# comments

text:
SUMMARY:
A satirical joyride in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, First Contact introduces us to the hyper-intelligent Rigelians, who admire Woody Allen movies and Bundt cake, and who urge the people of Earth to mend their ways to avoid destruction of their planet. But the president of the United States, a God-fearing, science-doubting fitness fanatic, is skeptical of the evidence presented to him and sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of his young attach, an alien scam artist, several raccoons, and a scientist who has predicted the end of the universe. Parrot sketch excluded.


text:
SUMMARY:
Pity the poor private eye (or official investigator, for that matter), who has to solve a case which may involve death by black magic, evidence that may have been altered or planted by an itinerant sorcerer, and supernatural entities ranging from ghosts to vampires to dragons. Even when the detective is a master of sorcery himself, the dragon may have an unbreakable alibi. Best-selling authors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick present a generous selection of stories from the intersection of mystery and magic by popular writers Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolf, David Drake, Harry Turtledove, Esther M. Friesner, and more, including Flint and Resnick themselves. The Dragon Done It is an exciting cross-genre volume that both mystery fans and fantasy fans will enjoy. And so will dragons.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

In this enchanting debut novel, Maggie Pouncey brings to life the unforgettable Flora Dempsey, the headstrong and quick-witted only child of Lewis Dempsey, a beloved former college president and famous literary critic in the league of Harold Bloom. At the news of her father’s death, Flora quits her big-city magazine job and returns to Darwin, the quaint New England town where she grew up, to retreat into the house he has left her, filled as it is with reminders of him. Even weightier is her appointment as her father’s literary executor. It seems he was secretly writing poems at the end of his life—love poems to a girlfriend Flora didn’t know he had. Flora soon discovers that this woman has her own claims on Lewis’s poetry and his memory, and in the righteousness of her loss and bafflement at her father’s secrets—his life so richly separate from her own in ways she never guessed—Flora is highly suspicious of her. Meanwhile, Flora is besieged by well-wishers and literary bloggers alike as she tries to figure out how to navigate it all: the fate of the poems, the girlfriend who wants a place in her life, her memories of her parents’ divorce, and her own uncertain future. At once comic and profound, *Perfect Reader* is a heady, uplifting story of loneliness and of the spur to growth that grief can be. Brimming with energy and with the elbow-patchy wisdom of her still-vivid father, Flora’s story will set her free to be the “perfect reader” not just of her father’s life but of her own as well.


text:
SUMMARY:
King's third collection, after Night Shift (1978) and Skeleton Crew (1985), offers 23 formerly uncollected works, with King as bizarre as ever. A handful of the stories have been rewritten or dressed up for this occasion. King's introduction (a defense against the ivory tower opinions of his critics) and endnotes mentions several sources, including The New Yorker, which printed the lengthy ``Heads Down''--about Little League teams up in Maine--that King calls ``the best nonfiction writing of my life.'' Other oddities are a nostalgic baseball poem and a downbeat teleplay, ``Sorry, Right Number,'' which appeared on Tales from the Darkside. Some pieces display King's charging, looser, richly vulgar style (``Dolan's Cadillac,'' a revenge tale in which the narrator gets even with a Mafia chieftain who killed the hero's wife, and buries him alive in his Caddie), while others occasionally show an unusually neat style hardly different from any other journeyman writer's, aside from the magical King touches (``The Moving Finger''--perhaps the best in the collection, about a man haunted by a live finger that keeps climbing out of the drain of his bathroom sink and finally grows to seven feet). Still others strive for human feeling (``Dedication''--about a longtime black cleaning maid in a fancy hotel who gets whammied by a voodoo lady and made pregnant by sperm on the bedsheets of a white novelist whose writing style gets passed on to her son)--and then some are just the King ticket readers expect: ``The End of the Whole Mess''-- about a polymathic genius who discovers the way to end man's inhumanity to man by altering his drinking water. Addicts, fear not: the King lives.


text:
SUMMARY:
Stephen King cranks up the suspense in a different kind of bedtime story. A game of seduction between a husband and wife goes horribly awry when the husband suddenly dies. But the wife's nightmare has just begun.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

When Rose Daniels sees the drop of blood on the bedsheet, she knows she must escape her marriage and her savage husband before it's too late.  But escape is not that easy.  Norman isn't willing to let her go without a fight.


text:
SUMMARY:
"King is at the top of his game." (Entertainment Weekly)A notice to those who feel that Stephen King has lost his  magic touch: Desperation is the genuine goods. The ensemble  cast of ordinary Americans thrown together by chance, including a  disgruntled alcoholic writer and a child who is wise beyond his years,  may be a bit too familiar. But the nearly deserted Nevada mining town  with an enormous haunted mine pit and an abandoned movie theatre where  the survivors hang out makes for a striking battleground, and the  grisly action rarely flags. Best of all, though, are the characters of  Tak, the ancient body-hopping evil who emerges from the mine, and of  "God"--whom the New York Times describes as "the  edgiest creation in Desperation. Remote, isolated, ironic,  shrouded behind disguises, perhaps 'another legendary shadow,' this  deity forms a sly foil, and an icy mirror, to Tak."


text:
SUMMARY:
There s a place in Wentworth， Ohio， where summer is in full swing. It s called Poplar Street. Up until now it s been a nice place to live.The idling red van around the corner is about to change all that. Let the battle against evil begin.


text:
SUMMARY:
 

Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war -- and the protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts in Atlantis, King's newest fiction, is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

In Part One, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.

In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.

In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow -- and as haunted -- as their own lives.

And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," this remarkable book's denouement, Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.

Full of danger, full of suspense, most of all full of heart, Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Stephen King's most gripping and unforgettable novel, *Bag of   Bones,* is a story of grief and a lost love's enduring bonds, of a new   love haunted by the secrets of the past, of an innocent child caught in a   terrible crossfire.  

  Set in the Maine territory King has made mythic, *Bag of Bones*   recounts the plight of forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan,   who is unable to stop grieving even four years after the sudden death of   his wife, Jo, and who can no longer bear to face the blank screen of his   word processor.  

  Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake.   Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, Mike finally returns to   Sara Laughs, the Noonans' isolated summer home.  

  He finds his beloved Yankee town familiar on its surface, but much   changed underneath -- held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max   Devore, who twists the very fabric of the community to his purpose: to   take his three-year-old granddaughter away from her widowed young mother.   As Mike is drawn into their struggle, as he falls in love with both of   them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of   ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery   of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here   -- and what do they want of Mike Noonan?  

  As vivid and enthralling as King's most enduring works, *Bag of   Bones* resonates with what Amy Tan calls "the witty and obsessive   voice of King's powerful imagination." It's no secret that King is our   most mesmerizing storyteller. In *Bag of Bones* -- described by   Gloria Naylor as "a love story about the dark places within us all" -- he   proves to be one of our most moving.


text:
SUMMARY:
Trisha McFarland is a plucky 9-year-old hiking with her brother and mom, who is grimly determined to give the kids a good time on their weekends together. Trisha's mom is recently divorced, and her brother is feuding with her for moving from Boston to small-town Maine, where classmates razz him. Trisha steps off the trail for a pee and a respite from the bickering. And gets lost.
    Trisha's odyssey succeeds on several levels. King renders her consciousness of increasing peril beautifully, from the "first minnowy flutter of disquiet" in her guts to her into-the-wild tumbles to her descent into hallucinations, the nicest being her beloved Red Sox baseball pitcher Tom Gordon, whose exploits she listens to on her Walkman. The nature writing is accurate, tense, and sometimes lyrical, from the maddening whine of the no-see-um mosquito to the profound obbligato of the "Subaudible" (Trisha's dad's term for nature's intimations of God). Our identification with Trisha deepens as we learn about her loved ones: Dad, a dreamboat whose beer habit could sink him; loving but stubborn Mom; Trisha's best pal, Pepsi Robichaud, vividly evoked by her colorful sayings ("Don't go all GIRLY on me, McFarland!"). The personal associations triggered by a full moon, the running monologue with which she stays sane--we who have been lost in woods will recognize these things.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Once upon a time, in the haunted city of Derry, four boys stood together and did a brave thing. It was something that changed them in ways they could never begin to understand. 

 **Dreamcatcher** 

 Twenty-five years after saving a Down's-syndrome kid from bullies, Beav, Henry, Pete, and Jonesy -- now men with separate lives and separate problems -- reunite in the woods of Maine for their annual hunting trip. But when a stranger stumbles into their camp, disoriented and mumbling something about lights in the sky, chaos erupts. Soon, the four friends are plunged into a horrifying struggle with a creature from another world where their only chance of survival is locked in their shared past -- and in the Dreamcatcher. 

