forbidding Twilight seas, Silus begins to discover the extraordinary truth behinf his burgeoning preternatural abilities. As he battles alongside the crew of the magical galleon the Llothriall, Silus will find out more about his legacy than he could ever have imagined. Hearing the call of Kerberos, he will fight to save existence itself!


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**CLASSIFIED: APPARENT SUPERNATURAL**

**Subject: Gabriel Bleak. Status: Civilian. Paranormal skills: Powerful. Able to manipulate AS energies and communicate with UBEs (e.g. "ghosts" and other entities). Psychological profile: Extremely independent, potentially dangerous. *Caution is urged....***

As far as Gabriel Bleak is concerned, talking to the dead is just another way of making a living. It gives him the competitive edge to survive as a bounty hunter, or "skip tracer," in the psychic minefield known as New York City. Unfortunately, his gift also makes him a prime target. A top-secret division of Homeland Security has been monitoring the recent emergence of human supernaturals, with Gabriel Bleak being the strongest on record. If they control Gabriel, they'll gain access to the Hidden -- the entity-based energy field that connects all life on Earth. But Gabriel's got other ideas. With a growing underground movement called the Shadow Community -- and an uneasy alliance of spirits, elementals, and other beings -- Gabriel's about to face the greatest demonic uprising since the Dark Ages. But this time, history is not going to repeat itself. This time, the future is Bleak. *Gabriel Bleak.*


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JOHN UPDIKE IS "A STYLIST OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, capable of illuminating the sublime in the mundane, thereby elevating all of human experience." --Chicago Tribune Toward the End of Time "is the journal of a 66-year-old man, Ben Turnbull . . . [which] reveals not only the world but the wanderings of his wits. . . . So what if he jumps from a United States in the next century, disintegrating after a war with China, to ancient Egypt, or to virtual reality? So what if characters appear and disappear like phantoms in a dream? . . . Turnbull's journal is like Walden gone haywire. . . . If Ben's ruthlessness is evenhanded, so is his alarming intelligence; it falls on every scene, person, object, and thought in the book, giving it an eerie ambiance." --The New York Times Book Review "A BOOK AIMED NOT TO RESOLVE BUT TO AROUSE A READER'S WONDER . . . Vintage Updike: marital angst worked out against the chilly backdrop of privilege, rendered with a lyricism and insight and eye for detail reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen." --The Miami Herald "WONDERFUL RUSHES OF NEAR-MELVILLEAN PROSE . . . Toward the End of Time has a force that gets under your skin." --New York Review of Books A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club


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Following up Finn, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors . . . William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth, a powerful and haunting story of life, death, and family in rural America. The edge of civilization is closer than we think. It’s as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older, wilder, and far less forgiving world—until one of them dies in his sleep and the other two are suspected of murder.Told in a chorus of voices that span a generation, Kings of the Earth examines the bonds of family and blood, faith and suspicion, that link not just the brothers but their entire community.Vernon, the oldest of the Proctors, is reduced by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side, needy and unknowable. And Creed, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army), struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We also meet Del Graham, a state trooper torn between his urge to understand the brothers and his desire for justice; Preston Hatch, a kindhearted and resourceful neighbor who’s spent his life protecting the three men from themselves; the brothers’ only sister, Donna, who managed to cut herself loose from the family but is then drawn back; and a host of other living, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this deeply intimate saga of the human condition at its limits. 


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Lauren Heller and her husband, Roger, are out to dinner one night when they're brutally attacked. Twenty-four hours later, Lauren awakes in the hospital to find that Roger has mysteriously "VANISHED"The only one with any chance of finding Roger is his brother, Nick. A private spy trained in the Special Forces, Nick Heller specializes in digging up secrets that those of influence would rather keep hidden. He and Roger have been estranged for years, ever since a bitter scandal tore their family apart. But Nick will do anything to protect Lauren and his nephew--even if it means taking on the most lethal enemy he's ever faced."An Action-packed, full-throttle...read-it-tonight thriller that you definitely shouldn't miss."--Lee Child Plunged headlong into a desperate chase, Nick begins making shocking discoveries about Roger's life--and his own. As he finds himself embroiled in a very personal, high-stakes investigation, Nick must take on a powerful and deadly conspiracy that will stop at nothing--and spare no one--to protect its secrets... "A HUMDINGER...TAUT ACTION SCENES." --"Washington"" Post""""Lots of unpredictable plot twists and a furious pace." --"San Francisco"" Chronicle""""lightning-paced from the first page to the last. "--"Providence"" Journal"


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To observe an eclipse is to witness a rare and unusual event. Under darkened skies the sun becomes a negative image of itself, its corona transforming the landscape into a strange space where anything might happen, and any story may be true... In the spirit of classic science fiction anthologies such as Universe, Orbit, and Starlight, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year) presents the non-themed genre anthology Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here you will find stories where strange and wonderful things happen - where reality is eclipsed by something magical and new.


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Veronica Kelly came to Africa to start her life over. Still reeling from her divorce, she is grateful when a handsome stranger invites her to join a tour to visit gorillas in Uganda's wild Impenetrable Forest. A trip that goes desperately wrong when their group is captured by brutal gunmen. Then one tourist is executed. And then another. This is no random kidnapping: their abduction is only the first move in a deadly strategic game. A game in which Veronica's ex-husband is somehow involved. Now she must embark on a wild journey across Africa to unveil a malignant conspiracy before it consumes entire nations - and hundreds of lives . . .nbsp;


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Published to coincide with the centenary of the Houndsditch Murders in December 2010, A Storm in the Blood tells the story of the Latvian revolutionaries who killed three officers of the Metropolitan Police. The parallel between the suicide ideologues of the time and contemporary terrorists, willing to die for their ideals, is all too clear. One of the most sensational crimes of the era, the murders were followed by the 'Siege of Stepney Street', a gunfight that saw then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill sending troops into the streets of London, shooting to kill. After hours of battle, the police broke through into the hideout, to find two corpses, but not the body of the ringleader, the mysterious 'Peter the Painter.' He had somehow vanished, along with his mistress, Rivka, a young refugee and Yiddish music hall singer. A Storm in the Blood fictionalises the events of 1910 with a dark, atmospheric rendering of pre-war London that explodes into a gripping, violent narrative. Publisher's Weekly remarked that: "While on the surface, the novel relates events of the present day to the terrorism of the past, Fink's story goes deeper, creating a compelling and psychologically driven tale of people who have lost their way.'' Published by Harper Perennial in the US, A Storm in the Blood is both a fascinating study of the psychology of self-sacrifice, and a suspenseful, action-packed thriller many readers consume in one sitting


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In his most original and compelling book yet, Andrew Vachss presents an electrifying tale of corruption in a devastated mill town.  It is 1959--a moment in history when the clandestine, powerful forces that will shape America to the present day are about to collide.Walker Dett is a hired gun, known for using the most extreme measures to accomplish his missions. Royal Beaumont is the "hillbilly boss" who turned Locke City from a dying town into a thriving vice capital. But organized crime outsiders are moving in on Beaumont's turf, so he reaches out for Dett in a high-risk move to maintain his power at all costs. Add a rival Irish political machine, a deeply entrenched neo-Nazi "party", the nascent black power movement, turf-disputing juvenile gangs, a muck-raking journalist who doubles as a blackmailer, the FBI--a covert observer and occasional participant which may itself be under surveillance-- and Locke City is about as stable as a nitroglycerin truck stalled on the railroad tracks.


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John Yoo, the key legal architect of the Bush administration’s response to 9/11, delivers a fascinating insider account of the War on Terror. While America reeled from the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001, Yoo and a skeletal staff of the Office of Legal Counsel found themselves on the phone with the White House. In a series of memos, Yoo offered his legal opinions on the president’s authority to respond, and in the process had an almost unmatched impact on America's fight against terrorism. His analysis led to many of the Bush administration’s most controversial policies, including detention at Guantanamo Bay, coercive interrogation, military trials for terrorists, preemptive attacks, and the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program. In fascinating detail, Yoo takes us inside the corridors of power and examines specific cases, from John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla to an American al-Qaeda leader assassinated by a CIA pilotless drone in the deserts of Yemen. In a midterm election year, when the controversies over the president’s handling of the War on Terror are sure to wage more forcefully than ever before, John Yoo’s War by Other Means is set to become one of the fall’s most talked about books.


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On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, with disastrous consequences. In a unique, compelling approach, author Johnny D. Boggs shifts perspectives from one first-person account to another to describe the bloody robbery, as well as the events leading to it and its aftermath.


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Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As "Mrs. Ro Grandee" she's trapped in a marriage that's thick with love and sick with abuse. Her true self has been bound in the chains of marital bliss in rural Texas, letting "Ro" make eggs, iron shirts, and take her punches. She seems doomed to spend the rest of her life battered outside by her husband and inside by her former self, until fate throws her in the path of an airport gypsy---one who shares her past and knows her future. The tarot cards foretell that Rose's beautiful, abusive husband is going to kill her. Unless she kills him first. Hot-blooded Rose Mae escapes from under Ro's perky compliance and emerges with a gun and a plan to beat the hand she's been dealt. Following messages that her long-missing mother has left hidden for her in graffiti and behind paintings, Rose and her dog Gretel set out from Amarillo, TX back to her hometown of Fruiton, AL, and then on to California, unearthing a host of family secrets as she goes. Running for her life, she realizes that she must face her past in order to overcome her fate---death by marriage---and become a girl who is strong enough to save herself from the one who loves her best. BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with a fresh and heartwrenching portrayal of the lengths a mother will go to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will go to escape the demands of forgiveness. With the seed of a minor character from her popular best-seller, GODS IN ALABAMA, Jackson has built a whole new story full of her trademark sly wit, endearingly off-kilter characters, and utterly riveting plot twists.


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March 1944: War’s darkest period descends upon Hungary’s Jews. By the time it ends in January 1945, over half a million Jews will have been murdered. Gratitude tells the story of that period, through the eyes of the wealthy Beck family, whose lives and loves are saved and lost. At the center of it all is Paul Beck, a young lawyer whose chance meeting with a visiting Swede, Raoul Wallenberg, may alter the inevitability of the Jews’ fate. Like The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Gratitude captures forever the pain and passion of one’s family precious moment in time.


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Set against the backdrop of a devastating forest fire that Henry David Thoreau accidentally set in 1844, John Pipkin's novel brilliantly illuminates the mind of the young philosopher at a formative moment in his life and in the life of the young nation. The Thoreau ofWoodsburneris a lost soul, resigned to a career designing pencils for his father's factory while dreaming of better things. On the day of the fire, his path crosses those of three very different people, each of whom also harbors a secret dream. Oddmund Hus, a shy Norwegian farmhand, pines for the wife of his brutal employer. Eliot Calvert, a prosperous bookseller, is also a hilariously inept aspiring playwright. Caleb Dowdy preaches fire and brimstone to his followers through an opium haze. Each of their lives, like Thoreau's, will be changed forever by the fire.


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For more than three decades John Saul has haunted the* New York Times *bestseller list–and readers’ imaginations–with his chilling tales of psychological suspense and supernatural horror. His instinct for striking the deepest chords of fear in our hearts and minds is unerring, and his gift for steering a tale from the light of day into the darkest depths of nightmare is at its harrowing best in **House of Reckoning. **After the untimely death of her mother, fourteen-year-old Sarah Crane is forced to grow up quickly in order to help tend her family’s Vermont farm and look after her grieving father, who’s drowning his sorrow in alcohol. But their quiet life together is shattered when her father is jailed for killing another man in a barroom brawl and injuring Sarah in a drunken car crash. Left in the cold care of a loveless foster family and alienated at school, Sarah finds a kindred spirit in classmate Nick Dunnigan, a former mental patient still plagued by voices and visions. And in eccentric art instructor Bettina Phillips, Sarah finds a mentor eager to nurture her talent for painting.  But within the walls of Bettina’s ancestral home, the mansion called Shutters, Sarah finds something altogether different and disturbing. Monstrous images from the house’s dark history seem to flow unbidden from Sarah’s paintbrush–images echoed by Nick’s chilling hallucinations. Trapped for ages in the shadowy rooms of Shutters, the violence and fury of long-dead generations have finally found a gateway from the grave into the world of the living. And Sarah and Nick have found a power they never had: to take control, and take revenge.


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Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-yearold paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police—unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother—Will alone holds the key to the planet’s salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing girl. And he already has someone in mind.  Lowboy, John Wray’s third novel, tells the story of Will’s fantastic and terrifying odyssey through the city’s tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope, and of Violet Heller’s desperate attempts to locate her son before psychosis claims him completely. She is joined by Ali Lateef, a missing-persons specialist, who gradually comes to discover that more is at stake than the recovery of a runaway teen: Violet—beautiful, enigmatic, and as profoundly at odds with the world as her son—harbors a secret that Lateef will discover at his own peril.  Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy’s haunting and extraordinary vision.  John Wray is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan’s Tongue. He was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Award, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-yearold paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Like most people he knows, Will believes the world is being destroyed by climate change; unlike most people, he’s convinced he can do something about it. Unknown to his doctors, unknown to the police—unknown even to Violet Heller, his devoted mother—Will alone holds the key to the planet’s salvation. To cool down the world, he has to cool down his own overheating body: to cool down his body, he has to find one willing girl. And he already has someone in mind.Lowboy, John Wray’s third novel, tells the story of Will’s fantastic and terrifying odyssey through the city’s tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope, and of Violet Heller’s desperate attempts to locate her son before psychosis claims him completely. She is joined by Ali Lateef, a missing-persons specialist, who gradually comes to discover that more is at stake than the recovery of a runaway teen: Violet—beautiful, enigmatic, and as profoundly at odds with the world as her son—harbors a secret that Lateef will discover at his own peril.Suspenseful and comic, devastating and hopeful by turns, Lowboy is a fearless exploration of youth, sex, and violence in contemporary America, seen through one boy’s haunting and extraordinary vision. “Lowboy is uncompromising, often gripping and generally excellent . . . One of the novel’s many pleasures is just going along: putting yourself fully in the hands of the story and its author, being drawn in, gradually immersed, making the connections, appreciating those seeds as they bloom into the tale’s developing complexity, danger and tragedy. By the time it all falls into place, the reader is long hooked and turning back is not an option . . . This is a meticulously constructed novel, immensely satisfying in the perfect, precise beat of its plot.”—Charles Bock, The New York Times Book Review “Lowboy is uncompromising, often gripping and generally excellent . . . One of the novel’s many pleasures is just going along: putting yourself fully in the hands of the story and its author, being drawn in, gradually immersed, making the connections, appreciating those seeds as they bloom into the tale’s developing complexity, danger and tragedy. By the time it all falls into place, the reader is long hooked and turning back is not an option . . . This is a meticulously constructed novel, immensely satisfying in the perfect, precise beat of its plot. Wray, however, has larger goals than a thrill ride. The book's core is a nexus of tragedy—the tragedy of a 17-year-old girl who, though she knows better, might do anything for the boy she loves; the tragedy of a mother whose life has been devoted to her son, yet who is incapable of helping him and who just may have been the source of his troubles; the tragedy of a middle-aged man caught between protecting the public and helping a parent; and finally, ultimately, the tragedy of a bright and beautiful teenager who not only must deal with all the confusions and pressures of being 16, but who, through no fault of his own, is not stable enough to be able to purchase a cupcake without confrontation. I'd be proud to be seen reading this novel on the downtown 6, or anywhere else at all.”—Charles Bock, The New York Times Book Review"What ever happened to the American Man? You know, the one who bullied and swore and drank his way through novels full of cigarette smoke, big cars and red meat? The one who'd abandon his family for a prostitute, or coerce his girlfriend into a threesome, or sleep with the housekeeper after murdering his wife? What happened to all those Rabbits and Portnoys and Rojacks and Wapshots and Herzogs? And does anyone really miss them? Judging from a sampling of recent male-penned fiction, the answer is no, not really . . . Which brings us to a tale told by a schizophrenic teenager, John Wray's dizzyingly seductive Lowboy. Wray's protagonist is on the lam from a mental institution, loose among the commuters and winos and rolling thunder of the Manhattan subway. Making your central character deeply insane is, of course, a risky and ambitious trick, but Wray carries it off with a fluid, inventive style that rises at times to a frightening pitch. Lowboy is an amplified hero for our times; despite his violence and craziness and incoherence, he is fundamentally sweet and in search of love."—Michael Lindgren, The Washington Post"John Wray is less interested in Lowboy’s picaresque circuits than in his mental circuits, whose damaged condition is brilliantly, compassionately evoked in the novel . . . Wray is never boring, largely because he has an uncanny talent for ventriloquism, and he seems to know, with unerring authority, how to select and make eloquent the details of Lowboy’s illness. He uses a variety of literary techniques . . . What is impressive about the book is its control, and its humane comprehension of radical otherness. In this regard, it ideally justifies itself, as one always hopes novels will. You can imagine replying to someone who was curious about what it’s like to be schizophrenic, 'Well, start with John Wray’s novel.' Lowboy may often be lost to himself, but he is not lost to us. Wray knows how to induce and then manage a kind of epistemological schizophrenia in the reader, whereby we can inhabit Lowboy’s groundless visions and still glimpse the ground they negate. There is a brilliant scene, like something out of Pinter, in which Lowboy is at a bakery in the Village, buying cupcakes. Emily waits for him outside. He is at the counter, and all is going reasonably well. But then his attention is caught by the bag . . . Lowboy is exceptionally tender and acute . . .  John Wray is a daring young writer, highly praised for his last two novels . . . These scenes are elegantly done, and are often moving."—James Wood, The New Yorker “[A] masterful third novel . . . The tone here is a departure for Wray . . . Lowboy is both sharper and more compressed . . . Lowboy is at its best at its most unflinching. Like Ken Kesey, Wray has a keen ear for the language of madness—the scripts, the shrinks, the straightjackets and the electric shocks.”—Matthew Shaer, San Francisco Chronicle"John Wray, an award-winning writer you've likely never heard of and a 'junior partner' in a poker circle that includes Myla Goldberg, Colson Whitehead, and Jonathan Lethem, has managed to avoid a day job for ten years. This frees him up to pursue his dual occupations. First and foremost, he's the author, at 37, of three standout novels—two probing works that have been reductively catalogued under historical fiction, and a new one, Lowboy, about a teenage paranoid schizophrenic at large in the subway system. It may be just suspenseful and familiar enough to promote the Park Sloper to full partnership in Brooklyn's literary society . . . Lowboy, sort of a police procedural written from the fugitive's point of view, may just be Wray's Motherless Brooklyn—a long-deserved breakout from a phenomenally versatile writer who wanted to try something a little easier to swallow."—Boris Kachka, New York magazine“John Wray’s third novel, one of the most anticipated books of the spring, has the makings of an American classic. Lowboy also represents Wray’s arrival as a major author, even though the story is in many ways a conventional one in which the hero of modest means sets out into the world with an enormous task, encounters a number of obstacles, comes to some new realization about his condition and finds a degree of redemption in the end . . . Wray’s genius as a storyteller lies in the fact that he recognizes that schizophrenia may well be the prevailing logic of the Twittered, Facebook-friended, RSS-fed culture around us. We can sympathize with Heller, and even love him, because he is all of us.”—Andrew Ervin, The Miami Herald"Imagine Dostoevsky in New York City, the Underground Man taking the A Train, only not hurrying home to Harlem but sneaking into abandoned stations in midtown Manhattan. That describes Will Heller, a schizophrenic 16-year-old who has gone AWOL from his school, gone off his meds—he was on Clorazil—and is out to save a world that is in the terminal stages of global warming. So radical is the warming that the world is scheduled to fry in just hours . . . Lowboy is his break from the rigors of historical research. It is a darkly introspective book, closeted and disturbing, that sees Wray trading in history for psychology . . . Lowboy is a brilliant and gutsy performance . . . At certain moments the book feels like a runaway subway car; you want it to slow down for you. But with Will Heller being chased by Violet and Ali as well as Skull and Bones, there is no slowing down. Toward the end, Lowboy moves with increasing acceleration toward some apocalyptic rendezvous with greenhouse gasses deep under the sidewalks of New York."—Mark Shechner, The Buffalo News "In this brisk read, a schizophrenic 16-year old goes off his meds and descends into the bowels of the New York subway system, convinced the end of the world is near. Meanwhile, his mother and a detective search for him above. Dual plot tracks give Wray the chance to tell noir-inspired mystery with a trippy yet chilling twist."—Tim Swift, The Baltimore Sun "Many novelists have tried to portray a character's madness or confusion, but few succeed in making that experience feel real and convincing. Lowboy, John Wray's third novel, is one of those few . . . The novel deftly incorporates two narratives, that of Will with his warped, fevered perspective, and a more straightforward one about Will's mother and Detective Ali Lateef as they try to find him before he does something violent, to himself or to others. That fear stems from an incident 18 months earlier, when Will pushed his girlfriend, Emily, off a subway platform. (She survived.) . . . Lowboy carries the reader along with suspense. The chapters depicting Violet and Detective Lateef's search for Lowboy read like a police procedural, while the ones presenting Lowboy's perspective leave one hoping he'll somehow find healing. Wray's pacing is superb. Describing mental illness can become labored, even boring, but he captures Lowboy's confused thoughts without judging or romanticizing him . . . Wray's writing shines . . . Lowboy moves inexorably toward a conclusion that includes a secret about Violet and an act that brings to mind another Russian novelist. This is a fine novel by a talented writer. I look forward to his next work."—Gordon Houser, The Wichita Eagle "The protagonist of John Wray's daring third novel is on a mission that evokes the plot of Porky's, but it would be a mistake to conflate Lowboy with the rest of the genre . . . Wray handles this bizarre scenario the only way he can: By explaining as little as possible, and allowing the details of Will's bizarre mission to emerge slowly over the course of the book. As Lowboy begins, Will is riding the New York Subway, having just been released from the hospital—but not, as planned, into his mother's custody. He's set out on his own to find Emily, and it's clear off the bat that something's not right: Will manages to freak out everyone in his train car, with talk like, 'The world's going to die in 10 hours. Ten hours exactly, Grandfather. By fire.' By all rights, this book should read as utterly preposterous: Global warming? Schizophrenic sex quest? What? Wray's writing is so spare and direct, though, that the book only seems odd when you stop to think about it. Meanwhile, narrative tension is established immediately and ratcheted up to a vibrating intensity by the end of the novel, making Lowboy that rarest of books: an utterly new take on a familiar theme."—Alison Hallett, The Portland Mercury "The book — Wray's attempt at combining art and accessibility — melds his daring narrative flourishes with the fast pace, thrills and chills of a sophisticated page turner. It's a coming-of-age tale unspooled within a modern-day, 24-hour period: A schizophrenic 16-year-old named Will goes off his meds, escapes his mental ward and finds potentially fatal purpose riding the New York subway; meanwhile, his mother and a police detective embark on a frantic search for the boy before the worst happens."—Erin Carlson, The Associated Press“Lowboy is a smart, moving thriller, and a deeply imaginative one, too . . . Wray handles his off-kilter hero with sympathy. Lowboy's hurtling plot makes it the sort of book you read in a few big gulps, but its complicated teen character—at once intensely familiar and completely foreign—sticks around for days after you're done.”—Izzy Grinspan, Time Out New York"John Wray's character, in his novel Lowboy, is a schizophrenic teenager on the lam. Lowboy sees himself as having a calling, warning folks that the world is about to end in fire, and he evades capture by his mother and a police detective for a good part of a long day while riding the subway. But John Wray captures Lowboy almost immediately and gives him to us in intense, sharp pages. Wray's really good at fusing physical states and distressed mental states, as in this moment when Lowboy's companion, the high school girl, is trying to teach him about intense kissing."—Alan Cheuse, NPR "William Heller is a 16-year-old that goes by the nickname of Lowboy, mainly because of his fondness for riding the subway. Not the most exciting of hobbies, but then again you're not a schizophrenic off his meds who believes that the world is going to end in 10 hours. Heller is such a person, so reading Lowboy is a lot more interesting than his chosen hobby might lead you to believe. John Wray, the author of Lowboy's deceptively simple prose, is giving a reading of his already acclaimed novel at Spike Hill in Williamsburg. The genius of it is that the reading ends in the bar; it begins on the L train. Interested parties should gather at the back end of the platform of the 8th Avenue and 14th Street stop. Get on board, and the reading starts. If enough of you go, you'll get a car all to yourselves. If not, well, welcome to the world of performance art. You should go."—John Coakley, Soho Journal "A breathtaking journey through the subway tunnels of Manhattan and the subterranean fantasies of a schizophrenic teen, the eponymous Lowboy careens toward disaster as the boy, a.k.a. Will Heller, disappears into the urban netherland. A wary detective gives chase, along with 'Violet,' a mother who harbors disturbing secrets about her son. Lowboy has an apocalyptic obsession with global warming (he believes that only he can save the world), but more immediate perils reside in the twists and turns of the human psyche."—Cathleen Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine“You’ll tear through the pages . . . A lip-biting thriller to the finish.”—Sarah Z. Wexler, Marie Claire"In his latest, versatile novelist John Wray hauntingly inhabits the paranoid schizophrenic mind of his 16-year-old protagonist, Will Heller (aka Lowboy). Convinced that he can single-handedly save the world from the fatal effects of global warming, Will embarks on a journey through the New York City subway system to find Emily Wallace, the one girl he thinks can help him. Because Will has displayed violent tendencies in the past, the pair is pursued by missing-persons detective Ali Lateef and Will’s mother, Violet. Wray spins out an increasingly suspenseful, psychologically astute narrative, perfectly pitching the voice to accommodate each character’s particular motivations. As the search heats up, Will’s fractured mind continues to corrode his conception of reality: 'Sourceless revelations sparked and spun behind his eyelids and memories flashed like stoplights in between . . .' A final revelation about Violet is followed by the disturbing closing paragraphs, which are sure to linger long after the book is closed."—Eric Liebetrau, Paste magazine “[Wray] succeeds with a brisk plot and odd moments of humor. The story’s final grimness is tough, but it’s hard not to admire this bullet train of a book for its chilling power.”—Stacey Levine, Bookforum“John Wray’s Lowboy is a psychotic, subterranean, environmentally conscious, coming-of-age novel.  It is also an affecting and affectionate love letter to New York. Lowboy is John Wray at his highest.”—Nathan Englander, author of Ministry of Special Cases“Through the windows of John Wray's rumbling express, we catch sight of the deep darkness that lives inside the human psyche. Lowboy is a riveting and disturbing ride, illuminating one adolescent boy's shadowy underground, and giving us glimpses of our own as well.”—Colson Whitehead, author of Apex Hides the Hurt“America's most original young writer has given us a book for the ages. Compelling, compassionate, and deeply unsettling, Lowboy introduces us to the brilliant sixteen-year-old Will Heller, a hero as three-dimensional as any in recent fiction, a Holden Caulfield for our troubled times.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and Absurdistan“Lowboy sucks you into the tunnels under NY and doesn't let you go until its perfect ending. Wray effortlessly portrays the cracked and distorted mind of his teenage hero. What a beguiling novel.”—Tim Pears, author of In The Place of Fallen Leaves"John Wray's novel, Lowboy, is about a schizophrenic teenager who has stopped taking his medication and escaped the asylum into the New York subway. The novel follows William Heller, aka 'Lowboy,' below ground and above, as he pursues what he perceives as his quest to save the world . . . Lowboy's chapters alternate with those of missing persons detective, Ali Lateef, who over the course of a single November day with the boy's mother, assembles the pieces of a puzzle that, alongside Lowboy's own narrative, gradually reveal Wray's schizophrenic narrator to be both a danger to himself and to others. Much of the novel's narration is halting and observational, mirroring Lowboy's own skewed perception of the world and the people around him . . . Lowboy is an intelligent and likable protagonist, but the reader is steadily filled with foreboding as the novel progresses. It is testament to John Wray's extensive research on mental illness that Lowboy is far more than the caricature of mental illness often presented in books and movies. The other characters in the novel similarly reveal complexities during the novel, keeping the reader surprised throughout. Occasionally comical and consistently tragic, Lowboy is an engaging novel with a difficult subject."—Mark Flanagan, About: Contemporary Literature "Lowboy has a plan to save the Earth from global warming: He will cool the planet by losing his virginity on the New York City subway. The idea may seem far-fetched, but not to Lowboy. He is a 16-year-old schizophrenic who has recently escaped from a mental hospital. The novel, by author John Wray, is a psychological thriller that unfolds over the course of a day. Lowboy tries to carry out his plan before his mother and a detective named Ali Lateef can stop him. Vivid scenes of Lowboy's reality and psychosis play out in subway cars, tunnels and even in the underground chambers that are covered by sidewalk grates. Wray says he researched the novel 'like an overeager method actor.' He spent nearly a week in a hospital psych ward observing patients. He also did much of his writing on the subway, where he encountered many passengers living with mental illness. Wray says riding the rails and writing was not always the most pleasant experience, but it fostered a 'low-level paranoia' that helped him capture the thoughts of a schizophrenic teenager. Wray paints a multidimensional portrait of Lowboy. Delusions aside, he is a pretty normal teenager. He's awkward, funny and full of angst. Wray admits he has what he considers a rather naive hope—that after readers finish his novel, they'll have a more 'human perspective' on schizophrenia."—All Things Considered, NPR"Will 'Lowboy' Heller, blond and blue-eyed and 16 years old, would not seem to be the most intimidating subway passenger. But Will is a paranoid schizophrenic, and on the day 'Lowboy' takes place, he is on a mission. Will believes that the only way he can stop the world from ending by global warming is to lose his virginity. Months ago, an incident with Will's best friend, Emily, led to his being institutionalized. Now, Will is determined to reunite with Emily and fulfill his plan for the world's salvation. Meanwhile, Ali Lateef of the New York Police Department and Violet, Will's mother, both of whom have troubles of their own, scour the city to find the boy before he harms himself—or someone else. Much of Lowboy takes place on the New York subway, and John Wray's kinetic descriptions of the trains' inevitable rush are the highlights of the book, making up for the relative thinness of the two adult characters. Lowboy is absorbing reading, though perhaps not for the morning commute."—Rebeccea Oppenheimer, Howard County Times  "A teenaged paranoid schizophrenic risks his fragmenting grasp of reality in a quixotic attempt to save a world threatened by global warming, in Whiting Award winner Wray’s deeply disturbing third novel. As in Wray’s previous books, this one is constructed from several interconnected stories. The narrative is occupied with three searches. The primary one is that of 16-year-old Will Heller, who walks out of a mental hospital and into the New York subway system, en route to a desired reunion with the former schoolmate, Emily Wallace, who was both his prospective lover and a presumably accidental victim of Will’s tendency to succumb to uncontrollable violence. The sources of such instability may lie in undisclosed experiences of sexual abuse or elsewhere in Will’s troubled relationship with his Austrian-born mother Yda (he calls her 'Violet'), whose search through her own past adds both explanatory exposition and subtle misdirection, as the reader struggles to comprehend Will’s belief that 'cooling' his own virginal body can avert a coming worldwide holocaust. The addled viewpoints of Will and Violet are challenged, and to some extent explained by the investigations of Ali Lateef, a weary SCM (Special Category Missings) police detective who senses that finding Will before he harms himself or others requires understanding the mysteries in Violet’s occluded past. The novel has a thriller-like pace, and Wray keeps us riveted and guessing, finding chilling rhetorical and pictorial equivalents for Will’s uniquely dysfunctional perspective (e.g., as he watches Emily approach: 'A green girl-shaped pillar rose through the veins of his retina like ivy twining through a chain-link fence . . . Her features came apart like knitting'). The suspense is expertly maintained, straight through the novel’s dreamlike climactic encounter and heart-wrenching final paragraph.  The opening pages recall Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, but the denouement and haunting aftertaste may make the stunned reader whisper 'Dostoevsky.' Yes, it really is that good."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Wray is an obviously gifted writer, who treatment of Will is a tour de force of empathy, style, and imagination.”—Booklist"Will Heller, aka Lowboy, is a brilliant but troubled 16-year-old paranoid schizophrenic in New York City. Recently escaped from a mental hospital and obsessed with the notion that the world is about to be destroyed by global warming, he boards the subway one morning seeking to save the world in the only way he believes it can be—by having sex with a woman. He attempts to locate former girlfriend Emily Wallace, whom he has not seen since he pushed her onto the subway tracks a year earlier, the act that led to his stay in a mental hospital. Throughout his daylong adventures in the tunnels and streets, he is pursued by police detective Ali Lateef and his mother, Violet, a woman with her own secrets, who seek to bring him home before he harms himself or others. Their growing relationship provides both a parallel and a counterpoint to that of Will and Emily. Wray presents a powerful and vivid portrait of Will's mental state, believably entering into his apocalyptic vision of the world."—Lawrence Rungren, Library Journal“Readers are pulled into the mind of a teenage schizophrenic in this dark and intriguing novel . . . Will [Heller] describes his experiences and the events leading up to them in a kind of organized stream-of-consciousness, revealing the inner workings of a different type of brain. Scenery and emotions alike are described with vivid imagery, allowing readers to truly experience Will’s journey. While the teen is at the center of the novel, the two adults who share his story are equally engaging. They are neither absent nor infallible. Comparisons to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye or Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower are inevitable: those drawn to damaged characters or seeking insight into a disturbed human psyche will be deeply affected by the chilling ending.”—Karen E. Brooks-Reese, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Pennsylviania, School Library Journal"Wray's captivating third novel drifts between psychological realities while exploring the narrative poetics of schizophrenia. The story centers on Will Heller, a 16-year-old New Yorker who has stopped taking his antipsychotic medication and wandered away from the mental hospital into the subway tunnels believing that the world will end within a few hours and that only he can save it. It's a novel that defies easy categorization, although in one sense it's a mystery, as a detective, Lateef, is on the case, assisted by Will's troubled mother, Violet. As Lateef tracks Will and gains some startling insight into Violet, Wray deploys brilliant hallucinatory visuals, including chilling descriptions of the subway system and an imaginary river flowing beneath Manhattan. In his previous works, Wray has shown that he's not a stranger to dark themes, and with this tightly wound novel, he reaches new heights."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)


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**Josh Lieb's hilarious, *New York Times* bestselling debut, now in paperback! ** 



 When a provocation from his dad irks twelve-year-old evil genius Oliver Watson, he'll have to put his plans for world domination on hold in order to beat the pants off the competition and win the middle school election.


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The acclaimed author of "Motherless Brooklyn" and "The Fortress of Solitude" returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies. Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called "Martyr & Pesty." Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancee, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties. Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency. Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth. Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.


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Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises four remarkable novels that explore social class in America and the inner lives of young Americans. In Expensive People, Oates takes a provocative and suspenseful look at the roiling secrets of America’s affluent suburbs. Set in the late 1960s, this first-person confession is narrated by Richard Everett, a precocious and obese boy who sees himself as a minor character in the alarming drama unfolding around him. Fascinated by yet alienated from his attractive, self-absorbed parents and the privileged world they inhabit, Richard incisively analyzes his own mismanaged childhood, his pretentious private schooling, his “successful-executive” father, and his elusive mother. In an act of defiance and desperation, eleven-year-old Richard strikes out in a way that presages the violence of ever-younger Americans in the turbulent decades to come.A National Book Award finalist, *Expensive People* is a stunning combination of social satire and gothic horror. “You cannot put this novel away after you have opened it,” said *The Detroit News*. “This is that kind of book–hypnotic, fascinating, and electrifying.”*Expensive People *is the second novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books that complete this acclaimed series, A* Garden of Earthly Delights*, them, and *Wonderland*, are also available from the Modern Library.