 Never before has Stephen King contended so frankly with the heart of darkness. *Dreamcatcher,* his first full-length novel since *Bag of Bones,* is a powerful story of astonishing range that will satisfy fans both new and old.


text:
SUMMARY:
Surely no stranger work exists in the annals of protest literature than The Master and Margarita. Written during the Soviet crackdown of the 1930s, when Mikhail Bulgakov's works were effectively banned, it wraps its anti-Stalinist message in a complex allegory of good and evil. Or would that be the other way around? The book's chief character is Satan, who appears in the guise of a foreigner and self-proclaimed black magician named Woland. Accompanied by a talking black tomcat and a "translator" wearing a jockey's cap and cracked pince-nez, Woland wreaks havoc throughout literary Moscow. First he predicts that the head of noted editor Berlioz will be cut off; when it is, he appropriates Berlioz's apartment. (A  puzzled  relative receives the following telegram: "Have just been run over by streetcar at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three afternoon come Berlioz.") Woland and his minions transport one bureaucrat to Yalta, make another one disappear entirely except for his suit, and frighten several others so badly that they end up in a psychiatric hospital. In fact, it seems half of Moscow shows up in the bin, demanding to be placed in a locked cell for protection. 
  Meanwhile, a few doors down in the hospital lives the true object of Woland's visit: the author of an unpublished novel about Pontius Pilate. This Master--as he calls himself--has been driven mad by rejection, broken not only by editors' harsh criticism of his novel but, Bulgakov suggests, by political persecution as well. Yet Pilate's story becomes a kind of parallel narrative, appearing in different forms throughout Bulgakov's novel: as a manuscript read by the Master's indefatigable love, Margarita, as a scene dreamed by the poet--and fellow lunatic--Ivan Homeless, and even as a story told by Woland himself. Since we see this narrative from so many different points of view, who is truly its author? Given that the Master's novel and this one end the same way, are they in fact the same book? These are only a few of the many questions Bulgakov provokes, in a novel that reads like a set of infinitely nested Russian dolls: inside one narrative there is another, and then another, and yet another. His devil is not only entertaining, he is necessary: "What would your good be doing if there were no evil, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?"
  Unsurprisingly--in view of its frequent, scarcely disguised references to interrogation and terror--Bulgakov's masterwork was not published until 1967, almost three decades after his death. Yet one wonders if the world was really ready for this book in the late 1930s, if, indeed, we are ready for it now. Shocking, touching, and scathingly funny, it is a novel like no other. Woland may reattach heads or produce 10-ruble notes from the air, but Bulgakov proves the true magician here. The Master and Margarita is a different book each time it is opened. --Mary Park  --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


text:
SUMMARY:
In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began withAll Over but the Shoutin'and continued withAva's Man,Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson. He learns, right from the start, that a man who chases a woman with a child is like a dog who chases a car and wins. He discovers that he is unsuited to fatherhood, unsuited to fathering this boy in particular, a boy who does not know how to throw a punch and doesn't need to; a boy accustomed to love and affection rather than violence and neglect; in short, a boy wholly unlike the child Rick once was, and who longs for a relationship with Rick that Rick hasn't the first inkling of how to embark on. With the weight of this new boy tugging at his clothes, Rick sets out to understand his father, his son, and himself. The Prince of Frogtowndocuments a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of Rick's youth, to Jacksonville's one-hundred-year-old mill, the town's blight and salvation; and to a troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow, Rick's father, a man bound to bring harm even to those he truly loves. And the book documents the unexpected corollary to it, the marvelous journey of Rick's later life: a journey into fatherhood, and toward a child for whom he comes to feel a devotion that staggers him. With candor, insight, tremendous humor, and the remarkable gift for descriptive storytelling on which he made his name, Rick Bragg delivers a brilliant and moving rumination on the lives of boys and men, a poignant reflection on what it means to be a father and a son.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Acclaimed historian Alan Brinkley gives us a sharply realized portrait of Henry Luce, arguably the most important publisher of the twentieth century.As the founder of *Time*, *Fortune, *and *Life *magazines, Luce changed the way we consume news and the way we understand our world. Born the son of missionaries, Henry Luce spent his childhood in rural China, yet he glimpsed a milieu of power altogether different at Hotchkiss and later at Yale. While working at a Baltimore newspaper, he and Brit Hadden conceived the idea of *Time*: a “news-magazine” that would condense the week’s events in a format accessible to increasingly busy members of the middle class. They launched it in 1923, and young Luce quickly became a publishing titan. In 1936, after *Time*’s unexpected success—and Hadden’s early death—Luce published the first issue of *Life,* to which millions soon subscribed.Brinkley shows how Luce reinvented the magazine industry in just a decade. The appeal of *Life* seemingly cut across the lines of race, class, and gender. Luce himself wielded influence hitherto unknown among journalists. By the early 1940s, he had come to see his magazines as vehicles to advocate for America’s involvement in the escalating international crisis, in the process popularizing the phrase “World War II.” In spite of Luce’s great success, happiness eluded him. His second marriage—to the glamorous playwright, politician, and diplomat Clare Boothe—was a shambles. Luce spent his later years in isolation, consumed at times with conspiracy theories and peculiar vendettas. *The Publisher* tells a great American story of spectacular achievement—yet it never loses sight of the public and private costs at which that achievement came.


text:
SUMMARY:
Deadeye Dick is Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence.  Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors&#8211;a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb&#8211;Rudy Waltz, a.k.a. Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness.  Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe...and who we say we are.


text:
SUMMARY:
International bestselling author Stephen King is in terrifying top form with his collection of short stories in almost a decade.In this spine-chilling compilation,King takes readers down a road less traveled(for good reason)in the blocbuster e-Book“Riding the Bullet,”bad table service turns bloody when you stop in for“Lunch at the Gotham Cafe,”and terror becomes deja vu all over again when you get“That Feeling,You Can Only Say What It Is in Frendh”——along with eleven more stories that will keep you awake until daybread.Enter a nightmarish mindscape of nurelenting horror and shocking revelations that could only come from the imagination of greatest storyteller of our time


text:
SUMMARY:
On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...


text:
SUMMARY:
Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went -- a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. Perhaps King's most personal and powerful novel, Lisey's Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love.


text:
SUMMARY:
Witness Stephen King's triumphant, blood-spattered return to the genre that made him famous. Cell, the king of horror's homage to zombie films (the book is dedicated in part to George A. Romero) is his goriest, most horrific novel in years, not to mention the most intensely paced. Casting aside his love of elaborate character and town histories and penchant for delayed gratification, King yanks readers off their feet within the first few pages; dragging them into the fray and offering no chance catch their breath until the very last page. 
 In Cell King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind. Those without cell phones, like illustrator Clayton Riddell and his small band of "normies," must fight for survival, and their journey to find Clayton's estranged wife and young son rockets the book toward resolution. 
 Fans that have followed King from the beginning will recognize and appreciate Cell as a departure--King's writing has not been so pure of heart and free of hang-ups in years (wrapping up his phenomenal Dark Tower series and receiving a medal from the National Book Foundation doesn't hurt either). "Retirement" clearly suits King, and lucky for us, having nothing left to prove frees him up to write frenzied, juiced-up horror-thrillers like Cell.  --Daphne Durham  --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. 

      
  Starred Review. It's probably a good idea not to use your cell phone while you listen to Scott's beautifully understated reading of terrormeister King's latest take on technology run amok: you might just toss it down the nearest storm drain. The excellent film actor (who catches the power of his late father George C. Scott's voice but smooths off the rough edges) adds an important element—quiet believability—to King's bloody, occasionally over-the-top story of a short but lethal electronic signal that seriously damages everyone in the world using a cell phone at that moment. The Pulse, as it comes to be known, turns idle chatterers into weirdly rewired killing machines. Scott makes the lead character—a comic book artist from Maine (where else?) named Clayton Riddell, who is in Boston with his phone off and in his pocket—a touching and surprisingly tough survivor, much like the nonpods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He also resists the temptation to make the "phoners" (those affected by the Pulse) sound unusually strange or dangerous—until their real motives become obvious. Simultaneous release with the Scribner hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 2). (Jan.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.  --This text refers to the Audio CD edition. 

     
  Fans have offered their horror-fiction idol unfaltering loyalty since the publication of his first novel, Carrie, three decades ago. More than 50 books later, Stephen King's stock-in-trade remains stinging, darkly humorous social commentary. His latest effort, a nod to gore-meisters George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) and Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), among others, is no different. The result, though entertaining, is uneven. Some reviewers appreciate King for his prodigious imagination and his storytelling abilities, while others take issue with his two-dimensional characters, scattershot plotting, and the too-obvious echoes of past novels. For longtime fans of King's work, Cell may bring to mind a more compact (though ultimately less satisfying) version of the author's epic The Stand.
Copyright &#169; 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.  --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

WANT TO GO FOR A RIDE...? 

 In a secret shed behind the barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, Troop D, there's a cherry Buick Roadmaster no one has touched in years -- because there's more power under the hood than anyone can handle....


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Stephen King -- who has written more than fifty books, dozens of number one *New York Times* bestsellers, and many unforgettable movies -- delivers an astonishing collection of short stories, his first since *Everything's Eventual* six years ago. As guest editor of the bestselling *Best American Short Stories 2007*, King spent over a year reading hundreds of stories. His renewed passion for the form is evident on every page of *Just After Sunset*. The stories in this collection have appeared in *The New Yorker*, *Playboy*, *McSweeney's*, *The Paris Review*, *Esquire*, and other publications.  

 Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-O-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love? A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well. Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating -- and then terrifying -- journey. Set on a remote key in Florida, "The Gingerbread Girl" is a riveting tale featuring a young woman as vulnerable -- and resourceful -- as Audrey Hepburn's character in *Wait Until Dark*. In "Ayana," a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and the touch of her hand. For King, the line between the living and the dead is often blurry, and the seams that hold our reality intact might tear apart at any moment. In one of the longer stories here, "N.," which recently broke new ground when it was adapted as a graphic digital entertainment, a psychiatric patient's irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside...or keep the world from falling victim to it.  

 *Just After Sunset* -- call it dusk, call it twilight, it's a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It's the perfect time for Stephen King.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

In Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward provides the most intimate and sweeping portrait yet of the young president as commander in chief. Drawing on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of interviews with most of the key players, including the president, Woodward tells the inside story of Obama making the critical decisions on the Afghanistan War, the secret campaign in Pakistan and the worldwide fight against terrorism.At the core of Obama's Wars is the unsettled division between the civilian leadership in the White House and the United States military as the president is thwarted in his efforts to craft an exit plan for the Afghanistan War."So what's my option?" the president asked his war cabinet, seeking alternatives to the Afghanistan commander's request for 40,000 more troops in late 2009. "You have essentially given me one option.... It's unacceptable.""Well," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally said, "Mr. President, I think we owe you that option."It never came. An untamed Vice President Joe Biden pushes relentlessly to limit the military mission and avoid another Vietnam. The vice president frantically sent half a dozen handwritten memos by secure fax to Obama on the eve of the final troop decision.President Obama's ordering a surge of 30,000 troops and pledging to start withdrawing U.S. forces by July 2011 did not end the skirmishing.General David Petraeus, the new Afghanistan commander, thinks time can be added to the clock if he shows progress. "I don't think you win this war," Petraeus said privately. "This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."Hovering over this debate is the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States. The White House led a secret exercise showing how unprepared the government is if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in an American city--which Obama told Woodward is at the top of the list of what he worries about all the time.Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions--and firsthand accounts of the thoughts and concerns of the president, his war council and his generals--reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes.Woodward has discovered how the Obama White House really works, showing that even more tough decisions lie ahead for the cerebral and engaged president.Obama's Wars offers the reader a stunning, you-are-there account of the president, his White House aides, military leaders, diplomats and intelligence chiefs in this time of turmoil and danger.From the Washington PostBy Steve Luxenberg, September 22, 2010:President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in Obama's Wars.According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives."This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."Read the full Post news report on Obama's Wars.


text:
SUMMARY:
Bonnie Pinkwater is a teacher, a good one. She cares about her students. So when Peyton Newlin, a thirteen-year-old math genius, disappears, Bonnie starts nosing around. One by one, students who were competing with the young genius start turning up dead and Bonnie suspects Peyton may be narrowing the field. Then Peyton himself turns up murdered. Bonnie's investigation ratchets up.What she discovers is a coven of witches, a teenage comic book magnate, a skinhead Neanderthal with violent propensities, an abusive father, an amorous science teacher, and a mistranslated medieval mathematics manuscript. Somehow, all the pieces have intersected at the tragically brief life of her math protégé. As the body count mounts, Bonnie realizes she may have bitten off more than she can chew. Because whoever is eliminating her beloved students, has now decided East Plains, Colorado would be better off without one aging math teacher.


text:
SUMMARY:
No secret will keep forever. A Vatican priest is found murdered on the shores of Denmark - nailed to a cross in the shadow of Hamlet's castle. He is the first victim in a vicious killing spree that spans the world. Each horrific murder mirrors the crucifixion of Christ. Meanwhile, deep in the Roman Catacombs of Orvieto, an archaeologist uncovers an ancient scroll dating back two thousand years. The scroll, he knows, holds the key to a dark and treacherous secret that will rock the very foundations of the Church. But only if he can decipher its lost meanings - and only if he can live long enough to reveal them. The enemies of the truth know no law of man.


text:
SUMMARY:
Retired soldiers Jonathon Payne and D.J. Jones return to action (after last year's Sign of the Cross), investigating a secret bunker off the coast of Korea where a gruesome scene and a missing squad from their former unit, an elite counterinsurgency team, indicate that secret interrogation proceedings have gone terribly wrong. Piecing together the facts of the case lead Payne and Jones to Mecca, where a plot to blow up the Grand Mosque suggests a global conspiracy to align forces against the United States. Soon Payne and Jones have to risk their lives to infiltrate Mecca (where non-Muslims can be summarily executed) to save the city and, ultimately, the world. Kuzneski's novel is taut and largely fast-paced; though occasionally bogged down in historical exposition, it's a fair trade that gives the book a rich sense of authenticity and plausibility. Though characters are short on depth, Kuzneski knows how to maintain a nuanced moral landscape while wresting maximum thrills from contemporary Western fear of terrorism. This globe-crossing action thriller, like its predecessor, evokes the spirit of Dan Brown, with welcome doses of Lee Child's ex-military tough-guy grit. (Oct.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
SUMMARY:
The Lost Throne reigns supreme...  A reclusive monastery is the scene of a brutal slaughter that sends Richard Byrd on a worldwide race to find a magnificent treasure. But there are those who will stop at nothing to prevent its discovery.


text:
SUMMARY:
The first to disappear is a ski instructor, out for a morning jog in the secluded mountains of Colorado. Hours later, a pregnant woman is abducted from a crowded hospital and smuggled past security without a hitch. Two places, two incidents, a single motive. One by one, in cities across America, people of all ages are being taken from their homes, their cars, their lives. But these aren't random kidnappings. They're crimes of passion, planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with no obvious signs of a struggle. The cops said there is little they can do for her. There isn't enough evidence to go on. Not enough time has passed. But that isn't good enough for Jonathon Payne. He loves Ariane and isn't about to sit around while her trail runs cold. Using the skills that he learned in the Maniacs, a special branch of the U.S. military, Payne and his best friend, David Jones, give chase, trekking to New Orleans on little more than a whim, hoping that Payne's gut instinct pays off. It does. With the help of several locals, the duo slowly begin to uncover the mystery of Walker's abduction and the shocking truth behind Louisiana's best-kept secret; The Plantation.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**The next exciting, action-packed thriller from the national bestselling author. ** 



 Michel de Nostredame, the French apothecary commonly known as Nostradamus, has gained a cult-like following, a loyal band of enthusiasts who credit him with predicting numerous world events-the Great Fire of London, the rise of Napoleon and Hitler, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima. However, his most important collection of prophetic verses has remained hidden...until now. 



 In the year 2009, a letter was mailed to a woman who does not understand why she has received the puzzling correspondence, written in a series of codes and ancient languages. She enlists the help of Jonathon Payne and David Jones. <BR

 Relentlessly hunted by those determined to protect the secret, the duo has no choice but to fight back. In an adventure that spans two continents and several centuries, Payne and Jones must locate the sacred text that may change everything we know about the future.


text:
SUMMARY:
Bavaria, 1886 King Ludwig II, infamous for his eccentric behavior, is declared insane by his government and removed from his throne. A day later, Ludwig's corpse washes up in the shallows of Lake Starnberg. Rumours about the cause of the tragedy abound, but few people know why Ludwig was really killed. Or what secret was silenced by his death. Germany, present day . . . Hidden among the crates in a newly discovered Nazi bunker are documents stamped with a black swan, the insignia of the murdered king. As a favour to a friend, Jonathon Payne and David Jones fly to Bavaria to protect the documents, but soon face a life-or-death battle against an unknown enemy. From the depths of the Black Forest to the water canals underneath Ludwig's castles, the duo must solve the mystery behind the king's death or share his tragic fate.


text:
SUMMARY:
Lenk can barely keep control of his mismatched adventurer band at the best of times (Gariath the dragon man sees humans as little more than prey, Kataria the shict despises most humans and the humans in the band are little better). When they're not insulting each other's religions they're arguing about pay and conditions. So when the ship they are travelling on is attacked by pirates things don't go very well. They go a whole lot worse when an invincible demon joins the fray. The demon steals the Tome of the Undergates - a manuscript that contains all you need to open the undergates. And whichever god you believe in you don't want the undergates open. On the other side are countless more invincible demons, the manifestation of all the evil of the gods, and they want out. Full of razor-sharp wit, characters who leap off the page (and into trouble) and plunging the reader into a vivid world of adventure this is a fantasy that kicks of a series that could dominate the second decade of the century.


text:
SUMMARY:
Drizzt joins Bruenor on his quest for the fabled dwarven kingdom of Gauntlgrym: ruins said to be rich with ancient treasure and arcane lore. But before they even get close, another drow and dwarf pair stumbles across it first: Jarlaxle and Athrogate.  In their search for treasure and magic, Jarlaxle and Athrogate inadvertently set into motion a catastrophe that could spell disaster for the unsuspecting people of the city of Neverwinter—a catastrophe big enough to lure even the mercenary Jarlaxle into risking his own coin and skin to stop it. Unfortunately, the more they uncover about the secret of Gauntlgrym, the more it looks like they can’t stop it on their own. They’ll need help, and from the last people they ever thought to fight alongside again: Drizzt and Bruenor.