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After Tyler's father is injured in a tractor accident, his family is forced to hire migrant Mexican workers to help save their Vermont farm from foreclosure. Tyler isn’t sure what to make of these workers. Are they undocumented? And what about the three daughters, particularly Mari, the oldest, who is proud of her Mexican heritage but also increasingly connected her American life. Her family lives in constant fear of being discovered by the authorities and sent back to the poverty they left behind in Mexico. Can Tyler and Mari find a way to be friends despite their differences?In a novel full of hope, but no easy answers, Julia Alvarez weaves a beautiful and timely story that will stay with readers long after they finish it.From the Hardcover edition.


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Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of a matinée idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He cannot stop walking. And, as his body propels him relentlessly forward, deep into the unfamiliar outer reaches of the city, he begins to realise he is moving further and further from his old self, seemingly unable to turn back and retrieve what he has lost.In his extraordinary novel Joshua Ferris delineates with great tenderness and a rare and inimitable wit the devastating story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is torn away without explanation or warning. The Unnamed is no less than a shimmering reflection of our times, of the lives we aspire to and the terrifying realisation of what is beyond our control.'An even more ambitious and provocative novel than . . . Then We Came to the End' Kirkus starred review


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After she’s brutally assaulted, a woman returns to her quiet hometown only to discover that someone wants her dead.


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The bestselling author of "Into the Wild," "Into Thin Air," and "Under the Banner of Heaven" delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man's haunting journey. ""Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army. He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside in southeastern Afghanistan. Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman's wife, other family members, and the American public for five weeks following his death. During this time, President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman's name to promote his administration's foreign policy. Long after Tillman's nationally televised memorial service, the Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had "probably" been killed by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and who was responsible. In "Where Men Win Glory," Jon Krakauer draws on Tillman's journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan to render an intricate mosaic of this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure as well as the definitive account" "of the events and actions that led to his death. Before he enlisted in the army, Tillman was familiar to sports aficionados as an undersized, overachieving Arizona Cardinals safety whose virtuosity in the defensive backfield was spellbinding. With his shoulder-length hair, outspoken views, and boundless intellectual curiosity, Tillman was considered a maverick. America was fascinated when he traded the bright lights and riches of the NFL for boot camp and a buzz cut. Sent first to Iraq--a war he would openly declare was "illegal as hell" --and eventually to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by complicated, emotionally charged, sometimes contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, patriotism, and masculine pride, and he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004, his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers. Krakauer chronicles Tillman's riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have come to expect from Krakauer's storytelling, "Where Men Win Glory "exposes shattering truths about men and war.


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I'd love a cup of coffee. . . . I wish she didn't hide how pretty she is. . . . I hope she didn't find out what Ben said about her. . . . I wish I knew how many calories were in a bite of muffin. . . .   

 Joy is used to Hearing Whispers. She's used to walking down the street and instantly knowing people's deepest, darkest desires. She uses this talent for good—to make people happy and give them what they want. But for her older sister, Jessica, the family gift is a curse, and she uses it to make people's lives—especially Joy's—miserable. Still, when Joy Hears Jessica Whisper *I want to kill my Hearing dead, and kill me too if that's what it takes*, she knows she has to save her sister, even if it means deserting her friends, stealing a car, and running away with a boy she barely knows—a boy who may have a dark secret of his own.  

 *Whisper* is an exhilarating debut novel from talented newcomer Phoebe Kitanidis.


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October 'Toby' Daye, a changeling who is half human and half fae, has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the Faerie world, retreating to a 'normal' life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world has other ideas...The murder of Countess Evening Winterrose pulls Toby back into the fae world. Unable to resist Evening's dying curse, which binds her to investigate, Toby must resume her former position as knight errant and renew old alliances. As she steps back into fae society, dealing with a cast of characters not entirely good or evil, she realizes that more than her own life will be forfeited if she cannot find Evening's killer.


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**Now comes the second in the series-from a dynamic new fantasy talent! ** 



 Toby Daye-a half-human, half-fae changeling-has been an outsider from birth. After getting burned by both sides of her heritage, Toby has denied the fae world, retreating to a "normal" life. Unfortunately for her, the Faerie world had other ideas... 



 Now her liege, the Duke of the Shadowed Hills, has asked Toby to go to the Country of Tamed Lightening to make sure all is well with his niece, Countess January O'Leary. It seems like a simple enough assignment-until Toby discovers that someone has begun murdering people close to January, and that if the killer isn't stopped, January may be the next victim.


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As the Kaisar-i-Hind weighs anchor for Bombay in the autumn of 1928, its passengers ponder their fate in a distant land. They are part of the "Fishing Fleet" -- the name given to the legions of Englishwomen who sail to India each year in search of husbands, heedless of the life that awaits them. The inexperienced chaperone Viva Holloway has been entrusted to watch over three unsettling charges. There's Rose, as beautiful as she is naïve, who plans to marry a cavalry officer she has met a mere handful of times. Her bridesmaid, Victoria, is hell-bent on losing her virginity en route before finding a husband of her own. And shadowing them all is the malevolent presence of a disturbed schoolboy named Guy Glover.From the parties of the wealthy Bombay socialites to the poverty of Tamarind Street, from the sooty streets of London to the genteel conversation of the Bombay Yacht Club, East of the Sun is graced with lavish detail and a penetrating sensitivity -- historical fiction at its greatest.


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How to be The Model Wife:1) Your Husband's happiness is your happiness2) Should you be His second wife, befriend His first wife3) Never ask Him when He'll be home4) Never ask Him where He's been Twentysomething Poppy became a cliche when an accidental pregnancy presented her with a forty-nine-year-old husband. But Luke Norton isn't any old husband - he's the anchorman for television's Seven O'Clock News and his ruggedly handsome face is beloved by the nation. Life isn't coming up roses thanks to the first Mrs Norton's popular column, 'My Husband, The Bimbo and Me'. Luke's having a mid-life crisis and going AWOL, his former lovers are circling like sharks and Poppy's left holding the baby, her once glitzy modelling career a horribly dim memory. It's time for her to fight back and show the world exactly what she's made of. . .


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In his award-winning bestseller *The World of Normal Boys,* K.M. Soehnlein introduced readers to the richly compelling voice of teenager Robin MacKenzie. In *Robin and Ruby,* he revisits Robin and his younger sister, masterfully depicting the turbulence of the mid-1980s--and that fleeting time between youth and adulthood, when everything we will become can be shaped by one unforgettable weekend.

At twenty-years-old, Robin MacKenzie is waiting for his life to start. Waiting until his summer working at a Philly restaurant is over and he's back with his boyfriend Peter. . .until the spring semester when he'll travel to London for an acting program. . .until the moment when the confidence he fakes starts to feel real. 

Then, one hot June weekend, Robin gets dumped by his boyfriend and quickly hits the road with his best friend George to find his teenaged sister, Ruby, who's vanished from a party at the Jersey Shore. For years, his friendship with George has been the most solid thing in Robin's life. But lately there are glimpses of another George, someone Robin barely knows and can no longer take for granted. 

Ruby is on an adventure of her own, dressing in black, declaring herself an atheist, pulling away from the boyfriend she doesn't love--not the way she loves the bands whose fractured songs are the soundtrack to her life. Then a chance encounter puts Ruby in pursuit of a seductive but troubled boy who might be the key to her happiness, or a disaster waiting to happen. 

As their paths converge, Robin and Ruby confront the sadness of their shared past and rebuild the bonds that still run deep. In prose that is lyrical, compulsively readable, and exquisitely honest, K.M. Soehnlein brilliantly captures a family redefining itself and explores those moments common to us all--when freedom bumps up against responsibility, when sex blurs the line between friendship and love, and when what you stand for becomes more important than who you were raised to be.


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"Karen Stabiner's GETTING IN [is] humorous (in a wry kind of way) but  pointed and surprisingly engaging novel about parental and teen  obsessiveness regarding the college application process in independent  schools and the debilitating, distorting impact of it on kids and  families. Must read for college-prep kids and their parents."   --Patrick Basset, President, National Association of Independent Schools

"A savvy insider's take on a high-stakes, cutthroat campaign--except it's not about getting into the White House, but about getting into the perfect college. Stabiner's sharp, witty tale is as essential as a good SAT prep course--but a hell of a lot more fun."  --Arianna Huffington    

"*Getting In* takes an edgy, knowing look inside the lives and minds of love-crazed parents--galvanized equally by desperation and devotion--as they try with all their might to thrust their cherished children into the universities of their dreams."  --Carolyn See, *Making a Literary Life*    

"Karen Stabiner has clearly been through the crazy circus that is college admissions, and lucky for the rest of us she took pitch-perfect notes. You will come away from her book reassured that all the other families of applicants are even loonier than yours--or reassured that you fit right in. What do you *mean*, this is fiction?"  --Lisa Belkin, *New York Times* parenting writer (and hardy survivor of her son's college application process)  

Q: What does a parent need to survive the college application process?    

A. A sense of humor.  B. A therapist on 24-hour call.  C. A large bank balance.  D. All of the above.    

*Getting In* is the roller-coaster story of five very different Los Angeles families united by a single obsession: acceptance at a top college, preferably one that makes their friends and neighbors green with envy. At an elite private school and a nearby public school, families devote themselves to getting their seniors into the perfect school--even if the odds are stacked against them, even if they can't afford the $50,000 annual price tag, even if the effort requires a level of deceit, and even if the object of all this attention wants to go somewhere else.  

*Getting In* is a delightfully smart comedy of class and entitlement, of love and ambition, set in a world where a fat envelope from a top school matters more than anything . . . almost.


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Experience the thrill of the hunt in the third October Daye urban fantasy novel. October "Toby" Daye is a changeling-half human and half fae-and the only one who has earned knighthood. Now she must take on a nightmarish new challenge. Someone is stealing the children of the fae as well as mortal children, and all signs point to Blind Michael. Toby has no choice but to track the villain down-even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael's realm, home of the Wild Hunt-and no road may be taken more than once. If Toby cannot escape with the children, she will fall prey to the Wild Hunt and Blind Michael's inescapable power.


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A sweeping novel set in war-torn 1928 China, with a star-crossed love story at its center. In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land. Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it.


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China, 1929. For years Lydia Ivanova believed her father was killed by the Bolsheviks. But when she learns he is captive in Stalin-controlled Russia, the fiery-haired girl is willing to leave everything behind - even her Chinese lover, Chang An Lo. Journeying with her half-brother Alexei, Lydia begins a dangerous search. Tension grows between the two, for while Alexei is searching for his past, Lydia is looking for her future. But when Alexei disappears, Lydia is left almost penniless in Soviet Russia - and doubting the choices she has made. Surrounded by dangers, she searches for information and soon finds herself entangled with a Russian officer.But Chang An Lo has not forgotten Lydia. He knows things about her father that she does not. And while he races to protect her, she is prepared to risk treacherous consequences to discover the truth . . .


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Om haar doodzieke medegevangene midden 20e eeuw te kunnen redden uit een Siberisch werkkamp besluit een vrouw te ontsnappen en een beroep te doen op dier jeugdliefde.


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KATHARINE WEBER is the author of the novels "Triangle, The Little Women, The Music" "Lesson, "and "Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than" "They Appear." She lives in Connecticut with her husband, the cultural historian Nicholas Fox Weber, and is a thesis adviser in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. "From the Hardcover edition."


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**A forensics expert follows the historic evolution of CSI through a century of serial killers.**



 "Katherine Ramsland has brilliantly captured the insights and drama of some fascinating cases" (Dr. Henry Lee) in her previous bestselling books. Now she examines the case histories of twelve of the most notorious serial killers of the last one hundred years, and answers the questions: What clues did they leave behind? How were they eventually caught? How was each twist and turn of their crimes matched by the equally compelling weapons of science and logic?



 From exploring the nineteenth century's earliest investigative tools to remarkable twenty-first century CSI advances, *The Devil's Dozen* provides a fascinating window into the world of those who kill-and those who dedicate their lives to bringing them to justice.


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This Wild West adventure just might be the life she was meant to live.The future is clearly mapped out for New York socialite Eugenia “Gennie” Cooper, but she secretly longs to slip into the boots of her favorite dime-novel heroine and experience just one adventure before settling down. When the opportunity arises, Gennie jumps at the chance to experience the Wild West, but her plans go awry when she is drawn into the lives of silver baron Daniel Beck and his daughter and finds herself caring for them more than is prudent–especially as she’s supposed to go back to New York and marry another man. As Gennie adapts to the rough-and-tumble world of 1880s Colorado, she must decide whether her future lies with the enigmatic Daniel Beck or back home with the life planned for her since birth. The question is whether Daniel’s past–and disgruntled miners bent on revenge–will take that choice away from her. “The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper is a fast-paced story full of fun, action, drama, and love.”–Mary Connealy, author of Calico Canyon, Petticoat Ranch, and Gingham Mountain            “If you loved Cathy Marie Hake, give yourself a treat with The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper.”–Lauraine Snelling, author of the Red River Series and One Perfect Day


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It's said that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, then the Tower will crumble and the kingdom will fall. Resurrected sorcerer Matthew Swift is about to discover that this isn't so far from the truth... One by one, the protective magical wards that guard the city are falling. This is not good news. This array of supernatural defenses - a mix of international tourist attractions and forgotten urban legends - formed a formidable shield that protects the city of London from threats that are known to no one. But what could be so dangerous as to threaten an entire city? Matthew Swift is about to find out. And if he's lucky, he might just live long enough to do something about it...


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**By the author of the *New York Times*-bestselling *Labyrinth*, a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage. ** 



 In the winter of 1928, still seeking some kind of resolution to the horrors of World War I, Freddie is traveling through the beautiful but forbidding French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Dazed, he stumbles through the woods, emerging in a tiny village, where he finds an inn to wait out the blizzard. There he meets Fabrissa, a lovely young woman also mourning a lost generation. 



 Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, Freddie will have unearthed a tragic, centuries-old mystery, and discovered his own role in the life of this remote town.


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*New York Times* bestselling author and *Cosmopolitan*'s editor-in-chief returns with a sizzling, page-turning thriller in which an ordinary woman flees the scene of a murder—and realizes it's not just the law that's hunting her.   

 When Lake Warren learns that her husband, Jack, is suing for full custody of their two kids four months after their separation, she's pretty certain that things can't get any worse. The upside is that she's working with the Advanced Fertility Center as a marketing consultant, alongside the attractive, flirtatious Dr. Keaton. But the morning after their one-night stand, Lake finds Keaton with his throat slashed and discovers that things can indeed become worse—they can become deadly.  

 So as not to jeopardize her case for custody, Lake is forced to lie to the police. Having just been intimate with a man who has been murdered, and wanting to protect herself from being charged with the crime, she begins her own search for the truth. Meanwhile, the police start looking at her closely, people at the clinic start treating her with hostility, and strange clues begin dropping—quite literally—on her doorstep, and Lake realizes that she is dangerously close to dark secrets, both about Keaton and the clinic. But can Lake stop what she's started before it's too late?


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A QUICK READ - part of the WORLD BOOK DAY 2009 literacy initiative for emergent readers.March 1928. Freddie Smith is on a motoring holiday in the mountains of south west France. He is caught in a violent storm and his car crashes. He is forced to seek shelter in a boarding house in the nearby village of Axat.There he meets another guest in the tiny hotel, a pale and beautiful young woman called Marie. As the storm rages outside, she explains how the region was ripped apart by wars of religion in the 14th century. She tells how, one terrible night in March 1328, all the inhabitants of Axat were forced to flee from the soldiers into the mountains. The villagers took refuge in a cave, but when the fighting was over, no one came back. Their bodies were never found. Axat itself became a ghost town.When Freddie wakes the following morning, Marie has gone. Worse still, his car will take several days to repair and he has to stay at the boarding house for a few days more. To pass the time, he explores the mountains. Then he realises it is almost 600 years to the day since the villagers disappeared. He decides to go and look for the cave himself. Perhaps, he thinks, he might even find Marie? It is a decision he will live to regret.


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**The dramatic story of the real-life murder that inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. 

**In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.

At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. 

Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s *The Moonstone *to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. 

*The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher *is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.


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From the internationally acclaimed author of *An Unquiet Mind,* an exquisite, haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss.Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison—who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with a writerly elegance and passion—could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. In direct, straightforward, and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty, candor, wit, and simplicity, she describes his death, her own long, difficult struggle with grief, and her efforts to distinguish grief from depression.But she also recalls the great joy that Richard brought her during the nearly twenty years they had together. Wryly humorous anecdotes mingle with bittersweet memories of a relationship that was passionate and loving—if troubled on occasion by her manic-depressive (bipolar) illness—as Jamison reveals the ways in which her husband encouraged her to write openly about her mental illness and, through his courage and grace taught her to live fully.A penetrating psychological study of grief viewed from deep inside the experience itself, *Nothing Was the Same* is also a deeply moving memoir by a superb writer.


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Keith Donohue’s first novel, *The Stolen Child*, was a national bestseller hailed as “captivating” (USA Today), “luminous and thrilling” (Washington Post), and “wonderful...So spare and unsentimental that it’s impossible not to be moved (Newsweek. His new novel, *Angels of Destruction*, opens on a winter’s night, when a young girl appears at the home of Mrs. Margaret Quinn, a widow who lives alone. A decade earlier, she had lost her only child, Erica, who fled with her high school sweetheart to join a radical student group known as the Angels of Destruction. Before Margaret answers the knock in the dark hours, she whispers a prayer and then makes her visitor welcome at the door. The girl, who claims to be nine years old and an orphan with no place to go, beguiles Margaret, offering some solace, some compensation, for the woman’s loss. Together, they hatch a plan to pass her off as her newly found granddaughter, Norah Quinn, and enlist Sean Fallon, a classmate and heartbroken boy, to guide her into the school and town. Their conspiracy is vulnerable not only to those children and neighbors intrigued by Norah’s mysterious and magical qualities but by a lone figure shadowing the girl who threatens to reveal the child’s true identity and her purpose in Margaret’s life. Who are these strangers really? And what is their connection to the past, the Angels, and the long-missing daughter? Angels of Destruction is an unforgettable story of hope and fear, heartache and redemption. The saga of the Quinn family unfolds against an America wracked by change. As it delicately dances on the line between the real and the imagined, this mesmerizing new novel confirms Keith Donohue’s standing as one of our most inspiring and inventive novelists.