text:
SUMMARY:
This wonderful detective novel is set in Peru in the 1950s. Near an Air Force base in the northern desert, a young airman is found murdered. Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma investigate. Lacking a squad car, they have to cajole a local cabbie into taking them to the scene of the crime. Their superiors are indifferent; the commanding officer of the air base stands in their way; but Silva and Lituma are determined to uncover the truth.Who Killed Palomino Molero, an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery, takes up one of Vargas Llosa’s characteristic themes: the despair at how hard it is to be an honest man in a corrupt society. This wonderful detective novel is set in Peru in the 1950s. Near an Air Force base in the northern desert, a young airman is found murdered. Lieutenant Silva and Officer Lituma investigate. Lacking a squad car, they have to cajole a local cabbie into taking them to the scene of the crime. Their superiors are indifferent; the commanding officer of the air base stands in their way; but Silva and Lituma are determined to uncover the truth.Who Killed Palomino Molero, an entertaining and brilliantly plotted mystery, takes up one of Vargas Llosa’s characteristic themes: the despair at how hard it is to be an honest man in a corrupt society.


text:
SUMMARY:
The City is beautiful at sunset, almost as beautiful as the Lake itself. The waters of the Lake run with crimson and flame-orange and deep lavender as the sun sinks beyond its farther shore, colors pouring across the water all the way to Tiger Bridge. At that moment the exotic lilies carved into the Bridge, crumbling with age, look whole and alive in the moving light and cerulean shadows. But after darkness falls, it will be the tigers of the Bridge that look real and alive. They shake themselves out of stone and come down from their pedestals, the lambent fires of sunset in their eyes, to stalk on great velvet paws through the night--so it is said. At the moment between sunset and dark, the wind off the Lake sometimes dies and the air becomes utterly still. If that pause lasts long enough, it is said, the water becomes a mirror in which a man may see his true face reflected, as well as the reflection of the eternal City. Few would linger at Tiger Bridge to look into the still Lake at that moment, both because truth can be a dangerous thing and because of the tigers that wake out of stone in the night. But that is the story that people in the City tell. That, at least, is a true story. The Bastard, who did not fear velvet-footed hunters, came to Tiger Bridge sometimes to watch the sun set and look into the glass-still Lake. The face he saw in the water was indeed not the face the simple mirror in his Palace apartments reflected. The Bastard could not have explained even to himself where, precisely, the difference lay. But it was to try to find out that he came to Tiger Bridge. The Bastard had a name: Neill. He had a place in the court as elder brother to Prince Cassiel and son of Drustan, who was King. But he was not the son of Ellis, the Queen. The Bastard's mother had been a woman who had wandered into the City and the King's bed from some far country beyond the shores of the Lake, beyond the farthest borders of the Kingdom. She had given her son her fine ivory skin, her ash-pale hair, and her dark secretive eyes. And she had given him a heritage that ran outside the bounds of the Kingdom, a mixed blessing at best. The woman had lived in the City for a season, for a year--long enough to carry and bear the King's son. Then she had walked out of the City. Though I go, this child will keep my presence always near you, she had said to the King, laying the baby in his hands--so the tale went. May he flourish in this Kingdom. Possibly the King did not appreciate reminders of his dalliance, especially once he married his Queen. It was well known he did not favor his illegitimate first-born son. Still, if he did not love Neill, he acknowledged him and kept him close to power. Kings have no need to be ashamed of the evidence of their indiscretions as other men may, and more than one royal bastard has grown up to rule when all the children born on the right side of the blanket have been sickly, or girls. From childhood, then, the court had called the boy Lord Neill to his face with careful deference, and, behind his back, sometimes with no less respect, Lord Bastard. When the Bastard was twelve years old, the true Prince was born, merry and bold even as a baby and beloved by all the City. By that time, folk in both the Palace and the City had learned well the habit of respect toward his elder half brother. The Bastard, even as a child, had a way of kee


text:
SUMMARY:
In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she knows what happened to her missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies.


text:
SUMMARY:
1945: a German bomber flies over Iceland in a blizzard; the crew have lost their way and eventually crash on the Vatnaj kull glacier, the largest in Europe. Puzzlingly, there are both German and American officers on board. One of the senior German officers claims that their best chance of survival is to try to walk to the nearest farm and sets off, a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He soon disappears into the white vastness. 1999, mid-winter, and the US Army is secretively trying to remove an aeroplane from the Vatnaj kull glacier. By coincidence two young Icelanders become involved - but will pay with their lifes. Before they are captured, one of the two contacts his sister, Kristin, who will not rest until she discovers the truth of her brother's fate. Her pursuit puts her in great danger, leading her, finally, to a remote island off Argentina in search of the key to the riddle about Operation Napoleon.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

"*Breaking Night* reads more like an adventure story than an addiction-morality tale. It's a white-knuckle account of survival. . . . By age 6, Murray knew how to mainline drugs (though she never took them) and how to care for her strung-out parents. She showed uncanny maturity, even as a child, and later managed to avoid that malady of teenagers and memoir writers, self-pity. . . . Murray's stoicism has been hard-earned; it serves her well as a writer. *Breaking Night* itself is full of heart, without a sliver of ice, and deeply moving." (*The New York Times Book Review*)  

"Liz Murray shows us that the human spirit has infinite ability to grow and  can never be limited by circumstance. *Breaking Night* is a beautifully  written, heartfelt memoir that will change the way you look your community, the  obstacles in your own life and the American Dream. An inspiration, a must read."  (Robert Redford)  

"[Liz Murray] reminds us that the greatest acts of love and failure can  occur side by side; that isolation and loss can give way to accomplishment and  promise. She offers the awesome hope that, regardless of its past, a life can go  beyond endurance and reach for triumph. She leave us with the memory of a child who  clung to and refused to surrender the dignity of her soul." (Andrew Bridge, author  of the *New York Times* bestseller *Hope's Boy*)  

"As much as it is a memoir, *Breaking Night* is a primer on how poverty and drug abuse create a heartbreaking underclass of children, one that goes largely unnoticed. By the truly uplifting ending, Liz Murray has shown us the worst, and the very best, of America." (Haven Kimmel, author of *A Girl Named Zippy* and *She Got Up Off the Couch*)  

In the vein of *The Glass Castle, Breaking Night* is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age fifteen was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard.   

Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age fifteen, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep.   

When Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny and go back to high school, often completing her assignments in the hallways and subway stations where she slept. Liz squeezed four years of high school into two, while homeless; won a *New York Times* scholarship; and made it into the Ivy League. *Breaking Night* is an unforgettable and beautifully written story of one young woman's indomitable spirit to survive and prevail, against all odds.


text:
SUMMARY:
A spectacular modern-day adventure along the Nile River from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea
With news of tenuous peace in Sudan, foreign correspondent Dan Morrison bought a plank-board boat, summoned a childhood friend who'd never been off American soil and set out from Uganda, paddling the White Nile on a quest to reach Cairo-a trip that tyranny and war had made impossible for decades.
Morrison's chronicle is a mashup of travel narrative and reportage, packed with flights into the frightful and the absurd. Through river mud that engulfs him and burning marshlands that darken the sky, he tracks the snarl of commonalities and conflicts that bleed across the Nile valley, bringing to life the waters that connect the hardscrabble fishing villages of Lake Victoria to the floating Cairo nightclubs where headscarved mothers are entertained by gyrating male dancers. In between are places and lives invisible to cable news and opinion blogs: a hidden oil war that has erased entire towns, secret dams that will flood still more and contested borderlands where acts of compassion and ingenuity defy appalling hardship and waste of life. As Morrison dodges every imaginable hazard, from militia gunfire to squalls of sand, his mishaps unfold in strange harmony with the breathtaking range of individuals he meets along the way. Relaying the voices of Sudanese freedom fighters and escaped Ugandan sex slaves, desert tribesmen and Egyptian tomb raiders, The Black Nile culminates in a visceral understanding of one of the world's most elusive hotspots, where millions strive to claw their way from war and poverty to something better-if only they could agree what that something is, whom to share it with, and how to get there.
With the propulsive force of a thriller, The Black Nile is rife with humor, humanity and fervid insight-an unparalleled portrait of a complex territory in profound transition.
"Part travelogue, part crazy adventure tale, part political reportage . . . Morrison's African river journey is a paradoxical mixture of awe-inspiring discoveries, eye-opening human interactions and perilous escapes."
-Chuck Leddy, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"An unorthodox travelogue . . . packed with illuminating, gritty detail."
-Kirkus
"Dan Morrison takes the reader on an incredible journey in The Black Nile. Weaving together intense travel writing and history, he has produced a supremely entertaining work, and also an important one."
-David Grann, best-selling author of The Lost City of Z and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes
"Dan Morrison is too young to have been part of the Gonzo movement. But if Hunter Thompson decided to travel the Nile, from its Ugandan source to Alexandria, encountering gun-toting whackos, crazed religious zealots, scary profiteers and a rich cast of characters in one of the world's most contested regions-well, I think he would have loved to share his trek with Morrison. Fasten your seat belts, readers!"
-Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Coming Plague
"Part On the Road, part Fear and Loathing in Africa, Dan Morrison takes us with him on his journey down the Nile-teaching us, by example, to be explorers of both the world and ourselves."
-Kevin Sites, author of In the Hot Zone
"The Black Nile reveals a traveler of dark humor and insight, equal parts Paul Theroux and Bill Buford."
-Robert Twigger, author of Dr. Ragab's Universal Language and Angry White Pyjamas
"The only thing more vivid would be traveling the river yourself. Then again, you may be a little more skittish about contested borders, rampaging militias and tiny plank-board boats than Dan Morrison is. The Black Nile is eye- opening, breath-taking, heart-pounding and, frankly, all the adventure I'm up for now."
-Ellis Henican, Fox News Channel


text:
SUMMARY:
“It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.” So begins this gorgeous memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell, a testament to the power of friendship, a story of how an extraordinary bond between two women can illuminate the loneliest, funniest, hardest moments in life, including the final and ultimate challenge.They met over their dogs. Both writers, Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp became best friends, talking about everything from their shared struggle with alcohol to their love of books. They walked the woods of New England and rowed on the Charles River, and the miles they logged on land and water became a measure of the interior ground they covered. From disparate backgrounds but with striking emotional similarities, these two private, fiercely self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen.  Rich with the joys of raising dogs and the rivalries of competitive sports, their friendship helped them define the ordinary moments of life as the ones worth cherishing. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this  moving memoir about treasuring and losing a best friend, and about coming of age in midlife. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of life and of the transformation that comes from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.


text:
SUMMARY:
In South of the Border, West of the Sun, the arc of an average  man's life from childhood to middle age, with its attendant rhythms of  success and disappointment, becomes the kind of exquisite literary  conundrum that is Haruki Murakami's trademark. The plot is simple:  Hajime meets and falls in love with a girl in elementary school, but he  loses touch with her when his family moves to another town. He drifts  through high school, college, and his 20s, before marrying and  settling into a career as a successful bar owner. Then his childhood  sweetheart returns, weighed down with secrets:     When I went back into the bar, a glass and ashtray remained where she  had been. A couple of lightly crushed cigarette butts were lined up in  the ashtray, a faint trace of lipstick on each. I sat down and closed my  eyes. Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle  darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound.    Murakami eschews the fantastic elements that appear in many of his other  novels and stories, and readers hoping for a glimpse of the Sheep Man  will be disappointed. Yet South of the Border, West of the Sun is  as rich and mysterious as anything he has written.  It is above all a  complex, moving, and honest meditation on the nature of love, distilled  into a work with the crystal clarity of a short story. A Nat "King" Cole  song, a figure on a crowded street, a face pressed against a car window,  a handful of ashes drifting down a river to the sea are woven together  into a story that refuses to arrive at a simple conclusion.  The  classic love triangle may seem like a hackneyed theme for a writer as  talented as Murakami, but in his quietly dazzling way, he bends us to  his own unique geometry. --Simon Leake  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

      
  Romance, accusingly bittersweet but still redemptive, is the theme of this novel written by award-winning novelist Murakami, one of Japan's most popular authors. Two only children who were schoolmates and best friends meet again after a 25-year separation. Hajime is now married, the father of two little girls and a successful owner of two jazz clubs. Shimamoto has also changed; she has become a very beautiful woman. She is always immaculately and expensively dressed, but she will not talk about her life or anything that has happened to her. Nevertheless, Hajime believes that he loves her more than life itself; he is convinced that he could leave his family and his business to be with her. After they spend a night together, a night filled with raw passion, she vanishes. Hajime is distraught. After much soul searching, he begins to put his life back together and discovers that he has become a stronger man, one who realizes that looking back is often necessary in order to move forward.?Janis Williams, Shaker Heights P.L., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

      
  Murakami never fails to surprise, whether he's mixing genres and creating ambitious alternate worlds, as he did in the magisterial Wind-Up Bird Chronicle , or putting his own spin on a tale of obsessional love, as he does here. Like many of Murakami's heroes, Hajime is, at least on the surface, a thoroughly conventional man: married with children, the owner of an upscale jazz bar in suburban Tokyo. And yet, there is another Hajime, disconnected from his outer self, drifting in its wake, waiting quietly to be summoned to action. The summons comes in the form of Shimamoto, Hajime's childhood sweetheart, whom he hasn't seen for 20 years but who has never been out of his thoughts. She returns one rainy night, walking into Hajime's bar, and the effect is a little like what happens when Ilse walks into Rick's in Casablanca ("Of all the gin joints in all the world . . ."). But it is something more, too. As always, Murakami drenches his story in American pop culture, but here he uses those illusions to set us up. What happens with Hajime and Shimamoto lacks the tragic tonic chord that melodramatic love stories give us at the end; instead, there is only mystery and confusion. In Murakami's world, secret selves and other realities are forever lurking beneath the shifting sands of the everyday. If this examination of one of those selves is less grand than we've come to expect from one of the masters of the contemporary novel, it is also more intimate and every bit as unsettling.  Bill Ott  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

      
  This latest from the internationally celebrated Japanese author of A Wild Sheep Chase and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle eschews Murakami's trademark comic extravagance, offering instead a muted portrayal of dream-driven midlife crisis. Narrator Hajim  e, an only child (a condition that obsesses him) whose very conventional upbringing includes a sexless (if emotionally intense) friendship with a crippled girl named Shimamoto, discovers in his mid-30s that his settled bourgeois existence masks an urgent   desire to resume and consummate the relationship that dominated his youth. Having endured a frustrating teenage romance (which was ended by his own unfaithfulness) and an unrewarding job as a textbook editor, Hajime later married happily, fathered childre  n, andthanks to his wealthy father-in-lawbecame the proprietor of two popular ``jazz bars.'' One night Shimamoto walks into Hajime's popular Robin's Nest, they talk for hours, and the fantasies of adventurous lives and exotic faraway places that had absor  bed their earlier years gradually resurface. Persuading himself that ``I was living someone else's life, not my own,'' Hajime surrenders to Shimamoto's spell, accompanying her on an enigmatic ``pilgrimage,'' then tumbling into an affair terminated only wh  en she inexplicably departs again, abandoning Hajime to the workaday world and domestic routine he had imagined escaping. In a slowly moving narrative made even more attenuated by shapeless lengthy conversations, Murakami presents Hajime as a hopeful drea  mer chastened, though not changed, by his realization that ``I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover.'' It seems scant material for a novel, though there are fine moments, including a hilarious anecdotal account of adolescent sexual panic a  nd an eerie climactic encounter with Izumi, the girl Hajime had wronged many years earlier. Brief Encounter meets Blue Velvet? Or a book written to exorcize personal demons? Whichever, it's only middling Murakamiwhat well have to make do with until the ne  xt wild sheep or wind-up bird comes along.  -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.  --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

      
  "A wise and beautiful book." 
--The New York Times Book Review

"A probing meditation on human fragility, the grip of obsession, and the impenetrable, erotically charged enigma that is the other."&#160;&#160;--The New York Times

"Brilliant. . . . A mesmerizing new example of Murakami's deeply original fiction." --The Baltimore Sun

"Lovely, deceptively simple. . . . A novel of existential romance."&#160;&#160;--San Francisco Chronicle

"His most deeply moving novel." --The Boston Globe -- Review   

      
  &#8220;A wise and beautiful book.&#8221; &#8211;The New York Times Book Review

&#8220;A probing meditation on human fragility, the grip of obsession, and the impenetrable, erotically charged enigma that is the other.&#8221; &#8211;The New York Times

&#8220;Brilliant. . . . A mesmerizing new example of Murakami&#8217;s deeply original fiction.&#8221; &#8211;The Baltimore Sun

&#8220;Lovely, deceptively simple. . . . A novel of existential romance.&#8221; &#8211;San Francisco Chronicle

&#8220;His most deeply moving novel.&#8221; &#8211;The Boston Globe

&#8220;Mesmerizing. . . . This is a harrowing, a disturbing, a hauntingly brilliant tale.&#8221; &#8211;The Baltimore Sun

&#8220;A fine, almost delicate book about what is unfathomable about us.&#8221; &#8211;The Philadelphia Inquirer

&#8220;Portrayed in a fluid language that veers from the vernacular . . . to the surprisingly poetic.&#8221; &#8211;San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

&#8220;Haunting and natural. . . .  so smoothly shifts the reader from mundane concerns into latent madness as to challenge one&#8217;s faith in the material world . . . contains passages that are among his finest.&#8221; &#8211;The New York Observer

&#8220;Haruki Murakami applies his patented Japanese magic realism&#8211;minimalist, smooth and transcendently odd&#8211;to a charming tale of childhood love lost.&#8221; &#8211;New York