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Tanaya Shah longs for the wonderful world of Paris, the world that she fell in love with while   watching Audrey Hepburn in *Sabrina*—so when a proposal comes along for an arranged   marriage with a man who is living in Paris, Tanaya seizes the chance. But once she lands in the   city, she shuns the match. A stroke of luck turns Tanaya into a supermodel, and soon the   traditional girl is cavorting with rock stars and is disowned by her family.  

  In her new whirlwind life, she is reintroduced to the man she was supposed to marry, the man she   now realizes she should have never walked away from, the man who is her only connection to the   family she longs to reconcile with, if only it’s not too late.


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There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. This is a ride on the Google wave, and the fullest account of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses. With unprecedented access to Googles founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined. Auletta goes inside Googles closed-door meetings, introducing Googles notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with and against them. In Googled, the reader discovers the secret sauce of the company's success and why the worlds of new and old media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down traditionalists spines, but its a crucial roadmap to the future of media business: the Google story may well be the canary in the coal mine.Googled is candid, objective and authoritative. Crucially, its not just a history or reportage: its ahead of the curve and unlike any other Google books, which tend to have been near-histories, somewhat starstruck, now out of date or which fail to look at the full synthesis of business and technology.


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Is falling in love the beginning . . . or the end? Beautiful Creatures, a beautiful new young adult book by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.In Ethan Wate's hometown there lies the darkest of secrets . . .There is a girl.Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes.There is a curse.On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it's been promised.And no one can stop it.In the end, there is a grave.Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided.Ethan never even saw it coming.Web site: beautifulcreaturesthebook.com


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Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book AwardAn Orange Prize Finalist Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white. In the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events. Burnt Shadows is a story for our time by "a writer of immense ambition and strength. . . . This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response" (Salman Rushdie). Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the United States. Two of her previous novels, "Kartography "and "Broken Verses," have won awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She writes for "The Guardian" (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC. Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize Winner for FictionShortlisted for the Orange Prize for FictionHiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and, in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound these families together over decades and generations are tested by wars and disasters, with unforeseeable consequences. "Shamsie stitches together a sweeping saga that begins with a young Japanese woman in wartime Nagasaki and ends, more than half a century later, with a Pakistani prisoner about to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The tale unfolds through the lives of two unusually multinational (and multilingual) families: the Weiss-Burtons (German, British and American) and the Ashraf-Tanakas (Indian/Pakistani and Japanese). Not counting minor detours, their triumphs and tragedies span five countries and, without giving too much away, at least three world-changing historical events. On the face of it, collapsing so broad a canvas in a relatively slender novel is a recipe for chaos worthy of a subcontinental urban planner. But in Ms. Shamsie's self-assured hands this does not come to pass. The story line remains taut, the characters vividly etched. Even the implausible romance at the heart of the novel--between Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Sajjad Ashraf, a young aesthete forced to emigrate from Delhi to Karachi in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India--is somehow rendered believable. Ms. Shamsie is . . . as a cartographer of culture. She notes, for instance, that in Indo-Muslim society the emotional terrain of mourning is often communal rather than personal; Urdu contains no phrase for leaving a person alone with his grief. The siren call of modernity--with its implicit privileging of the nuclear family over the extended clan--can be deeply disturbing. As the matriarch of the undivided Ashraf family in pre-partition Delhi declares archly, 'maa-dern' is a word 'created only to cut you off from your people and your past.' Sajjad's failure to try sushi after 35 years with Hiroko tells you all you need to know about the persistence of inherited attitudes that span everything from the loyalty of taste buds to the mental geography of marriage. In the end, for all its insights into the cultural and familial, this is above all a political novel. The choice of a Japanese protagonist allows the author to question much of the received wisdom of what used to be called the War on Terror. As a young teacher in Nagasaki, Hiroko has known adolescent boys as eager to embrace the cult of martyrdom as any young mujahideen. In General Zia's concerted effort to drag Islam out of the home and into the public square, she sees the echo of Japanese emperor worship. The implication of these observations, of course, is that criticism of Islam is unwarranted. Not that long ago it was followers of Shintoism who were turning aircraft into missiles while dreaming of immortality . . . A cleverly constructed and powerfully imagined novel. Ultimately, as with any work of the imagination, the color of the politics matters much less than the quality of the prose."--"The"" ""Wall Street Journal Online, "Asia edition "Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world's many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. "Burnt Shadows" is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response."--Salman Rushdie ""Burnt Shadows" is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author's intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions."--Anita Desai "In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through--pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through--the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty's lair."--Nadeem Aslam, author of "Maps for Lost Lovers """Burnt Shadows" is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I've (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come."--Tahmima Anam, author of "The Golden Age ""An epic tale of two families whose lives are intertwined by conflict. As a young woman, Hiroko Tanaka survives the bombing of Nagasaki, which takes the life of her first love, German-born Konrad Weiss. Physically and mentally scarred, Hiroko flees to Konrad's sister Elizabeth, who lives with her English husband James Burton in Delhi. Sajjad Ashraf, who frequents the Burton household, gives Urdu lessons to Hiroko, and they fall in love. But arranged marriages are traditional in his Muslim family, so the couple elopes and flees to Istanbul. Later, after Partition ends Sajjad's hopes of returning to Delhi, they move to Karachi. There Hiroko bears a son, Raza, who grows into a precocious youth with a passion for languages. With the appearance at their door of James and Elizabeth's son Harry, the lines of the two families cross once more. Raza flubs a final exam and deviates from his college-bound path to befriend a young Afghani smuggler, with whom he attempts to join the mujahideen. Shamsie builds vivid contemporary scenes on a rich and sometimes sordid history; the modern characters' struggles attain tragic, even mythic resonance as parents' ordeals are visited on their children. Wit, formidable imagination and intricate, well-worked characterizations distinguish the twisty narrative. Raza experiences mixed emotions as he travels through the blasted hinterlands with Afghani arms smugglers. In a world fraught with duplicity and inside deals among militant tribesmen, military contractors and CIA operatives, he learns that morality is anything but straightforward. But the struggles of zealots and mercenaries are dwarfed by Hiroko's titanic journey. Having survived and suffered so much, she finds herself sitting with a crossword puzzle in a West Village bistro, contemplating the grand and hellish pattern of her loved ones' lives as she considers with horror the threat of nuclear proliferation between India and Pakistan. With a rare combination of skill and sensitivity, Shamsie generates pathos for outsiders and the displaced."--"Kirkus Reviews ""An engrossing story of resilience and humanity in the face of crushing tragedy, Shamsie's fifth novel follows the interconnected lives of two families brought together in Nagasaki near the end of World War II. Their fates are linked for 60 years through several countries and ultimately to a somewhat paranoid New York following 9/11. The allusion to recent historical events is not simply an overt device on which to hang a particular political viewpoint; these events are integral to the personal narratives presented here. Shamsie explores the meanings of cultural identity through characters who endure sacrifice, betrayal, and human-made disaster as they live and work in countries foreign to them. This critically acclaimed Pakistani author, who writes in English, is a powerful storyteller who deserves a wider U.S. audience. Readers who appreciate the cross-cultural scope and insight into global tensions in the works of Khaled Hosseini and Salman Rushdie will thoroughly enjoy this novel. Highly recommended."--Gwen Vredevoogd, "Library Journal" "Shamsie takes readers on a tour de force in this examination of the impact of war, following a trajectory from the devastation of Nagasaki in WWII through the conflict-ridden formation of Pakistan in the late 1940s to post-9/11 Manhattan and war-torn Afghanistan. Konrad Weiss, living in Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, hires a local woman, Hiroko Tanaka, to help him write a book about the city. The romance that blossoms is cut short when the atom bomb falls, killing Konrad, and after a while, Hiroko, feeling she can no longer stay in her country, travels to India to find Konrad's sister, Ilse, the wife of a British lawyer enjoying the privileges of the British raj's final days. From there, Shamsie brilliantly interweaves the lives of an array of characters as she brings the story forward to the 1980s, then to the beginning of the 21st century, exploring the clashes between loyalty to family, homeland and cause. Shamsie's unsparing look at how individuals respond when war affects their world makes for an intriguing, heartrending tale of human connection."--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)


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Deep in the heart of seventh-century Arabia, a new prophet named Muhammad has arisen. As his message of enlightenment sweeps through Arabia and unifies the warring tribes, his young wife Aisha recounts Muhammad's astonishing transformation from prophet to warrior to statesman. But just after the moment of her husband's greatest triumph -- the conquest of the holy city of Mecca -- Muhammad falls ill and dies in Aisha's arms. A young widow, Aisha finds herself at the center of the new Muslim empire and becomes by turns a teacher, political leader, and warrior.Written in beautiful prose and meticulously researched, Mother of the Believer is the story of an extraordinary woman who was destined to help usher Islam into the world.


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In 1321, the English town of Ulewic teeters between survival and destruction, faith and doubt, God and demons. Against this intense backdrop, a group of women have formed a beguinage, a self-sustaining community of women. Led by the strong-willed Servant Martha, these women are committed to a code of celibacy and prayer, hard work and charity that is unsanctioned by the all-powerful church. Still, the villagers have come to rely on this remarkable group of women for their very lives. And seeking shelter among them now is the youngest daughter of Ulewic's lord, a man who holds power over them all. But when a series of natural calamities strikes, the beguinage's enemies make their move, stirring the superstitious villagers with dark rumors of unspeakable depravities and unleashing upon the defiant all-female community the full force of their vengeance in the terrifying form of the Owl Killers. Men cloaked in masks and secrecy, ruling with violence and intimidation--the Owl Killers draw battle lines. In this village ravaged by flood and disease, the women of the beguinage must draw upon their deepest strength if they are to overcome the raging storm of long-held secrets and shattering lies.


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London in 1900 is a sprawling, chaotic web of change and expansion, perfect for a man like Denton, an American with a violent past seeking anonymity as an outsider. But his notoriety as the author of several dark novels—and the well-known story that, decades before, he had gunned down four men in the American West—sometimes brings unwanted visitors to his door. When a terrified man shows up one evening and says that he is being pursued by the long-gone Jack the Ripper, Denton dismisses him as one more victim of London’s lunacy. But then the mutilated body of a teenaged prostitute named Stella Minter is found in London’s East End. . . .        Disappointed by the lack of police concern, Denton determines to pursue the murderer, even after it’s clear that he’s become the next target. As Denton begins to peel away the layers of the lurid and horrifying murder, he finds himself exploring the dark underbelly of the bursting metropolis, a place so vast that Denton is forced to follow nothing but his instincts through the maze of London—its pubs, its police offices, its dark alleys and disreputable neighborhoods—to find a murderer who is himself an agent of the city’s cancerous growth. And along the way Denton is lucky enough to find an ally in a woman with a past as haunted and a spirit as independent as his own.        Kenneth Cameron has brought turn-of-the-century London vividly to life in this intelligent and compelling crime novel. The Frightened Man delves far deeper than the mere circumstances of a murder to investigate the unseen—the secrets harbored in London’s immeasurable streets and in the dark side of human nature.


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For more than two years, he held Seattle in a terror grip - a cold-blooded killer who abducted young mothers right in front of their sons and murdered them execution style. Then, as suddenly as the killings began, they seemed to stop. Susan Blanchette is looking forward to a relaxing weekend getaway with her fiancee, Allen, and young son, Matthew. But something about the remote lake house doesn't feel right. A woman vanished from the area a year ago, and now Susan thinks she's spotted someone lurking around the property. And when Allen disappears, her fear grows. A psychopath has returned, ready to strike again. Someone who can't resist the urge to kill, who derives pleasure from others' pain, and who is drawing nearer to Susan as each minute of the weekend ticks by. But she's just one pawn at the heart of a killer's deadly game - a killer who is unrelenting, unstoppable, and absolutely vicious.


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Summoned home from Zimbabwe, Sophie Walker has returned to southern Ontario to nurse her dying mother. Her mother's farm borders on a tacky tourist spot called "Safari," and across from the kitchen window Sophie sees a herd of the immense Asian elephants playing in the snow. When the elephant keeper invites her to join in caring for the herd, she discovers a new human-animal relationship by recording and playing back the infrasound rumblings, bellows, and trumpets of the elephants. As she and her mother try to decode an Elephant-English dictionary, Sophie slowly uncovers an elephant culture, one which simultaneously honors the herd and the individual with Zen-like acceptance.


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A captivating, heartwarming debut novel.   After the loss of her fiancé Steven, Jenny Beckinsdale has more than a broken heart to deal with-their fledgling seaplane service is going under. In debt to Steven's best friend and fellow Navy pilot, she plans to convince the sexy, cynical flyboy to help save the business...and in the process these two lost souls may find they're saving each other.


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Anyone who has dealt with a strong-willed child knows that it is no easy task to turn bad behavior around. But the popularity of TV programs like Supernanny and Nanny 911 shows that parents have had it up to here and are ready to try anything to get their children to behave. Bestselling author and psychologist Dr. Kevin Leman is here to help. Have a New Kid by Friday shows parents how to reverse negative behavior in their children--fast! With his signature wit and encouragement, Dr. Leman offers hope and real, practical, doable strategies for regaining control and becoming the parents they always wanted to be. Focusing on changing a child's attitude, behavior, and character, it contains chapters for each day of the week and a special section with advice on everything from rolling eyes to sibling rivalry to talking back to punching walls and much, much more. This large section of more than 100 specific topics is indexed, allowing parents to flip immediately to any areas of concern for witty, straightforward, and gutsy plans of action.EXCERPT FROM CATALOGI've got news for you. Since the beginning of time, kids have been unionized, and they've got a game plan to drive you bonkers. Don't believe it? Take a look around....In today's society, kids even shorter than a yardstick are calling the shots. Some hedonistic little suckers of the ankle-biter battalion have even graduated to emeritus status and are holding down the hormone group division. Then there's the already-adult children who return home to your cozy little nest and stay and stay and stay.... You know all about that. If you picked up this book, you picked it up for a reason. You'd like to see a few things--or maybe many--change in your house. You may have small concerns, or big concerns, about your child at this point.... I'll be blunt. You got a big job to do as a parent, and a short window to do it in. If you believe that you, as a parent, are to be in healthy authority over your child, this book is for you. If you don't believe that you, as a parent, are to be in healthy authority over your child, put this book down right now and buy another.... But I've got a Midas muffler guarantee for you. If you stick to the simple strategies in this book--strategies that any parent can carry out--you'll have a new kid by Friday. You can have a great kid, and you can be a great parent. Your relationship with your child can change in just one week.


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Whoever saves a single life saves the entire world . . .  

 In 1592, as the Catholic Church and the Protestants battle for control of the soul of Europe, Prague is a relatively safe harbor in the religious storm. Ruled by Emperor Rudolph II, the city is a refuge for Jews who live within the gated walls of its ghetto. But their lives are jeopardized when a young Christian girl is found with her throat slashed in a Jewish shop on the eve of Passover. Charged with blood libel, the shopkeeper and his family are arrested. All that stands in the way of a rabid Christian mob is a clever Talmudic scholar, newly arrived from Poland, named Benyamin Ben-Akiva. Pleading the shopkeeper's innocence to the city's sheriff, Benyamin is given three days to bring the true killer to justice.  

 But the search will not be easy. Hampered by rabbinic law, and with no allies or connections, Benyamin has only his wits, knowledge, and faith to guide him on his quest—a trail that weaves from the city's teeming streets to the quiet of a shul, from the forbidden back rooms of a ghetto brothel to the emperor's lavish palace.  

 The Talmud says many things in life depend on *mazl*, luck. Fortunately, Benyamin is blessed, for an unlikely group of heroes will risk their own lives to help him discover the truth: Anya, a Christian butcher's daughter; the renowned reformist rabbi Judah Loew; a wise herbal healer known as Kassandra the Bohemian; and even the emperor himself.  

 Who would most profit from the girl's murder—and from having the entire ghetto sealed off? Is the killer a Christian indebted to the girl's apothecary father? Or a messianic Jew bent on the destruction of his people to precipitate the Messiah's coming? The desperate search for answers is complicated by the arrival of a new Holy Inquisitor determined to root out witchcraft and heresy, and reclaim the fractious Bohemian territory for Rome. With time running out, Benyamin must dare the impossible—and commit the unthinkable—to save the Jews of Prague . . . and his own life.  

 Infused with history and spiritual insight, rich in atmosphere and color, *The Fifth Servant* vividly re-creates sixteenth-century Prague—a bustling city where superstition, ignorance, and hatred clash with curiosity, knowledge, and tolerance; a world in which innocent lives are swept away by political and religious struggles, and righteous men and women sacrifice everything in the name of justice and truth.


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When Denton, the famous American author and expatriate in turn-of-the-century London, receives a letter from a young woman saying shers"s in danger and needs his help, he doubts therers"s anything he can do. The letter is months old, and was only forwarded to him when the buyer of a painting found it stuck behind the frame. But why did she hide the note instead of sending it? The search for answers leads Denton into the heart of Bohemian London'the world of artists and their models, of brilliance and depravity, where the border between genius and madness is hard to discern but easy to cross. And before he has learned the shocking truth, Denton will discover what itrs"s like to be the object of a lethal obsession and endure a terrifying confrontation with his own demons.


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It is a lost art, passed down by the ancients in great secrecy: Dim-mak. It is death, by the lightest touch of a finger. Sano Ichiro, tenuous in the new regime as the shogun’s second-in-command, does not have the luxury of skepticism?another senior official is dead, a fingerprint lightly glazed into his skin. Sano’s wife Reiko has an investigation of her own: a beautiful, proud, and hopelessly poor woman has confessed to murdering her family. Yet the pieces do not fit, and as Reiko looks deeper into the woman’s life as a hinin?a moral outcast, shunned by the world?inexplicable connections appear between her investigation and Sano’s. As Reiko’s questions spiral her further into the squalor of life as a hinin, Sano and Hirata?his most loyal samurai?pursure their prey, uncovering an intricate tapestry of betrayal woven into the highest levels of the new regime. But they are no match for the one who has mastered dim-mak, a warrior who will strike all those who cross him or his path?even Reiko.