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? But Ender is not the only result of the genetic experiments. The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. Born in Richland, Washington, in 1951, Orson Scott Card grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He lived in Brazil for two years as an unpaid missionary for the Mormon Church and received degrees from Brigham Young University (1975) and the University of Utah (1981). The author of numerous books, Card was the first writer to receive both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel two years in a row, first for "Ender's Game" and then for the sequel "Speaker for the Dead." He lives with his wife and children in North Carolina. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut--young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender's skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister. Is Ender the general Earth needs? And what if Ender is merely the brilliant result of genetic experiments? The war with the Buggers has been raging for a hundred years, and the quest for the perfect general has been underway for almost as long. Ender's two older siblings are every bit as unusual as he is, but in very different ways. Between the three of them lie the abilities to remake a world. If, that is, the world survives. An increasingly popular and relevant novel that risks and achieves and delivers more than most anything else within the science fiction genre, "Ender's Game" is a contemporary classic--a work, as Gene Wolf has written, that "will still be finding new readers when 99 percent of the books published this year are completely forgotten." "'Intense' is the word for "Ender's Game.""--"The New York Times" "An affecting novel full of surprises that seem inevitable once they are explained. The key, of course, is Ender Wiggin himself. Mr. Card never makes the mistake of patronizing or sentimentalizing his hero. Alternately likable and insufferable, his is a convincing little Napoleon in short pants."--Gerald Jonas, "The New York Times Book Review" "A gripping tale of adventure in space and a scathing indictment of the military mind."--"Library Journal" "This twenty-five-year-old science fiction classic [is] unlike many hardcore SF titles [in that it] is particularly appropriate for a younger audience, for its protagonist, Ender Wiggin, is just six years old at the novel's beginning and still a pre-teen at its end. Ender's parents have received a special dispensation to have a third child in spite of strict population control laws. [Ender's] brilliant older siblings, Peter and Valentine, have each showed great promise, but each falls just short of having 'the right stuff.' The International Fleet (I.F.) believes that Ender may be the commander they need to lead great armies against invasion by alien 'buggers.' When Ender does exhibit the desired combination of compassion and cruelty, the I.F. takes him to the distant Battle School, where brilliant children are trained in military strategy and tactics. The centerpiece of their education is a simulated battle game at which Ender quickly excels, eventually becoming the youngest commander in history. Life at Battle School, especially [its many] battle games, is richly described. Ender is portrayed as just a pawn in the larger game being played by the I.F., and readers will alternately sympathize with his exploitation and cheer when he is able to make friends in spite of the tremendous forces working to isolate and dehumanize him . . . For the most part, this novel will deservedly reach a new generation."--Norah Piehl, "Children's Literature" "Card has taken the venerable SF concepts of a superman and interstellar war against aliens, and, with superb characterization, pacing, and language, combined them into a seamless story of compelling power. This is Card at the height of his very considerable powers--a major SF novel by any reasonable standards."--"Booklist"</p>


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens  ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz brings his fertile imagination and unparalleled storytelling abilities to one of the most timeless—and terrifying—creations in all of fiction: the legend of Frankenstein. In Lost Souls, Koontz puts a singular twist on this classic tale of ambition and science gone wrong and forges a new legend uniquely suited to our times—a story of revenge, redemption, and the razor-thin line that separates humanity from inhumanity as we consider a new invitation to apocalypse.  The work of creation has begun again. Only now things will be different. Victor Leben, once Frankenstein, has not only seen the future—he’s ready to populate it. Using stem cells, “organic” silicon circuitry, and nanotechnology, he will engender a race of superhumans—the perfect melding of flesh and machine. With a powerful, enigmatic backer eager to see his dream come to fruition and a secret location where the enemies of progress can’t find him, Victor is certain that this time, nothing and no one can stop him.It is up to five people to prove him wrong. In their hands rests nothing less than the survival of humanity itself. They are drawn together in different ways, by omens sinister and wondrous, to the same shattering conclusion: Two years after they saw him die, the man they knew as Victor Helios lives on. Detectives Carson O’Connor and Michael Maddison; Victor’s engineered wife, Erika 5, and her companion Jocko; and the original Victor’s first creation, the tormented Deucalion, have all arrived at a small Montana town where their old alliance will be renewed—and tested—by forces from within and without, and where the dangers they face will eclipse any they have yet encountered. Yet in the midst of their peril, love will blossom, and joy, and they will discover sources of strength and perseverance they could not have imagined. They will need all these resources, and more. For a monumental battle is about to commence that will require all their ingenuity and courage, as it defines what we are to be . . . and if we are to be at all.


text:
SUMMARY:
Dean Koontz's first ever nonfiction book, the deeply moving story of his life with his good dog TrixieDean Koontz is known for exploring the dark side of human nature in his fiction. But his softer, playful side comes out when he talks about his beloved dog, Trixie, a golden retriever.Trixie had a special place in Dean's heart. And now, in this, his first non-fiction book, Dean opens his heart to his readers to give us memories of Trixie, of the glorious dog who changed him and changed his life.There's everything in this memoir: adventure, mischief, emotion, and sadness too. Dean will talk with joy about the many gifts Trixie gave him ' and the lessons she taught ' and he'll talk with sadness at losing his beloved pet.The loss of a dog is a heartbreak that's been experienced by a great many people, and Dean's delving into that loss is a powerful part of this book, and a cathartic experience for those of us who have loved and lost an animal companion.Trixie had a big little life and lives for ever in Dean's heart 'Ś and in these pages.


text:
SUMMARY:
#1New York Timesbestselling master of suspense Dean Koontz delivers a mesmerizing new thriller that explores the razor-thin line between the best and worst of human natureand the anarchy simmering just beneath society's surfaceas a likeable, successful family man is drawn into a confrontation with a foe of unimaginable malice.... Bestselling novelist Cullen "Cubby" Greenwich is a lucky man and he knows it. He makes a handsome living doing what he enjoys. His wife, Penny, a children's book author and illustrator, is the love of his life. Together they have a brilliant six-year-old, Milo, affectionately dubbed "Spooky," and a non-collie named Lassie, who's all but part of the family. So Cubby knows he shouldn't let one bad review of his otherwise triumphant new book get to himeven if it does appear in the nation's premier newspaper and is penned by the much-feared, seldom-seen critic, Shearman Waxx. Cubby knows the best thing to do is ignore the gratuitously vicious, insulting, and inaccurate comments. Penny knows it, even little Milo knows it. If Lassie could talk, she'd tell Cubby to ignore them, too. Ignore Shearman Waxx and his poison pen is just what Cubby intends to do. Until he happens to learn where the great man is taking his lunch. Cubby just wants to get a look at the mysterious recluse whose mere opinion can make or break a careeror a life. But Shearman Waxx isn't what Cubby expects; and neither is the escalating terror that follows what seemed to be an innocent encounter. For Waxx gives criticism; he doesn't take it. He has ways of dealing with those who cross him that Cubby is only beginning to fathom. Soon Cubby finds himself in a desperate struggle with a relentless sociopath, facing an inexorable assault on far more than his life. Fearless, funny, utterly compelling,Relentlessis Dean Koontz at his riveting best, an unforgettable tale of the fragile bonds that hold together all that we most cherishand of those who would tear those bonds asunder. From the Hardcover edition.


text:
Timothy was not human - not if by human you mean a man with two arms, two legs, two eyes. Of the first criteria, he had none at all; of the last, only one. And even that one was misplaced. 

Timothy was born of human stock, of course - but not of woman. He was the product of the artificial wombs, a strictly military venture, and when he was born the technicians shrugged, and consigned him to custodial care. They expected him to die within five years, like most of the freaks. 

It was in his third year that they discovered Timothy to be something more than human. Cheated of a normal life through his physical deformities, nature developed his brain - and talents that were peculiarly his. Talents that would help him survive in a world made for the normal people - survive, and perhaps even more!


text:
<div><p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW:</p>
<p class="description">With each of his #1 *New York Times* bestsellers, Dean Koontz has displayed an unparalleled ability to entertain and enlighten readers with novels that capture the essence of our times even as they bring us to the edge of our seats. Now he delivers a heart-gripping tour de force he’s been waiting years to write, at once a love story, a thrilling adventure, and a masterwork of suspense that redefines the boundaries of primal fear—and of enduring devotion.  Amy Redwing has dedicated her life to the southern California organization she founded to rescue abandoned and endangered golden retrievers. Among dog lovers, she’s a legend for the risks she’ll take to save an animal from abuse. Among her friends, Amy’s heedless devotion is often cause for concern. To widower Brian McCarthy, whose commitment she can’t allow herself to return, Amy’s behavior is far more puzzling and hides a shattering secret.No one is surprised when Amy risks her life to save Nickie, nor when she takes the female golden into her home. The bond between Amy and Nickie is immediate and uncanny. Even her two other goldens, Fred and Ethel, recognize Nickie as special, a natural alpha. But the instant joy Nickie brings is shadowed by a series of eerie incidents. An ominous stranger. A mysterious home invasion. And the unmistakable sense that someone is watching Amy’s every move and that, whoever it is, he’s not alone. Someone has come back to turn Amy into the desperate, hunted creature she’s always been there to save. But now there’s no one to save Amy and those she loves. From its breathtaking opening scene to its shocking climax, **The Darkest Evening of the Year** is Dean Koontz at his finest, a transcendent thriller certain to have readers turning pages until dawn.</p></div>


text:
Four men waited on the narrow mountain road for the Cadillac carrying 341,890, the biweekly taking of a Mafia cell. Four men who had never failed in a heist before, on their fourteenth operation in three years: Shirillo, watching in the long grass; Pete Harris with a submachine gun; Bachman in the getaway car; and Mike Tucker, art dealer and professional thief; the perfectionist. As the big Cadillac slewed round the bend, none of them realized that this time Tucker had made a fatal miscalcuation that would plunge them all into a blood war against the Mafia


text:
SUMMARY:
Held for a million dollars in ransom, Alice, a blonde, is disguised by her kidnappers as a young Black girl