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Tokyo, 1698:** **Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to become the shogun's second-in-command, is investigating rumors of a plot to overthrow the ruling regime. But conspiracy theories travel far too close to home when Sano discovers that Lord Mori, heir to the shogun, has been found murdered in his own bed…with Sano's pregnant wife, Reiko, lying naked beside him. Was Reiko Lord Mori's scorned mistress, and vengeful assassin, as Lady Mori alleges? Or is she involved in a stunning hoax with her husband--as the *ghost* of Lord Mori* *has charged? Now, in a desperate race against time, Sano must find the real killer or face execution for treason. . .unless he can solve the mystery of the*** RED CHRYSANTHEMUM***


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Japan, 1699: On a moonlit night on the northern frontier island of Ezogashima, a woman is running through the forest when an arrow strikes her dead. Meanwhile, in the city of Edo, the young son of Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to power in the shogun's court, vanishes during a moon-watching festival. When one of Sano's political rivals hints that the boy was kidnapped'and may be in Ezogashima'he and his wife, Reiko, begin a desperate journey to find their son'Śonly to discover that the local ruler, Lord Matsumae, is holding the entire province hostage for another crime: The murder of his mistress. So Sano strikes a deal: He will solve the mistress's murder if Matsumae will free the hostages and return his son. Soon, however, Sano and Reiko find themselves caught up in a dangerous scheme that includes clan warfare, bitter jealousy, and murderous betrayal as they race to unravel the mystery of THE SNOW EMPRESS


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Japan, March 1700. Near a Shinto shrine in the hills, a windstorm knocks down a tree to uncover a human skeleton, long buried and forgotten. Meanwhile, in the nearby city of Edo, troops ambush and attack Lady Reiko, the wife of Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to power and influence in the shogun's court. The troops who attacked Reiko appear to belong to Sano's fiercest enemy, Lord Matsudaira, who denies all responsibility. But if the rivals are not to blame for each other's misfortune, who is? Just as Sano's strife with Matsudaira begins to escalate to the brink of war, the shogun orders Sano to investigate the origins of the mysterious skeleton, buried with swords that identify it as belonging to the shogun's cousin, who disappeared forty years earlier on the night that a cursed kimono touched off a fire that nearly destroyed the city. Suddenly, Sano and Reiko are forced to confront dangerous, long-buried secrets that expose Sano's own mother as the possible culprit. The shogun gives Sano and Reiko just three days to clear her nameor risk losing not only their position at court but their families' lives.


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Japan, 1701. A woman is brutally attacked within a bamboo prison as clouds swirl around her head. Meanwhile, at Edo Castle, samurai detective turned chamberlain Sano Ichiro is suspicious of his old rival, Yanagisawa, who has been oddly cooperative since returning from exile.But just as Yanagisawa's true motives begin to emerge, Sano's estranged uncle comes to him for help: His daughter has disappeared, and he begs Sano and his wifewho once suffered through the kidnapping of their own sonto find her before it is too late.


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Seventeenth-century Tokyo is the setting for Rowland's first book in a murder mystery series featuring Sano Ichiro the Senior Police Commander in the district of Edo. Ichiro is a samurai whose academic background puts him at odds with most of his peers.When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in what seems to be a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the cause was their forbidden love. Everyone, that is, but Sano Ichiro.Despite the official verdict and being warned off by his superiors, the shoguns Most Honourable Investigator of Events, Situations and People suspects this double death was not only a tragedy it was murder. Risking his familys good name and his own life, Sano will search for the killer across every level of society, determined to find answers to a mystery no one else seems to want solved . . .


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It is early spring, 1679, and the feudal Japanese capital, Edo, is beginning to blossom. But along its peaceful, misty streets evil lurks. With one stroke, the favored vassal of the ruling family is decapitated, his head taken for a bundori -- a war trophy. Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, is called to find the culprit. In a city where danger and deceit lie just below the lush surface, Sano must rely on his mind, his instincts, and his noble training in Bushido -- the Way of the Warrior -- to solve this case that could bring him glory...or everlasting shame. Set against a backdrop of sumptuous castles, tawdry pleasure districts, and serene temples, and filled with unforgettable, rich characters, Bundori is breathtaking entertainment.


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A volatile, corrupt city threatened by toreign invasion and ru by an iron-fisted government, Nagasaki is the last place Sano Ichiro wants to be, Unfortunately, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People has been banished there by a wicked adversary in the shogun's court. Surrounded by spies, Sano must tread carefully. When the body of a Dutch trader washes ashore, he finds himself leading an investigation that could push Japan into war -- even as it thrusts his life into the hands of powerful enemies. Sano has to unmask a killer and prove his innocence, or his samurai head, and maybe his country, will fall.


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Twenty months spent as the shogun's sosakan-sama--most honorable investigator of events, situations, and people--has left Sano Ichiro weary. He looks forward to the comforts that his arranged marriage promises: a private life with a sweet, submissive wife and a month's holiday to celebrate their union. However, the death of the shogun's favorite concubine interrupts the couple's wedding ceremony and shatters any hopes the samurai detective had about enjoying a little peace with his new wife. After Sano traces the cause of Lady Harume's death to a self-inflicted tattoo, he must travel into the cloistered, forbidden world of the shogun's women to untangle the complicated web of Harume's lovers, rivals, and troubled past, and identify her killer. To make matters worse, Reiko, his beautiful young bride, reveals herself to be not a traditional, obedient wife, but instead, a headstrong, intelligent, aspiring detective bent on helping Sano with his new case. Sano is horrified at her unladylike behavior, and the resulting sparks make their budding love as exciting as they mystery surrounding Lady Harume's death. Amid the heightened tensions and political machinations of feudal Japan, Sano faces a daunting complex investigation.


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IN THE IMPERIAL CITY OF KYOTO, POWER IS MERELY CEREMONIAL. BUT AN ANCIENT EVIL STILL SURVIVES...Far from the shogun's court at Edo, Most Honorable Investigator Sano Ichiro begins the most challenging case of his career. Upon the insistence of his strong-willed and beautiful wife Reiko, Sano arrives with her at the emperor's palace to unmask the murderer-who possesses the secret of kiai-"the spirit cry"-a powerful scream that can kill instantly. A high Kyoto official is the victim. Treading carefully through a web of spies, political intrigue, forbidden passions, and intricate plots, Sano and Reiko must struggle to stay ahead of the palace storms-and outwit a cunning killer. But as they soon discover, solving the case means more than their survival. For if they fail, Japan could be consumed in the bloodiest war it has ever seen...A legendary land comes alive in this compelling murder mystery set in seventeenth-century Japan. Filled with finely drawn characters and suspenseful plot twists, THE SAMURAI'S WIFE is a novel as complex, vivid, and artful as the glorious, lost world it portrays.AUTHORBIO: LAURA JOH ROWLAND, the granddaughter of Chinese and Korean immigrants, grew up in Michigan. She is the author of four previous Sano Ichiro novels, The Concubine's Tattoo, Shinju, Bundori, and The Way of the Traitor, and lives in New Orleans with her husband and three cats.


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When veteran samurai-detective Sano Ichiro, the Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, is called on to investigate the burning of a cottage belonging to the Black Lotus Temple, he makes a shocking discovery. The three victims of the blaze did not die in the fire, but were brutally murdered before the fire even began. With a triple homicide on his hands, Sano's search for a killer leads him to Haru, an orphan girl found at the scene of the crime. But Sano's wife, Reiko, investigating the case against Sano's wishes, is convinced of Haru's innocence. Reiko's investigation leads her behind the walls of the Black Lotus Temple, where she discovers a sect involved in extortion, prostitution, and hedonistic rituals. Could one of the sect's members be the killer? Now Reiko must risk her marriage to Sano in order to prove Haru's innocence...Set in the luscious finery of the samurai court of medieval Japan, this latest installment in the bestselling series by Laura Joh Rowland is filled with shocking surprises and suspense as readers are once again allowed access into the world of Sano Ichiro.AUTHORBIO: LAURA JOH ROWLAND is the granddaughter of Chinese and Korean immigrants. She grew up in Michigan and was educated at the University of Michigan, where she graduated with a B.S. in microbiology and a master's in public health. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Marty, and their three cats. Her previous novels include The Samurai's Wife, The Concubine's Tattoo, and Shinju, all of which feature the samurai-detective Sano Ichiro.


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In feudal Japan, passion and secrets lead to murder. . .From A Remote, Exotic World. . . Sano Ichiro, Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, awakens from a turbulent dream into a real-life nightmare. Lord Matsudaira Mitsuyoshi, the shogun's cousin and heir, has been murdered after a night of debauchery in the city's pleasure quarter... Comes A Danger All Too Close To Home. . .The matter requires Sano's personal attention-more personal than Sano at first imagines. For he soon discovers that Mitsuyoshi's companion for the evening was none other than the alluring Lady Wisteria, a woman whom Sano himself once knew intimately before he was married to his beloved wife, Reiko. But the memory of Wisteria still stirs him, and it is with both dismay and relief that he learns she has vanished along with her pillow book, a diary that may contain valuable clues. The circumstances trouble him, as does the possibility that he and Wisteria might meet again with dangerous consequences. . .


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November 1694. The streets of Edo are erupting in violence as two factions struggle for control over the ruling Tokugawa regime. One is led by the shogun's cousin, Lord Matsudaira, and the other by the shogun's second-in-command, Chamberlain Yanagisawa. Each side pressures Sano Ichiro, the shogun's most honorable investigator, to join its ranks.When one of the shogun's most trusted advisers is found dead, Sano is forced to honor a posthumous request for a murder investigation. Senior Elder Makino believed that his death would be the result of assassination rather than natural causes. Although he and Sano were bitter enemies, Makino knew that the incorruptible Sano would be duty-bound to oblige his final wish.Under the watchful eyes and thinly veiled threats of both Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa, Sano moves with caution. Each is eager to implicate the other in Makino's death. Sano must discover whether the death was indeed murder, and if so, whether it was motivated by politics, love, or sex. The discovery of secret alliances, both romantic and military, further complicates matters. Sano's investigation has barely begun when violent death claims another of the shogun's favorites. With his wife, Reiko, working undercover, Sano and his chief retainer, Hirata, must not only investigate multiple deaths, but stem the tide of an impending civil war.


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On a whim of the shogun's mother, a procession has left the sweltering heat of Edo, bound for the cooler climate of Mount Fuji. Among her traveling companions are Reiko, the beautiful wife of Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People; Reiko's friend Midori, nine months pregnant; and Lady Yanagisawa, the deranged wife of the shogun's powerful second-in-command. None of them look forward to the trip. But their troubles have only begun when their procession is stopped suddenly on a deserted road. The entire retinue is viciously slaughtered and the four women are bound and taken away, imprisoned by a mysterious kidnapper.Sano now finds himself faced with the most important case of his career. The shogun demands quick action, and under the threat of death, Sano is forced to work with his bitter enemies-Chamberlain Yanagisawa and Police Commissioner Hoshina. The delivery of a ransom note only complicates matters-forcing both Sano and Reiko to take desperate measures.


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On March 17, 2009, Laura Ling and her colleague Euna Lee were working on a documentary about North Korean defectors who were fleeing the desperate conditions in their homeland. While filming on the Chinese–North Korean border, they were chased down by North Korean soldiers who violently apprehended them. Laura and Euna were charged with trespassing and "hostile acts," and imprisoned by Kim Jong Il's notoriously secretive Communist state. Kept totally apart, they endured months of interrogations and eventually a trial before North Korea's highest court. They were the first Americans ever to be sentenced to twelve years of hard labor in a prison camp in North Korea.  

 When news of the arrest reached Laura's sister, journalist Lisa Ling, she immediately began a campaign to get her sister released, one that led her from the State Department to the higher echelons of the media world and eventually to the White House.  

 *Somewhere Inside* reveals for the first time Laura's gripping account of what really happened on the river, her treatment at the hands of North Korean guards, and the deprivations and rounds of harrowing interrogations she endured. She speaks movingly about the emotional toll inflicted on her by her incarceration, including the measures she took to protect her sources and her fears that she might never see her family again.  

 Lisa writes about her unrelenting efforts to secure Laura and Euna's release. Offering insights into the vast media campaign spearheaded on the women's behalf, Lisa also takes us deep into the drama involving people at the highest levels of government, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, Senator John Kerry, and Governor Bill Richardson—intense discussions that entailed strategically balancing the agendas and good intentions of the various players. She also describes her role in the back-and-forth between North Korea's demands and the dramatic rescue by former President Bill Clinton.  

 Though they were thousands of miles apart while Laura was in captivity, the Ling sisters' relationship became a way for the reclusive North Korean government to send messages to the United States government, which helped lead to Laura and Euna's eventual release.  

 Told in the sisters' alternating voices, *Somewhere Inside* is a timely, inspiring, and page-turning tale of survival set against the canvas of international politics that goes beyond the headlines to reveal the impact on lives engulfed by forces beyond their control. But it is also a window into the unique bond these two sisters have always shared, a bond that sustained them throughout the most horrifying ordeal of their lives.


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From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "City of Light" comes a compelling, richly detailed tale of passion and intrigue set in New York City during the tumultuous early days of World War II.  Claire Shipley is a single mother haunted by the death of her young daughter and by her divorce years ago. She is also an ambitious photojournalist, and in the anxious days after Pearl Harbor, the talented "Life" magazine reporter finds herself on top of one of the nation's most important stories. In the bustling labs of New York City's renowned Rockefeller Institute, some of the country's brightest doctors and researchers are racing to find a cure that will save the lives of thousands of wounded American soldiers and countless others--a miraculous new drug they call penicillin. Little does Claire suspect how much the story will change her own life when the work leads to an intriguing romance.  Though Claire has always managed to keep herself separate from the subjects she covers, this story touches her deeply, stirring memories of her daughter's sudden illness and death--a loss that might have been prevented by this new "miracle drug." And there is James Stanton, the shy and brilliant physician who coordinates the institute's top secret research for the military. Drawn to this dedicated, attractive man and his work, Claire unexpectedly finds herself falling in love. But Claire isn't the only one interested in the secret development of this medicine. Her long-estranged father, Edward Rutherford, a self-made millionaire, understands just how profitable a new drug like penicillin could be. When a researcher at the institute dies under suspicious circumstances, the stakes become starkly clear: a murder has been committed to obtain these lucrative new drugs. With lives and a new love hanging in the balance, Claire will put herself at the center of danger to find a killer--no matter what price she may have to pay.  Lauren Belfer dazzled readers with her debut novel, "City of Light," a "New York Times" notable book of the year. In this highly anticipated follow-up, she deftly captures the uncertainty and spirit, the dreams and hopes, of a nation at war. A sweeping tale of love and betrayal, intrigue and idealism, "A Fierce Radiance" is an ambitious and deeply engaging novel from an author of immense talent.


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*"If you have introvert inclinations and are doubting yourself, this is a must read. Or if you know someone who exhibits introvert symptoms, read this book before calling the shrink."* **- Bhante Yogavacara Rahula, author of One Night's Shelter: An Autobiography of an American Buddhist Monk** 

EMBRACE THE POWER INSIDE YOU Are you an introvert? Psychologist and introvert Laurie Helgoe reveals that more than half of all Americans are. Introverts gain energy and power through reflection and solitude. Our culture, however, is geared toward the extrovert. The pressure to enjoy parties, chatter, and interactions can lead people to think that an inward orientation is a problem instead of an opportunity. 

Helgoe shows that the exact opposite is true: Introverts can capitalize on this inner source of power. **INTROVERT POWER** is a groundbreaking call for an introvert renaissance, a blueprint for how introverts can take full advantage of this hidden strength in daily life. Supplemented by the voices of several introverts, Helgoe presents a startling look at introvert numbers, influence, and economic might. 

Revolutionary and invaluable, INTROVERT POWER includes ideas for how introverts can learn to:  Claim private space Carve out time to think Bring a slower tempo into daily life Create breaks in conversation and relationships Deal effectively with parties, interruptions, and crowds  

QUIET IS **MIGHT**. SOLITUDE IS **STRENGTH**. INTROVERSION IS **POWER**.


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From the sun-scorched sands of the Kalahari to the snake-infested jungles of the Amazon, Les Stroud has made a life of surviving in the harshest—and most remote—regions on Earth.  

 Now, the creator, producer, and host of the hit television program *Survivorman* transfers his decades of knowledge and experience to the pages of *Survive!*, a practical guide that gives everyday readers a no-nonsense look at the real world of survival.  

 Stroud offers readers the essential skills and tactics necessary to endure in any corner of the globe, along with a wealth of insider information born of his own experiences in the outdoors and unavailable in any other book. Readers will learn:   How to make a survival shelter and why a lean-to is largely a waste of time. Why survival kits are important, and why you should make your own. Where to find water and why drinking contaminated water is sometimes warranted. How to locate and trap small animals and why the notion of tracking and hunting large game is largely a pipe dream.  

 Whether seasoned in the outdoor arts or new to adventuring, all readers will learn something from *Survive!*. Stroud's many colorful anecdotes and cut-to-the-chase philosophy not only make for an entertaining read, but also enhance anyone's ability to focus on the main goal when everything else has gone wrong—survival.


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**WELCOME TO THE SECOND “GOLDEN AGE” OF SUPERHEROES AND HEROINES **

Superheroes have come a long way since the “Man of Steel” was introduced in 1938. This brilliant new collection features original stories and novellas from some of today’s most exciting voices in comics, science fiction, and fantasy. Each marvelously inventive tale shows us just how far our classic crusaders have evolved—and how the greatest of heroes are, much like ourselves, all too human. 

In “Call Her Savage,” **MARJORIE M. LIU **enters the dark heart of a fierce mythic heroine who is forced, by war, to live up to her own terrible legend. 

In “A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe (Villains Too),” **BILL WILLINGHAM **presents a fully-realized vision of a universe where epic feats and tragic flaws have transformed the human race. 