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

“An elegant page-turner of nineteenth-century detective fiction.”–The Washington Post Book WorldOne rainy morning in 1871 in lower Manhattan, Martin Pemberton a freelance writer, sees in a passing stagecoach several elderly men, one of whom he recognizes as his supposedly dead and buried father. While trying to unravel the mystery, Pemberton disappears, sending McIlvaine, his employer, the editor of an evening paper, in pursuit of the truth behind his freelancer’s fate. Layer by layer, McIlvaine reveals a modern metropolis surging with primordial urges and sins, where the Tweed Ring operates the city for its own profit and a conspicuously self-satisfied nouveau-riche ignores the poverty and squalor that surrounds them. In E. L. Doctorow’s skilled hands, The Waterworks becomes, in the words of *The New York Times*, “a dark moral tale . . . an eloquently troubling evocation of our past.”“Startling and spellbinding . . . The waters that lave the narrative all run to the great confluence, where the deepest issues of life and death are borne along on the swift, sure vessel of [Doctorow’s] poetic imagination.”–*The New York Times Book Review*“Hypnotic . . . a dazzling romp, an extraordinary read, given strength and grace by the telling, by the poetic voice and controlled cynical lyricism of its streetwise and world-weary narrator.”–*The Philadelphia Inquirer*“A gem of a novel, intimate as chamber music . . . a thriller guaranteed to leave readers with residual chills and shudders.”–*Boston Sunday Herald*“Enthralling . . . a story of debauchery and redemption that is spellbinding from first page to last.”–*Chicago Sun-Times*“An immense, extraordinary achievement.”*–San Francisco Chronicle*


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Ben Chase is a war hero with bitter memories. Vietnam left him with a hard drinking habit, a mental breakdown -- and massive guilt. So who will believe him when he swears a psychopath is out to get him? When society is sick, the mad are sane -- and persecution is a killer's game!


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**A delightful comedy of manners about two sisters who must set aside their differences when they inherit a house in the Hamptons ** 



 Half-sisters Cassie and Peck could not be more different. Cassie is a newly divorced journalist with her feet firmly planted on the ground; Peck is a vintage-obsessed actress with her head in the clouds. In fact, the only thing they seem to have in common is their inheritance of Fool's House, a rundown cottage left to them by their beloved Aunt Lydia. But Cassie and Peck can't afford the house, and they can't agree on anything, much less what to do with the place. Plus, along with the house, they've inherited an artist-inresidence and self-proclaimed genius named Biggsy who seems to bring suspiciously bad luck wherever he goes. As these two likable sisters try to understand their aunt's puzzling instructions to "seek a thing of utmost value" from within the house, they're both distracted by romantic entanglements with men from their pasts. *The Summer We Read Gatsby*, set in the end-of-an-era summer of 2008, is filled with fabulous parties, eccentric characters, and insider society details that showcase Ganek's pitch-perfect sense of style and wit.


text:
t was hard for Sonya Carter to believe that she was only half an hour from civilization, for the feeling of isolation from the world on this tiny island in the Caribbean was almost complete. The people in the two houses on the island could have been cast adrift from reality, inhabiting a universe of their own. Sonya had come to Distingue to escape the dark days of her recent past; the offer of a job as tutor to the Dougherty children seemed heaven- sent. And for a time Distingue seemed to live up to the promise of its name--a place of elegance. But there was a darker force on the island, an insane power that sought to bring terror to the most innocent victims of all, the children. Someone was determined to murder them--and only Sonya stood in his way!


text:
SUMMARY:
Summary of The fall of the dream machine: when all the world's a stage, director Cockley will run it.


text:
Sam was an android.

His flesh was the ultimate miracle of science, artificially created and completely self sustaining. And he had the unusual power to heal others. In fact, Sam was too good to live."


text:
SUMMARY:
With each and every new novel, Dean Koontz raises the stakes—and the pulse rate—higher than any other author. Now, in what may be his most suspenseful and heartfelt novel ever, he brings us the story of an ordinary man whose extraordinary commitment to his wife will take him on a harrowing journey of adventure, sacrifice, and redemption to the mystery of love itself—and to a showdown with the darkness that would destroy it forever.

What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill?  

We have your wife. You can get her back for two million cash. Landscaper Mitchell Rafferty thinks it must be some kind of joke. He was in the middle of planting impatiens in the yard of one of his clients when his cell phone rang. Now he’s standing in a normal suburban neighborhood on a bright summer day, having a phone conversation out of his darkest nightmare.

Whoever is on the other end of the line is dead serious. He has Mitch’s wife and he’s named the price for her safe return. The caller doesn’t care that Mitch runs a small two-man landscaping operation and has no way of raising such a vast sum. He’s confident that Mitch will find a way. 

If he loves his wife enough. . .  Mitch does love her enough. He loves her more than life itself. He’s got  seventy-two hours to prove it. He has to find the two million by then. But he’ll pay a lot more. He’ll pay anything.

From its tense opening to its shattering climax, The Husband is a thriller that will hold you in its relentless grip for every twist, every shock, every revelation&#8230;until it lets you go, unmistakably changed. This is a Dean Koontz novel, after all.  And there’s no other experience quite like it.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Dean Koontz’s unique talent for writing terrifying thrillers with a heart and soul is nowhere more evident than in this latest suspense masterpiece that pits one man against the ultimate deadline. If there were speed limits for the sheer pulse-racing excitement allowed in one novel, *Velocity* would break them all. Get ready for the ride of your life.**Velocity**Bill Wile is an easygoing, hardworking guy who leads a quiet, ordinary life. But that is about to change. One evening, after his usual eight-hour bartending shift, he finds a typewritten note under the windshield wiper of his car. *If you don’t take this note to the police and get them involved, I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. If you do take this note to the police, I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have four hours to decide. The choice is yours.*It seems like a sick joke, and Bill’s friend on the police force, Lanny Olson, thinks so too. His advice to Bill is to go home and forget about it.  Besides, what could they do even if they took the note seriously? No crime has actually been committed. But less than twenty-four hours later, a young blond schoolteacher is found murdered, and it’s Bill’s fault: he didn’t convince the police to get involved.  Now he’s got another note, another deadline, another ultimatum…and two new lives hanging in the balance.Suddenly Bill’s average, seemingly innocuous life takes on the dimensions and speed of an accelerating nightmare. Because the notes are coming faster, the deadlines growing tighter, and the killer becoming bolder and crueler with every communication—until Bill is isolated with the terrifying knowledge that he alone has the power of life and death over a psychopath’s innocent victims. Until the struggle between good and evil is intensely personal.  Until the most chilling words of all are: *The choice is yours*.


text:
SUMMARY:
In TUNNELS, boy archaeologist Will Burrows went in search of his missing father--and discovered a sinister subterranean world. Now, wandering the dark, hot bowels beneath the Colony with his best friend, Chester, and his brother, Cal, Will stumbles across the Styx's dastardly plan to enslave all Topsoilers by poisoning them with a lethal toxin. Slowly he begins to piece together the plot. But how can Will save all those above from annihilation when his own life is at risk down below--and when his killer sister is still at large?


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. When his father goes missing and he begins to delve into an archaeological dig to uncover clues, Will Burrows discovers a strange subterranean society where enslaved citizens live under the control of a cruel sect and so now must convince some of them to begin a revolt in order to free themselves and his father in the process.


text:
SUMMARY:
A daughter of privilege in the most powerful empire the world has ever known, Claudia has a unique and disturbing "gift": her dreams have an uncanny way of coming true. As a rebellious child seated beside the tyrannical Roman Emperor Tiberius, she first spies the powerful gladiator who will ultimately be her one true passion. Yet it is the ambitious magistrate Pontius Pilate who intrigues the impressionable young woman she becomes, and Claudia finds her way into his arms by means of a mysterious ancient magic. Pilate is her grand destiny, leading her to Judaea and plunging her into a seething cauldron of open rebellion. But following her friend Miriam of Magdala's confession of her ecstatic love for a charismatic religious radical, Claudia begins to experience terrifying visions—horrific premonitions of war, injustice, untold devastation and damnation . . . and the crucifixion of a divine martyr whom she must do everything in her power to save.
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

A daughter of privilege in the most powerful empire the world has ever known, Claudia has a unique and disturbing "gift": her dreams have an uncanny way of coming true. As a rebellious child seated beside the tyrannical Roman Emperor Tiberius, she first spies the powerful gladiator who will ultimately be her one true passion. Yet it is the ambitious magistrate Pontius Pilate who intrigues the impressionable young woman she becomes, and Claudia finds her way into his arms by means of a mysterious ancient magic. Pilate is her grand destiny, leading her to Judaea and plunging her into a seething cauldron of open rebellion. But following her friend Miriam of Magdala's confession of her ecstatic love for a charismatic religious radical, Claudia begins to experience terrifying visions—horrific premonitions of war, injustice, untold devastation and damnation . . . and the crucifixion of a divine martyr whom she must do everything in her power to save.