In “Vacuum Lad,” **STEPHEN BAXTER **unveils the secret origins of the first true child of the space age—and disproves the theory that “nothing exists in a vacuum.” 

In “Head Cases,” **PETER DAVID **and **KATHLEEN DAVID **blast through the blogosphere to expose the secret longings of a Lonely Superhero Wife. 

In “The Non-Event,” **MIKE CAREY **removes the gag order on a super-thief named Lockjaw . . . and pries out a confession of life-altering events. 

Also includes stories by Mike Baron • Mark Chadbourn • Paul Cornell • Daryl Gregory • Joseph Mallozzi • James Maxey • Ian McDonald • Chris Roberson • Gail Simone • Matthew Sturges . . . and an introduction by Lou Anders, “one of the brightest and best of the new generation of science fiction editors” (Jonathan Strahan, *The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year*).


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*The Game On! Diet* is not a diet. It's a bold new approach to fitness that turns the latest, smartest, most successful health science into a fun, fierce, and exhilarating game. Developed by Az Ferguson, to help *Grey's Anatomy* writer Krista Vernoff shed forty pounds of postpregnancy weight, it is the ideal program for busy people who should be working out but have a thousand good excuses not to.  

Az keeps you motivated and Krista keeps you laughing as they show you how to organize opposing teams, set goals, and compete to earn points for daily exercise, healthy meal plans, and positive lifestyle changes. With *The Game On! Diet*, the process of losing weight, for the first time ever, is actually fun. After all, what's better than a bikini body . . . *and* bragging rights?  

Get out there and lose . . . to win! *Game on!*


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Lalita Tademy was a corporate vice president at a Fortune(r) 500 company when she decided to give notice and embark upon an odyssey to uncover her family's past. Through her exhaustive research, she would find herself transported back to the early 1800s, to an isolated, close-knit rural community on Louisiana's Cane River. Here, Tademy takes historical fact and mingles it with fiction to weave a vivid  account of what life was like for the four remarkable women who came before her. The result is a family saga that sweeps from the early days of slavery into a pre-Civil Rights South-a unique and moving slice of America's past that will resonate with readers for generations to come.


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In AD 476 the Roman Empire fell–or rather, its western half did. Its eastern half, which would come to be known as the Byzantine Empire, would endure and often flourish for another eleven centuries. Though its capital would move to Constantinople, its citizens referred to themselves as Roman for the entire duration of the empire’s existence. Indeed, so did its neighbors, allies, and enemies: When the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453, he took the title Caesar of Rome, placing himself in a direct line that led back to Augustus.For far too many otherwise historically savvy people today, the story of the Byzantine civilization is something of a void. Yet for more than a millennium, Byzantium reigned as the glittering seat of Christian civilization. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages, Byzantium held fast against Muslim expansion, keeping Christianity alive. When literacy all but vanished in the West, Byzantium made primary education available to both sexes. Students debated the merits of Plato and Aristotle and commonly committed the entirety of Homer’s Iliad to memory. Streams of wealth flowed into Constantinople, making possible unprecedented wonders of art and architecture, from fabulous jeweled mosaics and other iconography to the great church known as the Hagia Sophia that was a vision of heaven on earth. The dome of the Great Palace stood nearly two hundred feet high and stretched over four acres, and the city’s population was more than twenty times that of London’s.From Constantine, who founded his eponymous city in the year 330, to Constantine XI, who valiantly fought the empire’s final battle more than a thousand years later, the emperors who ruled Byzantium enacted a saga of political intrigue and conquest as astonishing as anything in recorded history. *Lost to the West* is replete with stories of assassination, mass mutilation and execution, sexual scheming, ruthless grasping for power, and clashing armies that soaked battlefields with the blood of slain warriors numbering in the tens of thousands.Still, it was Byzantium that preserved for us today the great gifts of the classical world. Of the 55,000 ancient Greek texts in existence today, some 40,000 were transmitted to us by Byzantine scribes. And it was the Byzantine Empire that shielded Western Europe from invasion until it was ready to take its own place at the center of the world stage. Filled with unforgettable stories of emperors, generals, and religious patriarchs, as well as fascinating glimpses into the life of the ordinary citizen, *Lost to the West* reveals how much we owe to this empire that was the equal of any in its achievements, appetites, and enduring legacy.*From the Hardcover edition.*


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**A thrilling new voice in fantasy makes an unforgettable debut with this "intriguingly twisted tale of treachery and magic" (*New York Times *bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.). Liane Merciel’s *The River Kings’ Road *takes us to a world of bitter enmity between kingdoms, divided loyalties between comrades, and an insidious magic that destroys everything it touches. . . . **

*The wounded maidservant thrust the knotted blankets at him; instinctively, Brys stepped forward and caught the bundle before it fell. Then he glimpsed what lay inside and nearly dropped it himself. *

*There was a baby in the blankets. A baby with a tear-swollen face red and round as a midsummer plum. A baby he knew, even without seeing the lacquered medallion tucked into the swaddling—a medallion far too heavy, on a chain far too cold for an infant who had not yet seen a year. *

A fragile period of peace between the eternally warring kingdoms of Oakharn and Langmyr is shattered when a surprise massacre fueled by bloodmagic ravages the Langmyrne border village of Willowfield, killing its inhabitants—including a visiting Oakharne lord and his family—and leaving behind a scene so grisly that even the carrion eaters avoid its desecrated earth. But the dead lord’s infant heir has survived the carnage—a discovery that entwines the destinies of **Brys Tarnell**, a mercenary who rescues the helpless and ailing babe, and who enlists a Langmyr peasant, a young mother herself, to nourish and nurture the child of her enemies as they travel a dark, perilous road . . . **Odosse**, the peasant woman whose only weapons are wit, courage, and her fierce maternal love—and who risks everything she holds dear to protect her new charge . . . **Sir Kelland**, a divinely blessed Knight of the Sun, called upon to unmask the architects behind the slaughter and avert war between ancestral enemies . . . **Bitharn**, Kelland’s companion on his journey, who conceals her lifelong love for the Knight behind her flawless archery skills—and whose feelings may ultimately be Kelland’s undoing . . . and **Leferic**, an Oakharne Lord’s bitter youngest son, whose dark ambitions fuel the most horrific acts of violence. As one infant’s life hangs in the balance, so too does the fate of thousands, while deep in the forest, a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic that could doom them all. . . .


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**With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century**



 It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.



 In *Lords of Finance*, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear—that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation— and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard.



 For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression.



 As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, *Lords of Finance* is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.


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In her best-selling story collection, Birds of America (“[it] will stand by itself as one of our funniest, most telling anatomies of human love and vulnerability” —James McManus, front page of The New York Times Book Review), Lorrie Moore wrote about the disconnect between men and women, about the precariousness of women on the edge, and about loneliness and loss.Now, in her dazzling new novel—her first in more than a decade—Moore turns her eye on the anxiety and disconnection of post-9/11 America, on the insidiousness of racism, the blind-sidedness of war, and the recklessness thrust on others in the name of love.As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir.Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny.The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.This long-awaited new novel by one of the most heralded writers of the past two decades is lyrical, funny, moving, and devastating; Lorrie Moore’s most ambitious book to date—textured, beguiling, and wise.From the Hardcover edition.


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From the author of the groundbreaking New York Times bestseller The Female Brain, here is the eagerly awaited follow-up book that demystifies the puzzling male brain. Dr. Louann Brizendine, the founder of the first clinic in the country to study gender differences in brain, behavior, and hormones, turns her attention to the male brain, showing how, through every phase of life, the "male reality" is fundamentally different from the female one. Exploring the latest breakthroughs in male psychology and neurology with her trademark accessibility and candor, she reveals that the male brain:     *is a lean, mean, problem-solving machine. Faced with a personal problem, a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.      *thrives under competition, instinctively plays rough and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.      *has an area for sexual pursuit that is 2.5 times larger than the female brain, consuming him with sexual fantasies about female body parts.     *experiences such a massive increase in testosterone at puberty that he perceive others' faces to be more aggressive.The Male Brain finally overturns the stereotypes. Impeccably researched and at the cutting edge of scientific knowledge, this is a book that every man, and especially every woman bedeviled by a man, will need to own.Praise for The Female Brain:"Louann Brizendine has done a great favor for every man who wants to understand the puzzling women in his life. A breezy and enlightening guide to women and a must-read for men."—Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence        From the Hardcover edition.


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Acclaimed novelist Luanne Rice "touches the deepest, most tender corners of the heart" (Tami Hoag, author ofA Thin Dark Line). Her stories remind us how precious and fragile life can beand that we must risk our hearts every day to know happiness.Follow the Stars Homeis just such a novel: a story of poignancy and heartbreak, grace and courage. Being a good mother is never simple: each day brings new choices and challenges. For Dianne Robbins, being a devoted single mother has resulted in her greatest joy and her darkest hours. Weeks before her daughter was born, she and her husband, Tim McIntosh, received the news every parent fears. Tim had not reckoned on their child being anything less than perfect, and abruptly fled to a solitary existence on the sea, leaving Dianne with a newbornalmost alone. It was Tim's brother, Alan, the town pediatrician, who stood by Dianne and her exceptional daughter. Throughout years of waiting, watching, and caring, Alan hid his love for his brother's wife. But one of the many hard choices Dianne has made is to close her heart toward any manespecially one named McIntosh. It will take a very special twelve-year-old to remind them all that love comes in many forms and can be received with as much grace as it is given. As lyrical and moving as the poetry of nature,Follow the Stars Homeis a miracle of storytelling that will take your breath away. If words alone can dare us to confront our fears and to choose joy over sorrow, then Luanne Rice's magnificent novel is a benediction and a call to celebrate our lives. says acclaimed author Luanne Rice. "I always say the same thing: love. It's an easy answer, but like love itself, far from simple." And her new novel, FOLLOW THE STARS HOME, demonstrates that on each finely wrought page. Being a good mother is never simple: each day brings new choices and challenges. For Dianne Robbins, being a devoted single mother has resulted in her greatest joy and her darkest hours. Weeks before her child was born, she and her husband, Tim McIntosh, received the news every parent fears. Tim had not reckoned on their child being anything less than perfect, and abruptly fled to a solitary existence on the sea. Dianne was left with a newbornalmost alone. It was Tim's brother, Alan, the town pediatrician, who stood by Dianne and her exceptional daughter. Throughout these years of waiting, watching, and caring, Alan hid his love for his brother's wife. But Dianne has chosen to close her heart toward all menespecially those named McIntosh. It will take a very special twelve-year-old to remind them all that love comes in many forms, and can be received with as much grace as it is given. Film rights optioned by Hallmark for television.


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A crime caper in the tradition of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, this fast and funny debut is the story of "Shake" Bouchon, fresh out of prison and ready for life on the straight and narrow—well, maybe after *one* last job. . . .   

 When Charles "Shake" Bouchon, professional wheel man, walks out of prison after a three-year stretch for grand theft auto, he's got only two problems: he's too nice a guy for the life he's led and not nice enough for any other.  

 So he says yes when he's asked to run a simple errand for his former boss and lover, Alexandra Ilandryan, the formidable *pakhan* of the Armenian mob in Los Angeles. All Shake has to do is deliver a package to Las Vegas and pick up a briefcase.  

 Only the package turns out to be a wholesome young housewife named Gina whose husband has run afoul of Dick Moby, aka "The Whale," an unpleasant four-hundred-pound Vegas strip-club owner. Shake hates to think what's going to happen to Gina when he delivers her to The Whale, so in a move that's as noble as it is boneheaded, he decides to set her free.  

 Now Shake and Gina are on the run to Panama, hoping to unload the very valuable—and highly unusual—contents of The Whale's briefcase. Shake could end up a rich man, but first he'll have to outmaneuver two angry crime bosses, a murderous Armenian thug plagued by erectile superfunction, a former pro football player who blames Shake for his romantic woes, and a billionaire swindler with a flair for the theatrical. Not to mention, and not the least, Shake will need to survive his own heart, since he's going to discover that wholesome housewife Gina is even more intriguing, and a lot more complicated, than he ever imagined.  

 Full of blindsided double-crosses and hard shots to the head, *Gutshot Straight* is a tale of love, luck, and larceny against the odds.


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So begins the chilling last testament of Gus Landor, a retired New York City police constable, whose numerous talents include code-breaking, riot control and the 'gloveless interrogation'. A young cadet has been found hanged at a military academy on the shores of the Hudson River. Before his body could be buried, however, it was stolen and his heart brutally carved out. Fearing a scandal, the top brass at West Point have summoned Landor to help catch the culprit, and keep his discoveries away from prying eyes. As Landor embarks on a thrilling adventure to solve the case, he uncovers a series of dark secrets and finds unlikely assistance in the form of a mischievous young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe. THE PALE BLUE EYE is a brilliantly atmospheric historical mystery, full of drama and unexpected twists. From the events of one seemingly ordinary afternoon, Louis Bayard conjures a tale as haunting as it is entertaining.


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During the Christmas Truce of 1914, Hal Montgomery, a British soldier, is given a photo by a German soldier, Wilhelm Wetzlar, and they make a pact. Hal promises to find his enemy's English girlfriend, Sam, and let her know her fiance is alive and thinking of her. Several weeks later, Halnow injuredis discharged from the army and goes to Stratford on Avon to fulfill his promise. But things take an unexpected turn when he meets the woman in the photo and falls in love with her himself. As their romance blossoms, Sam shares with Hal her most private confidence: Her newborn son is of German lineage, information that threatens her reputation and her job as a schoolteacher. Fearful that he will lose Sam, Hal holds tight to the secretand the photographthat brought them together. The scene shifts to London, where Hal becomes involved with military intelligence and is introduced to Sam's sisters and a different kind of secrecy. Against the broader landscape of England in wartime,Gifts of Warcaptures the era and the fates of men and women caught in the sweep of history. A vivid tale of romance, adventure, and intrigue, the novel is a remarkable narrative that explores what made War World I so tragic, so revolutionary, and so exciting. It also announces a gifted new novelist.


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Not long before her fiftieth birthday, Mackenzie Phillips walked into Los Angeles International Airport. She was on her way to a reunion for *One Day at a Time*, the hugely popular 70s sitcom on which she once starred as the lovable rebel Julie Cooper. Within minutes of entering the security checkpoint, Mackenzie was in handcuffs, arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin.

Born into rock and roll royalty, flying in Learjets to the Virgin Islands at five, making pot brownies with her father's friends at eleven, Mackenzie grew up in an all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool. It was a kingdom over which her father, the legendary John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, presided, often in absentia, as a spellbinding, visionary phantom.

When Mackenzie was a teenager, Hollywood and the world took notice of the charming, talented, precocious child actor after her star-making turn in *American Graffiti*. As a young woman she joinedthe nonstop party in the hedonistic pleasure dome her father created for himself and his fellow revelers, and a rapt TV audience watched as Julie Cooper wasted away before their eyes. By the time Mackenzie discovered how deep and dark her father's trip was going, it was too late. And as an adult, she has paid dearly for a lifetime of excess, working tirelessly to reconcile a wonderful, terrible past in which she succumbed to the power of addiction and the pull of her magnetic father.

As her astounding, outrageous, and often tender life story unfolds, the actor-musician-mother shares her lifelong battle with personal demons and near-fatal addictions. She overcomes seemingly impossible obstacles again and again and journeys toward redemption and peace. By exposing the shadows and secrets of the past to the light of day, the star who turned up *High on Arrival* has finally come back down to earth -- to stay.


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A legendary island steeped in the mystery and wisdom of centuries... A runaway heiress learning to trust life, and love... A mother and daughter, separated for years, searching for a way to face the future together... "New York Times" bestselling author Luanne Rice tells a powerful story of love, family, and friendship through the lives of two women who reunite at a place where dreams begin--and where they may be fulfilled at last.... Years ago, Lyra Davis left behind a world of wealth and privilege and the people she loved most in the world, unable to reconcile the expectations of her celebrated family with the longings of her own wild heart. Now she lives quietly among a community of expatriates on the isle of Capri, slowly, carefully learning to live fully for the first time, flourishing in the friendship of a singular man who recognizes in her a kindred spirit. Granddaughter of the reigning doyenne of Newport, Rhode Island, wise beyond her sixteen years, Pell Davis is poised to take her place at the pinnacle of society. Yet she and her young sister still long for the mother who ran away from them when they were children so that they could be raised by the father they adored. Pell knows that Lyra felt she loved them best by leaving. But with her father now dead and her sister veering dangerously into fantasy, she will travel across an ocean to find the mother she remembers and the deeper truths they all need so desperately.... Lyrical, unforgettable, Luanne Rice's new novel unfolds against a background of timeless beauty, as an unlikely love affair reshapes the meaning of devotion and three generations of women resist the pull of memory and tradition to find a new way forward.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia's preeminent contemporary fiction writer**



Vanishings and aparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia-or anywhere else in the world-today.


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"Octavia E. Butler is one of the finest voices in fiction---period. . . . A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature."--"The Washington Post Book World" "Readers familiar with . . . "Parable of the Sower" and "Bloodchild" will recall that [Butler] never asks easy questions or settles for easy answers."--Gerald Jonas in "The New York Times" "Fledgling," Octavia Butler's first new novel in seven years, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted--and still wants--to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself. "Fledgling" is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human. Octavia E. Butler is the author of 11 novels, including "Kindred," "Dawn," and "Parable of the Sower." Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and numerous other literary awards, she has been acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations that range from the distant past to the far future.


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From the author of All Souls’ Rising which The Washington Post called “A serious historical novel that reads like a dream,” comes a powerful new novel about Nathan Bedford Forrest, the most reviled, celebrated, and legendary, of Civil War generals. With the same eloquence, dramatic energy, and grasp of history that marked his previous works, Madison Smartt Bell gives us a wholly new vantage point from which to view this complicated American figure. Considered a rogue by the upper ranks of the Confederate Army, who did not properly use his talents, Forrest was often relegated to small-scale operations.In Devil's Dream, Bell brings to life an energetic, plainspoken man who does not tolerate weakness in himself or in those around him. We see Forrest on and off the battlefield, in less familiar but no less revealing moments of his life: courting the woman who would become his wife; battling a compulsion to gamble; overcoming his abhorrence of the army bureaucracy to rise to its highest ranks. We see him treating his slaves humanely even as he fights to ensure their continued enslavement, and in battle we see his knack for keeping his enemy unsettled, his instinct for the unexpected, and his relentless stamina.As Devil's Dream moves back and forth in time, providing prismatic glimpses of Forrest, a vivid portrait comes into focus: a rough, fierce man with a life fill of contradictions.


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The election of Don Albino Luciani to the papal throne in 1978 threatens the Vatican status quo in this routine thriller from Portuguese author Rocha, his first novel. John Paul I's views on papal infallibility and such controversial subjects as birth control, not to mention his resolve to clean house of those men of God who sullied the Roman Catholic church by financial chicanery with mob links, lead to his murder soon after he becomes pope. In the present-day, London journalist Sarah Monteiro receives a letter implicating the pope's killers. The same shadowy band turns out to be behind the attempt on the life of John Paul II as well as the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme. Sarah struggles to stay alive and keep the evidence out of the wrong hands amid predictable action sequences and hairbreadth escapes. An author interview at book's end claiming that John Paul I was actually murdered is sure to please conspiracy buffs.


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EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**The international bestseller from the author of *The Last Pope* ** 



 After the suspicious death of Pope John Paul I, British journalist Sarah Monteiro is drawn into the web of an international conspiracy, and must reluctantly reunite with the mysterious priest/assassin Rafael, and the sinister mastermind known only as JC. But Sarah and Rafael's determination could prove to be their downfall-and seal the doom of John Paul II. Especially if they discover the true power behind the papal throne.


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Narrative history at its most compelling, "After the Prophet" relates the dramatic tragic story at the heart of the ongoing rivalry between Shia and Sunni Islam. Even as Muhammad lay dying, the battle over his successor had begun. Pitting the family of his favorite wife, the controversial Aisha, against supporters of his son-in-law, the philosopher-warrior Ali, the struggle would reach its breaking point fifty years later in Iraq, when soldiers of the first Sunni dynasty massacred seventy-two warriors led by Muhammad's grandson Hussein at Karbala. Hussein's agonizing ordeal at Karbala was soon to become the Passion story at the core of Shia Islam. Hazleton's vivid, gripping prose provides extraordinary insight into the origins of the world's most volatile blend of politics and religion. Balancing past and present, she shows how these seventh-century events are as alive in Middle Eastern hearts and minds today as though they had just happened, shaping modern headlines from Iran's Islamic Revolution to the civil war in Iraq. "After the Prophet" is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and an emotional and political revelation for Western readers.


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When a group of people vanish without a trace from an old manse on an island off the Scottish coast, the British government sends in a team from Department 18, a unit designed to investigate paranormal activity. What they find is far worse than any mere haunted house!


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Lose weight without losing your mind!    *Cook Yourself Thin* is a healthy, delicious way to drop a dress size without  all the gimmicks. The ladies of "Cook Yourself Thin," a new Lifetime reality  show, offer 80 easy, accessible recipes in this companion cookbook that  teaches readers how to cut calories without compromising taste.  

For some of us, losing weight has always been a struggle. The challenge:  figuring out how to cook healthy, low-fat foods that won't leave you hungry,  bored, or running for a gallon of ice cream! *Cook Yourself Thin* shows how to  cut calories, change diets, and improve health without sacrificing the foods  we love.  

*Cook Yourself Thin* is not a fad diet. It gives skinny alternatives to your  cravings. You can't live without your chocolate cake or mac 'n' cheese? You  don't have to! (See Deep Dark Chocolate Cake, page 197.) There's never  enough time to cook? *Cook Yourself Thin* keeps it simple─with easy  instructions and fun recipes you'll want to make again and again.  

What are you waiting for? Cook Yourself Thin!


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Introducing Detective Inspector Darko Dawson: dedicated family man, rebel in the office, ace in the field-and one of the most appealing sleuths to come along in years. When we first meet Dawson, hers"s been ordered by his cantankerous boss to leave behind his loving wife and young son in Ghanars"s capital city to lead a murder investigation: In a shady grove outside the small town of Ketanu, a young woman-a promising medical student-has been found dead under suspicious circumstances. Dawson is fluent in Ketanurs"s indigenous language, so hers"s the right man for the job, but the local police are less than thrilled with an outsiderrs"s interference. For Dawson, this sleepy corner of Ghana is rife with emotional land mines: an estranged relationship with the family he left behind twenty-five years earlier and the painful memory of his own motherrs"s inexplicable disappearance. Armed with remarkable insight and a healthy dose of skepticism, Dawson soon finds his cosmopolitan sensibilities clashing with age-old customs, including a disturbing practice in which teenage girls are offered to fetish priests as trokosi, or Wives of the Gods. Delving deeper into the studentrs"s haunting death, Dawson will uncover long-buried secrets that, to his surprise, hit much too close to home.


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From bonding to bondage, from B&Q to Belarus, along with seven smelly cats, three useless handymen, two slimy estate agents, social workers, a bonker lady. The story of a very unlikely friendship. Georgie Sinclair's husband has walked out; her sixteen-year-old son is busy surfing born-again websites; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern World are getting her down. So when Georgie spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old Jewish eacute;migreacute; neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it's just the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first - Georgie doesn't like the look of that past-its-sell-by-date fish, while Mrs Shapiro thinks Georgie needs to smarten herself up and grab a new husband - a firm friendship is formed over the reduced-price shelf at the supermarket. Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and to Georgie's surprise, she is named as her next of kin. But sorting out Mrs Shapiro's semi-derelict mansion in Highbury, home to seven stinky cats with agendas of their own, is no easy job when the handyman called in to change the locks turns out to be not what he seems and his two assistants, 'the Uselesses', are doing more breaking than fixing. And what about the two slimy estate agents (one with a charming taste for bondage) who start competing to trick Mrs Shapiro into selling her rickety old house, or the social worker determined to commit her to a nursing home? As Georgie steps in to help her new friend, she finds herself unravelling a mystery which takes her from Highbury to wartime Europe to the Middle East, and learning a bit about DIY along the way.


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One of the country's leading researchers updates his revolutionary approach to solving--and preventing--your children's sleep problems Here Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a distinguished pediatrician and father of four, offers his groundbreaking program to ensure the best sleep for your child. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, he explains with authority and reassurance his step-by-step regime for instituting beneficial habits within the framework of your child's natural sleep cycles. This valuable sourcebook contains brand new research that - Pinpoints the way daytime sleep differs from night sleep and why both are important to your child- Helps you cope with and stop the crybaby syndrome, nightmares, bedwetting, and more- Analyzes ways to get your baby to fall asleep according to his internal clock--naturally- Reveals the common mistakes parents make to get their children to sleep--including the inclination to rock and feed- Explores the different sleep cycle needs for different temperaments--from quiet babies to hyperactive toddlers- Emphasizes the significance of a nap schedule- Rest is vital to your child's health growth and development. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child outlines proven strategies that ensure good, healthy sleep for every age. Advises parents dealing with teenagers and their unique sleep problems "From the Trade Paperback edition."


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An amusing, astonishing debut . . . about how a family learns to let go of the past and live and love in the present. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  With this wise, tender, and deeply funny novel, Marina Lewycka takes her place alongside Zadie Smith and Monica Ali as a writer who can capture the unchanging verities of family. When an elderly and newly widowed Ukrainian immigrant announces his intention to remarry, his daughters must set aside their longtime feud to thwart him. For their fathers intended is a voluptuous old-country gold digger with a proclivity for green satin underwear and an appetite for the good life of the West. As the hostilities mount and family secrets spill out, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian combines sex, bitchiness, wit, and genuine warmth in its celebration of the pleasure of growing old disgracefully.  A charming comedy of eros... A ride that, despite the bumps and curves in the road, never feels anything less than jaunty. Los Angeles Times Lewycka is a writer with a fundamentally optimistic vision of the future and a healthy curiosity about the past. Chicago Tribune Charming, poignantly funny. The Washington Post Book World


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In the idyll of the English countryside, on a beautiful summer's evening in a Kent field, and around their two caravans, a little group of strawberry pickers is getting ready to celebrate a birthday. But who picks our strawberries these days? The Ukrainians: Irina, just off the coach from Kiev, and eager to improve her excellent English and find true love with a romantic Englishman; Andriy, the miner's son from the other Ukraine; the Poles: Bob Dylan fan, Tomasz, (whose smelly trainers will soon punish those in the men's caravan), Yola, the petite, voluptuous gangmistress and her religious niece Marta, who finds the wild mushrooms to cook with the sliced loaf; then there is Vitaly, king of the new mobilfon world of the shiny new Eastern Europe; two Chinese girls; Emanuel, the round eyed eighteen-year-old from Malawi, come to England to look for his sister. And although he can't exactly help pick strawberries, there's also the Dog...But these are a group leading dangerous lives - exploitative employers, British regulations and gang masters with guns will all threaten their existence as they take to the caravan road until each of them peels off to find their destiny.  Hilarious, gritty, moving, and slapstick by turns, "Two Caravans" has every bit of the extraordinary distinctiveness and wit and heart that made "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" so successful.


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Mark Jenkins's engrossing history draws on the latest science, anthropological and archaeological research to explore the origins of vampire stories, providing gripping historic and folkloric context for the concept of immortal beings who defy death by feeding on the lifeblood of others. From the earliest whispers of eternal evil in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, vampire tales flourished through the centuries and around the globe, fueled by superstition, sexual mystery, fear of disease and death, and the nagging anxiety that demons lurk everywhere. In "Vampire Forensics, " Mark Jenkins probes vampire legend to tease out the historical truths enshrined in the tales of terror: sherds of Persian pottery depicting blood-sucking demons; the amazing recent discovery by National Geographic archaeologist Matteo Borrini of a 16th-century Venetian grave of a plague victim and suspected vampire; and the Transylvanian castle of "Vlad the Impaler," whose bloodthirsty cruelty remains unsurpassed. Jenkins navigates centuries of lore and legend, adding new chapters to the chronicle and weaving an irresistibly seductive blend of superstition, psychology, and science sure to engross everyone from Anne Rice's countless readers to serious students of archaeology and mythology.


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When a first-generation Basque fisherman pulls in the body of a beautiful young woman, his close-knit Long Island community will be irrevocably changed. As sweeping and haunting as its backdrop, Amagansett is an unforgettable evocation of life's epic forces.


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protect the diamondssurvive the clubsdig deep through the spadesfeel the hearts Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first ace arrives in the mail. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?A 2005 Michael L. Printz Honor Book and recipient of five starred reviews, *I Am the Messenger* is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love.


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In May 1915, Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire. Nearly 750,000 Italian troops were killed in savage, hopeless fighting on the stony hills north of Trieste and in the snows of the Dolomites. To maintain discipline, General Luigi Cadorna restored the Roman practice of decimation, executing random members of units that retreated or rebelled.

With elegance and pathos, historian Mark Thompson relates the saga of the Italian front, the nationalist frenzy and political intrigues that preceded the conflict, and the towering personalities of the statesmen, generals, and writers drawn into the heart of the chaos. A work of epic scale, *The White War* does full justice to the brutal and heart-wrenching war that inspired Hemingway’s *A Farewell to Arms*.


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Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a mission -- self-preservation. But Niles was raised by missionary parents and educated in the shadows of Tokyo's underworld -- making his loyalties as dubious as his business dealings.Now, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niles must decide where his true allegiances lie, as he tries to juggle his Japanese mistress and an affair with the wife of a British diplomat; avoid a modern-day samurai who is honor-bound to kill him; and survive the Japanese high command, whose plans for conquest may just dictate his survival.Set in a maelstrom of personal temptations and mortal enemies, with a remarkable anti-hero caught in a land he can never call his own, DECEMBER 6 is a triumph of imagination, history, and riveting storytelling.


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For over two hundred years we have lived in a western-made world, one where the very notion of being modern was synonymous with being western. This original and ground-breaking new book argues that the twenty-first century will be different. With the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, the west will no longer be dominant and there will be many ways of being modern. In this new era of 'contested modernity' the central player will be China.Far from becoming a western-style society, China will remain highly distinctive. Continental in size and mentality, and accounting for one-fifth of humanity, China is a 'civilization-state' whose characteristics, attitudes and values long predate its existence as a nation-state. China is already having a far-reaching and much discussed economic impact, but its influence will be far greater than this: China's rise signals the end of the global dominance of the western nation-state and the rise of a world which it will shape in a host of different ways. As it rapidly reassumes its traditional position at the centre of East Asia, the old tributary system will be resurface in a modern form, contemporary ideas of racial hierarchy will be redrawn and China's ages-old sense of superiority will reassert itself. China's rise will change the world as we know it, from one made in the west to one increasingly shaped by China.This profound and far-sighted book explains for the first time the deeper meaning of China's arrival as a global power.


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Ishawooa, Wyoming, is far from bucolic nowadays. The sheriff, Crane Carlson, needs no reminder of this but gets one anyway when he finds a kid not yet twenty murdered in a meth lab. His other troubles include a wife who's going off the rails with bourbon and pot, and his own symptoms of the disease that killed his grandfather. Einar Gilkyson, taking stock at eighty, counts among his dead a lifelong friend, a wife and--far too young--their only child; and his long-absent sister has lately returned home from Chicago after watching her soul mate die. His granddaughter, Griff, has dropped out of college to look after him, though Einar would rather she continue with her studies and her boyfriend, Paul. Completing this extended family are Barnum McEban and his ward, Kenneth, a ten-year-old whose mother--Paul's sister--is off marketing spiritual enlightenment. What these characters have to contend with on a daily basis is bracing enough, involving car accidents, runaway children, strokes and Lou Gehrig's disease, not to mention the motorcycle rallies and rodeos that flood the tiny local jail. But as their lives become even more strained, hardship foments exceptional compassion and generosity, and those caught in their own sorrow alleviate the same in others, changing themselves as they do so. In this gripping story, along with harsh truths and difficult consolation come moments of hilarity and surprise and beauty. No one writes more compellingly about the modern West than Mark Spragg, and in "Bone Fire "he is at the very height of his powers.


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English Passengers (2000)
A novel by Matthew Kneale

Awards:
Whitbread Prize
The Booker Prize (nominee)

This novel tells two parallel stories: one of three eccentric Englishmen who set sail for Tasmania to find the garden of Eden; the other of a young Tasmanian aborigine and his tribe, struggling against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions as in their cruelty.

"English Passengers is an old-fashioned book in the best sense: epic in scale, crammed with outsize characters, set in a long-ago time and a faraway place... 'A-'"—Entertainment Weekly

"Robust and rollicking...unforgettable...It's tough to pull off a memorable epic, but Kneale has done it. So get comfortable, and be prepared to enter a fascinating world."—New York Post

When Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband—but not all—confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship Sincerity up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe.The Reverend Geoffrey Wilson believes the Garden of Eden was on the island of Tasmania. His traveling partner, Dr. Thomas Potter, unbeknownst to Wilson, is developing a revolutionary, and sinister, thesis of his own, about the races of men. And these passengers are perhaps only slightly more odd than the crew itself, a diverse and lively bunch better equipped to entertain one another than to steer Sincerity around Cape Horn and across the Indian Ocean. Yet they set sail, pointed southward and bound for a thrilling, epic romp across the high seas and cultures of the nineteenth century.Meanwhile, an aboriginal in Tasmania named Peevay recounts his people's struggles against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions as in their cruelty. This is no Eden but a world of hunting parties and colonial ethnic cleansing. As the English passengers haplessly approach Peevay's land, their bizarre notions ever more painfully at odds with reality, we know a mighty collision is looming.Full of dangerous humor, English Passengers combines wit, adventure, and harrowing historical detail in a mesmerizing display of storytelling. Narrated by over twenty different characters, each one so distinct that the reader has the sense of a story not so much told as dazzlingly peopled, Matthew Kneale has created a buoyant tale, beautifully presented in a storm of voices that brings a past age to vivid and memorable life.


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FIRSTLY: don’t touch the hands of your cuckoo-clock heart. SECONDLY: master your anger. THIRDLY: never, ever fall in love. For if you do, the hour hand will poke through your skin, your bones will shatter, and your heart will break once more.Edinburgh, 1874. Born with a frozen heart, Jack is near death when his mother abandons him to the care of Dr. Madeleine—witch doctor, midwife, protector of orphans—who saves Jack by placing a cuckoo clock in his chest. And it is in her orphanage that Jack grows up among tear-filled flasks, eggs containing memories, and a man with a musical spine.As Jack gets older, Dr. Madeleine warns him that his heart is too fragile for strong emotions: he must never, ever fall in love. And, of course, this is exactly what he does: on his tenth birthday and with head-over-heels abandon. The object of his ardor is Miss Acacia—a bespectacled young street performer with a soul-stirring voice. But now Jack’s life is doubly at risk—his heart is in danger and so is his safety after he injures the school bully in a fight for the affections of the beautiful singer.Now begins a journey of escape and pursuit, from Edinburgh to Paris to Miss Acacia’s home in Andalusia. Mathias Malzieu’s The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is a fantastical, wildly inventive tale of love and heartbreak—by turns poignant and funny—in which Jack finally learns the great joys, and ultimately the greater costs, of owning a fully formed heart.


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When Mary Yukari Waters's short-story collection, The Laws of Evening, was published, Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio's Fresh Air said that "Waters's empathic imagination is so vivid she makes her reader feel like a silent witness to the small acts of cruelty and surrender that the history books can't record." In her exquisite first novel, Waters explores the complex relationships among three generations of women bound by a painful family history and a culture in which custom dictates behavior.Fourteen-year-old Sarah Rexford, half-Japanese and half-American, feels like an outsider when she visits her family in Japan. She quickly learns that in traditional Kyoto, personal boundaries are firmly drawn and actions are not always what they appear. Sarah learns of a family secret -- an interfamily adoption arranged in the throes of World War II. Her grandmother gave up one of her daughters to the matriarch of the family, and the two families have coexisted quietly, living on the same lane. While this arrangement is never discussed, it looms over the two households. In this carefully articulated world, where every gesture and look has meaning, Sarah must learn the rules by which her mother, aunts, and grandmother live.Delicately balancing drama and restraint, Waters captures these women -- their deep passions and tumultuous histories -- in this tender and moving novel about the power and beauty of mother-daughter relationships.


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The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, 'continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal' (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness--and to her astonishing resurrection.    Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in 'The Mental Marriott,' with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, 'Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!' has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity.    Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober, becoming a mother by letting go of a mother, learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up--as only Mary Karr can tell it.


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Boston, 1870. When news of Charles Dickens’s sudden death reaches his struggling American publisher, James Osgood sends his trusted clerk, Daniel Sand, to await the arrival of Dickens’s unfinished final manuscript. But Daniel never returns, and when his body is discovered by the docks, Osgood must embark on a quest to find the missing end to the novel and unmask the killer. With Daniel’s sister Rebecca at his side, Osgood races the clock through a dangerous web of opium dens, sadistic thugs, and literary lions to solve a genius’s last mystery and save his own–and Rebecca’s–lives.


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In 1783 London, the destiny of an orphaned boy and girl becomes intertwined as the boy, Cirrus Flux, is pursued by a sinister woman mesmerist, a tiny man with an all-seeing eye, and a skull-collecting scoundrel, all of whom believe that he possesses an orb containing a divine power.


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The magnificent conclusion of Maureen Howard's ambitious quartet of novels. Maureen Howard is one of America's most esteemed authors, beloved both for the lyricism of her writing and her dazzling intellect. The Rags of Timeis a moving meditation on memory and imagination that, in its interplay of history, politics, art and life, explores the very necessity of telling stories. Focusing on a New York writer with an ailing heart as she reviews her own history and the lives she imagined in her fiction, the novel interlaces the sorrows and consolations of private moments with the undeniable memory of the public record. The result is nothing less than a deeply profound exploration of American life.


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When Johnny Richardson returns to Oakridge he has one thing on his mind--correcting a terrible mistake that caused him to flee his hometown eight years ago. Revisiting the past, though, is a dark and dangerous game in small-town America. When a careless sexual episode leads to the suicide of the town’s first lady, Johnny finds himself the target of a revenge campaign that threatens to tear apart the fragile world he’s built among the gold-bearing mountains of Northern California.

Left an unexplained piece of land when his father mysteriously disappears, Johnny must unravel its secrets in a desperate bid to protect those he loves. But his efforts to do this have deadly consequences and will ultimately force him to confront not only his own failings, but the very nature of guilt.

A searing meditation on the futility of trying to right the wrongs of the past, *Empty Mile* blends elements of thrilling urban noir with the wide-open spaces of outdoor adventure in a story that reflects America’s contemporary uncertainty about itself.


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Brooke Tyler knows a thing or two about secrets. Growing up, she'd sworn to keep certain skeletons in the family closet. But her silence came at a heavy price, not the least of which was giving up the love of her life. Today, Brooke is a small-town cop, sworn to uphold the law and uncover the truth. Until her latest investigation unearths another long-buried secret: a dead body. And then others. A virtual killing field. As she delves into these murders, Brooke discovers more than she bargained for--that every secret she's ever kept was based on a lie... .


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Small-town sheriff J.C. Harrow made headlines when he apprehended a would-be presidential assassin - only to come home that night and find his wife and son brutally murdered. This tragic twist of fate launched his career as the host of reality TV's smash-hit, "Crime Seen"! But while media star Harrow tracks down dangerous criminals coast to coast - with the help of viewers' tips - a killer with a twisted agenda is making his own bloody path to fame.


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Visionary, gripping, sumptuous and tantalizing, Grande Junction is a masterwork of hip, literary science fiction. On October 4, 2057, most electronic devices on Earth are infected and destroyed by unknown viruses, and billions of people dependent on machine interfaces are killed as a result. Twelve years later, the survivors are sunk in a new Dark Age, a grim afterworld in which the only law is the law of the jungle. In the sprawling ruins of Grande Junction, a thriving urban community centered on an abandoned spaceport, civilization is hanging on by its fingernails. In this last fragile outpost of knowledge and reason, hope and faith, a second wave of lethal viruses is unleashedviruses that attack human beings directly, stripping away language, thought, humanity itself. But it is also here that a young boy, a guitar-playing prodigy named Link de Nova, discovers within himself the power to fight a malevolent entity determined to remake the world in its own bleak image. Now, as the viruses spread and enemies converge on Grande Junction, Link and his friends and protectors, Chrysler Campbell and Yuri McCoy, prepare to fight for the survival of the human race with rifles, radios, and rock 'n' roll.


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Few works of literature are as universally beloved as" Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole-and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling. But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful? Alice Liddell Hargreaves's life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she's experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only "Alice." Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year-the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories. That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice-he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice's childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war. For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey. A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire. "From the Hardcover edition."


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A breathtaking tale of love, loyalty, and intrigue set in the early days of World War II from the acclaimed "New York Times" Notable Book author of "Soul Catcher," which "USA Today" hailed as "a marvelous historical novel"  World War II threatens to engulf the globe. The beleaguered Soviets, struggling to hold back the rising German tide, face despair and defeat daily. Yet just as all seems lost, a fearless female sniper named Tat'yana Levchenko gains fame in the Battle of Sevastopol with her remarkable composure and stunning skill. Offering hope in her nation's darkest moments, she becomes a Soviet hero, and word of her beauty and prowess eventually reaches Washington, D.C. Soon, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt invites Tat'yana to visit America and tour the country with her.  For the Soviets, Tat'yana's newfound friendship with the wife of the most powerful man in the world is an opportunity to garner public support for a much-needed second front in the war--but it's also a chance to gather information about President Roosevelt's plans. Surrounded by those who would exploit her position, Tat'yana becomes a pawn in a battle for information, and she is forced to question the motivations of everyone she knows, including the American captain who has been assigned as her translator. But as quickly as she rises to fame, Tat'yana vanishes. Did she defect? Was she silenced--and if so, by whom? Decades later, a clever journalist will discover Tat'yana's story . . . and reveal the truth.  In "Beautiful Assassin," Michael White delivers a heartrending story of war, betrayal, and a mother's love that can never be extinguished. Lyrical, evocative, and powerfully moving, this is a tale you will not soon forget.


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“The author has written a truly complete reference book on options trading, from basics to strategies to taxes and theory. Newcomers to options can quickly find a clear explanation of terms or strategies they aren’t familiar with, and experienced traders can expand their understanding of how complex strategies are created.”  --**Jim Bittman, **author, *Trade Options Like a Professional*     “For a new perspective about options, I recommend Michael Thomsett’s comprehensive *The Options Trading Body of Knowledge*. Traders at all levels will enjoy his easy-to-read style as he explains options from A to Z. The options industry has needed a reference like this for a long time.”  --**Marty Kearney, **Senior Staff Instructor, The Options Institute     **The Comprehensive, Up-to-Date Reference for Every Options Trader**      By Michael C. Thomsett, author of the global best-seller *Getting Started in Options*    Illuminates virtually every technique and form of options trading--including options on futures and ETFs    Helps you consistently choose the right options strategies and understand your true risks     Options offer investors multiple opportunities to enhance their profits. However, options trading is complex, and the sheer scope of available strategies can overwhelm traders. Today, options can support a wide range of strategies, from high risk to conservative. Moreover, options are available not only for stock equities but also for futures, indices, and mutual funds. To trade successfully, traders need an authoritative, up-to-date guide to all the strategies available to them. Now, renowned options expert and best-selling author Michael C. Thomsett has created the definitive reference for options traders at all levels of experience.     Thomsett systematically illuminates each key technique and strategy: how trades are structured, how to assess risk, and when each strategy is most applicable. For most strategies, Thomsett presents detailed tables and illustrations identifying profit zones, loss zones, and breakeven points.      This book thoroughly explains how option premium develops based on various elements of value, walks through the calculation of returns on options trading, discusses how federal taxation works in the options market, shows how stocks are picked for options trading, and provides a complete glossary and additional resources for traders.       **Thoroughly Comprehend Options Trading Risks**    *Systematically evaluate risks associated with markets, volatility, inflation, taxation, portfolios, and knowledge*    **Understand All the Elements of Value in an Options Trade

***Master concepts ranging from time-to-expiration to implied volatility*    **Use the Right Strategies at the Right Time

***Know when to use covered calls, spreads, straddles, combinations, and synthetic positions*    **The Options Marketplace: History, Evolution, and Trends

***Understand both the “forest” and the “trees” *


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It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last---revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door---a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .Sweeping top honors at film festivals all over the globe, director Tomas Alfredsson’s film of *Let the Right One In* has received the same kind of spectacular raves that have been lavished on the book. American readers of vampire fiction will be thrilled!


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From the Introduction: ""Look around," the drill sergeant said. "In a few years, or even a few months, several of you will be dead. Some of you will be severely wounded or so badly mutilated that your own mother can't stand the sight of you. And for the real unlucky ones, you will come home so emotionally disfigured that you wish you had died over there."It was Week 7 of Basic Training . . . 18 years old and I was preparing myself to die."They say the Army makes a man out of you--but for 18-year-old SPC Michael Anthony, that fabled rite of passage proved a very dark journey. After soliciting his parents' approval to enlist at only 17, Anthony began his journey with an unshakeable faith in the military born of his family's long tradition of service. But when thrust into a medical unit of misfits as lost as he was, SPC Anthony not only witnessed the unspeakable horror of war--but the undeniable misconduct of the military--firsthand. Everything he ever believed in dissolved, forcing Anthony to rethink his loyalties, and ultimately risk his career--and his freedom--to challenge the military he had so firmly believed in.This searing memoir chronicles the iconic experiences that changed one young soldier forever. A seasoned veteran before the age of twenty-one, he faced the truth about the war--and himself--in this shocking and unprecedented eyewitness account.


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THE ASCENSION BEGINS. A Catholic bishop. A Quaker prayer leader. A Methodist minister. A Mormon ward leader. An entire congregation of Seventh Day Adventists. What do they have in common? They all minister to people's spiritual needs. And someone-or something-is ripping them to shreds for it. A BLOODY WARNING. Police detective Caldwell "Cal" Evans, still three weeks shy of completing rehab, is called in on the case. His only clue is a chilling message written in blood at the first murder scene: "Leave the Christ alone. He does not belong to you." THE SERPENT SHALL REIGN. With bodies piling up, Cal and his partner, Velvet Rabinowitz, chase leads involving snake-handling cults, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and an ancient ceremony left unfinished for two thousand years. With the help of a graduate student and an enigmatic Roman Catholic priest, the two detectives do more than fight for their lives. .THEY FIGHT FOR US ALL.


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***New York Times***** bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" (*The Denver Post*), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense**

Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group. While her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims, Sonia tries to keep them all alive by working her way into the kidnappers' psyches and interpreting their dreams. With her knowledge of their language, her familiarity with their religion, and her Jungian training, Sonia confounds her captors with her insights and beliefs. Meanwhile, when the kidnappers decide to kill their captives, one by one, in retaliation for perceived crimes against their country, Theo races against the clock to try and save their lives.


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With technologies and weapon systems torn from the pages of DARPA's most advanced military programs, DOMINANT SPECIES is an explosive roller-coaster of futuristic military action. This fast-paced, character-driven novel will immerse you in the world of lethal powered armor aboard a ghostly abandoned starship buried miles underground. Somewhere amid the twisted, frozen decks, a group of elite Marines will find themselves trapped in an ancient mystery and a life-or-death battle to see who really is... the DOMINANT SPECIES.


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In the tradition of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE and THE LAST LECTURE comes an inspiring book of life lessons from Michael J Fox. Michael J Fox didn t finish high school, but he has gone on to receive honorary degrees from several universities and has achieved the highest accolades for his acting, as well as his writing. In his new book, he inspires and motivates his readers to work hard, achieve the most they can and maximise their abilities - all with his trademark optimism, warmth and humour. From moving to Los Angeles fresh from Canada, without a high school degree and learning to live on a wage; to taking on roles in Family Ties and the Back to the Future movies and nearly crashing and burning; and then learning to cope first with the death of his father and then with his own diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, MJF shares what he's learned about life, work, love, family and happiness and everything else along the way.


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This stunning new novel from Tatiana de Rosnay, author of the acclaimed *New York Times* bestseller *Sarah’s Key*, plumbs the depths of complex family relationships and the power of a past secret to change everything in the present.

It all began with a simple seaside vacation, a brother and sister recapturing their childhood.  Antoine Rey thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister Mélanie’s birthday: a weekend by the sea at Noirmoutier Island, where the pair spent many happy childhood summers playing on the beach.  It had been too long, Antoine thought, since they’d returned to the island—over thirty years, since their mother died and the family holidays ceased.  But the island’s haunting beauty triggers more than happy memories; it reminds Mélanie of something unexpected and deeply disturbing about their last island summer.  When, on the drive home to Paris, she finally summons the courage to reveal what she knows to Antoine, her emotions overcome her and she loses control of the car.

Recovering from the accident in a nearby hospital, Mélanie tries to recall what caused her to crash.  Antoine encounters an unexpected ally: sexy, streetwise Angèle, a mortician who will teach him new meanings for the words life, love and death.  Suddenly, however, the past comes swinging back at both siblings, burdened with a dark truth about their mother, Clarisse.  

Trapped in the wake of a shocking family secret shrouded by taboo, Antoine must confront his past and also his troubled relationships with his own children.  How well does he really know his mother, his children, even himself?  Suddenly fragile on all fronts as a son, a husband, a brother and a father, Antoine Rey will learn the truth about his family and himself the hard way. By turns thrilling, seductive and destructive, with a lingering effect that is bittersweet and redeeming, *A Secret Kept *is the story of a modern family, the invisible ties that hold it together, and the impact it has throughout life.


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The Galactic Hegemony has been around a long time, and it likes stability--the kind of stability that member species like the aggressive, carnivorous Shongairi tend to disturb. So when the Hegemony Survey Force encountered a world whose so-called "sentients"—"humans," they called themselves—were almost as bad as the Shongairi themselves, it seemed reasonable to use the Shongairi to neutralize them before they could become a second threat to galactic peace. And if the Shongairi took a few knocks in the process, all the better.

Now, Earth is conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere minutes, more than half the human race has died.

Master Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols and trying to organize scattered survivors without getting killed. And in the southeastern US, firearms instructor and former Marine Dave Dvorak finds himself at the center of a growing network of resistance—putting his extended family at lethal risk, but what else can you do?

On the face of it, Buchevsky’s and Dvorak’s chances look bleak, as do prospects for the rest of the surviving human race. But it may well be that Shongairi and the Hegemony alike have underestimated the inhabitants of that strange planet called Earth…


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In this novel, Greek tragedy meets a dysfunctional family from Maryland, revealing how time and place matter little when it comes to the implacable logic of the darkest human emotions. The family matriarch–half Medea, half Clytemnestra–calls home her three children, who take turns narrating this story, for a final, bedside reunion. There’s the firstborn, Maury, who has Asperger’s, and whose poetic and offbeat reasoning is both endearing and heartbreaking; Candy, his sister, who takes care of their mother, having renounced marrying the man she loves; and Quinn, the wonder boy who left his white trash background to become a successful actor in London. Mother still lives in the house where she made their lives miserable as children and where their father was murdered–a crime for which Maury went to jail as a teenager. Once the family is reassembled in the childhood home, the pieces of a somber puzzle come together over brilliant and witty exchanges showing Irish humor at its best. Mewshaw invites us into the heart of a family dynamic, at times almost too close for comfort, exploding prejudices about murder and family love.


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The Football Fan's Ten Commandments You Must Choose Your Team by the Age of Eight. Value That Team Above All Else, Even Yourself. Under No Circumstances Can You Switch Teams (And Expect to Live). There is a Limit to the Amount of Merchandise You Can Own (But It's Very Generous). Sportsmanship is for the Athletes. Fans Can Gloat Endlessly. A Self-Induced Coma to Skip the Off-season is a Practical Solution to an Annoying Problem. An Inoffensive Fantasy Football Name is a Lame Fantasy Football Name. Wealth Doesn't Matter So Long As You Don't Have to Work Weekends. Respect Superstitions. If Your Team Lost, It's Because You Jinxed Them. In Life, the Order of Importance: Football First, Football Second, Football Third, Family . . . uh, I Don't Know, twelfth?  These are just the basics if you wish to be a True Football Fan. The full picture is much more complex and boozy. Thankfully, "The Football Fan's Manifesto" is your very own playbook to the strict rules and bylaws that must be scrupulously observed. After all, trash-talking is an intricate science and running onto the field a dangerous but irresistible pursuit. There are many lessons to be learned, especially that choosing a favorite team to live and die with is not a choice made easily: It's the most important decision of your life!


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In the spirit of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett,The Sheriff of Yrnameeris sci-fi comedy at its best-mordant, raucously funny, and a thrilling page-turner. Meet Cole: hapless space rogue and part-time smuggler. His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxyrs"s most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out to be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans. Cole gathers a misfit crew for a desperate journey to the far reaches of the galaxy: the mysterious world of Yrnameer, the very last of the "your-name-heres"-planets without corporate sponsors. But little does Cole suspect that this legendary utopia is home to a band of outlaws bent on destroying the planetrs"s tiny, peaceful community.


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People say that Dr. Taylor Jenkins is the best there is. Devoted to his patients, he has given his life to the hospital. But any free time he has is spent searching out his latest high-adrenaline adventure--and successfully shielding his heart!So now he's in a fix. Not only has he been left in charge of his nephew, he's also been thrown for a loop by the new nurse who's arrived in Santa Fe. Beautiful, talented Piper is a natural with kids, but she's also only temporary. They have one summer and the clock is ticking. The adventure is only just beginning....