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER On the morning that marks the end of the world they have known, Molly and Neil Sloan awaken to the drumbeat of rain on their roof. A luminous silvery downpour is drenching their small California mountain town. It has haunted their sleep, invaded their dreams, and now, in the moody purple dawn, the young couple cannot shake the sense of something terribly wrong. As the hours pass, Molly and Neil listen to disturbing news of extreme weather phenomena across the globe. By nightfall, their little town loses all contact with the outside world. A thick fog transforms the once-friendly village into a ghostly labyrinth. And soon the Sloans and their neighbors will be forced to draw on reserves of courage and humanity they never knew they had. For within the misty gloom they will encounter something that reveals in a shattering instant what is happening to their world-something that is hunting them with ruthless efficiency.</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
Acknowledged as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”(Rolling Stone ) and as one of today’s most celebrated and successful writers, Dean Koontz has earned the devotion of millions of readers around the world and the praise of critics everywhere for tales of character, mystery, and adventure that strike to the core of what it means to be human. Now he delivers the page-turner of the season, an unforgettable journey to the heart of darkness and to the pinnacle of grace, at once chilling and wickedly funny, a brilliantly observed chronicle of good and evil in our time, of illusion and everlasting truth. He’s Hollywood’s most dazzling star, whose flawless countenance inspires the worship of millions and fires the hatred of one twisted soul. His perfectly ordered existence is under siege as a series of terrifying, enigmatic “messages” breaches the exquisitely calibrated security systems of his legendary Bel Air estate.The boxes arrive mysteriously, one by one, at Channing Manheim’s fortified compound. The threat implicit in their bizarre, disturbing contents seems to escalate with each new delivery. Manheim’s security chief, ex-cop Ethan Truman, is used to looking beneath the surface of things. But until he entered the orbit of a Hollywood icon, he had no idea just how slippery reality could be. Now this good man is all that stands in the way of an insidious killer—and forces that eclipse the most fevered fantasies of a city where dreams and nightmares are the stuff of daily life. As a seemingly endless and ominous rain falls over southern California, Ethan will test the limits of perception and endurance in a world where the truth is as thin as celluloid and answers can be found only in the illusory intersection of shadow and light.Enter a world of marvelous invention, enchantment, and implacable intent, populated by murderous actors and the walking dead, hit men and heroes, long-buried dreams and never-dying hope. Here a magnificent mansion is presided over by a Scottish force of nature known as Mrs. McBee, before whom all men tremble. A mad French chef concocts feasts for the mighty and the malicious. Ming du Lac, spiritual adviser to the stars, has a direct line to the dead. An aptly named cop called Hazard will become Ethan’s ally, an anarchist will sow discord and despair, and a young boy named Fric, imprisoned by celebrity and loneliness, will hear a voice telling him of the approach of something unimaginably evil. Traversing this extraordinary landscape, Ethan will face the secrets of his own tragic past and the unmistakable premonition of his impending violent death as he races against time to solve the macabre riddles of a modern-day beast.A riveting tour de force of suspense, mystery, and miraculous revelation, The Face is that rare novel that entertains, provokes, and uplifts at the same time. It will make you laugh. It will give you chills. It will fill you with hope.


text:
<div><p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW:</p>
<p class="description">Dean Koontz has surpassed his longtime reputation as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”(*Rolling Stone*) to become one of the most celebrated and successful writers of our time. Reviewers hail his boundless originality, his art, his unparalleled ability to create highly textured, riveting drama, at once viscerally familiar and utterly unique. Author of one *#1 New York Times* bestseller after another, Koontz is at the pinnacle of his powers, spinning mysteries and miracles, enthralling tales that speak directly to today’s readers, balm for the heart and fire for the mind. In this stunning new novel, he delivers a tour de force of dark suspense and brilliant revelation that has all the Koontz trademarks: adventure, chills, riddles, humor, heartbreak, an unforgettable cast of characters, and a climax that will leave you clamoring for more.Dylan O’Connor is a gifted young artist just trying to do the right thing in life. He’s on his way to an arts festival in Santa Fe when he stops to get a room for himself and his twenty-year-old autistic brother, Shep. But in a nightmarish instant, Dylan is attacked by a mysterious “doctor,” injected with a strange substance, and told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him...or transform his life in the most remarkable way. Then he is told that he must flee--before the doctor’s enemies hunt him down for the secret circulating through his body. No one can help him, the doctor says, not even the police.Stunned, disbelieving, Dylan is turned loose to run for his life...and straight into an adventure that will turn the next twenty-four hours into an odyssey of terror, mystery--and wondrous discovery. It is a journey that begins when Dylan and Shep’s path intersects with that of Jillian Jackson. Before that evening Jilly was a beautiful comedian whose biggest worry was whether she would ever find a decent man. Now she too is a carrier. And even as Dylan tries to convince her that they’ll be safer sticking together, cold-eyed men in a threatening pack of black Suburbans approach, only seconds before Jilly’s classic Coupe DeVille explodes into thin air. Now the three are on the run together, but with no idea whom they’re running from--or why. Meanwhile Shep has begun exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. And whatever it is that’s coursing through their bodies seems to have plunged them into one waking nightmare after another. Seized by sinister premonitions, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to crime scenes--just minutes before the crimes take place. What this unfathomable power is, how they can use it to stop the evil erupting all around them, and why they have been chosen are only parts of a puzzle that reaches back into the tragic past and the dark secrets they all share: secrets of madness, pain, and untimely death. Perhaps the answer lies in the eerie, enigmatic messages that Shep, with precious time running out, begins to repeat, about an entity who does his work “by the light of the moon.”**By the Light of the Moon** is a novel of heart-stopping suspense and transcendent beauty, of how evil can destroy us and love can redeem us--a masterwork of the imagination in which the surprises come page after page and the spell of sublime storytelling triumphs throughout.</p></div>


text:
In his new novella, UR, King is at his unsettling best as he examines the future of the written word - for better or worse. Following a nasty break-up, lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith can't seem to get his ex-girlfriend's parting shot out of his head: "Why can't you just read off the computer like the rest of us?" Egged on by her question and piqued by a student's suggestion, Wesley places an order for Amazon.com's Kindle eReader. The [pink?] device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo -via one-day delivery that he hadn't requested - unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we'll never read or live through. Firm, gripping, and deftly written by a craftsman at the top of his game, this is King at his crisp, clear, page-turning best.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Hailed as “America’s most popular suspense novelist” (*Rolling Stone*) Dean Koontz has entered a rich new phase of his writing career that is yielding his most imaginative, meaningful, and popular work yet.At the height of his powers as a literary craftsman, he has won the acclaim of critics as well as the allegiance of millions of fans the world over, transforming the greatest fears and hopes of our time into masterworks of dazzling originality and emotional resonance.Now, with the stunning depth and virtuosity of his storytelling, he brings to readers one of his most gripping and richly imagined novels to date—an intoxicating story of adventure and suspense, mystery and revelation, told with humor, heart, and high art. **One Door Away From Heaven**In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong contemplates the choices she has made. At twenty-eight, she wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can’t find her way—until a new family settles into the rental trailer next door and she meets the young girl who will lead her on a remarkable quest that will change Micky herself and everything she knows—or thinks she knows—forever. Despite the brace she must wear on her deformed left leg, and her withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani’s effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express.Leilani’s mother is little more than a child herself. And the girl’s stepfather, Preston Maddoc, is educated but threatening. He has moved the family from place to place as he fanatically investigates UFO sightings, striving to make contact, claiming to have had a vision that by Leilani’s tenth birthday aliens will either heal her or take her away to a better life on their world.Slowly, ever more troubling details emerge in Leilani’s conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky’s discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now “gone to the stars.”Leilani’s tenth birthday is approaching. Micky is convinced the girl will be dead by that day. While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. Micky sets out across America to track and find them, alone and afraid but for the first time living for something bigger than herself.She finds herself pitted against an adversary, Preston Maddoc, as fearsome as he is cunning. The passion and disregard for danger with which Micky pursues her quest bring to her side a burned-out detective who joins her on a journey of incredible peril and startling discoveries, a journey through terrible darkness to unexpected light. **One Door Away From Heaven** is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have readers cheering. Filled with tragedy and joy, with terror and hope, it solidifies Dean Koontz’s reputation as one of the foremost storytellers of our time. This is Dean Koontz at his very best—and it doesn’t get any better than that.*From the Hardcover edition.*


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**His birth was marked by wonder and tragedy.He sees beauty and terror beyond our deepest dreams.His story will change the way you see the world.**On the heels of his #1 bestseller **False Memory**, Dean Koontz brings together his most compelling themes and an unforgettable cast of characters to create what is perhaps the most thrilling and emotionally powerful work of his critically acclaimed career. Bartholomew Lampion is born on a day of tragedy and terror that will mark his family forever. All agree that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen. On this same day, a thousand miles away, a ruthless man learns that he has a mortal enemy named Bartholomew. He embarks on a relentless search to find this enemy, a search that will consume his life. And a girl is born from a brutal rape, her destiny mysteriously linked to Barty and the man who stalks him. At the age of three, Barty Lampion is blinded when surgeons remove his eyes to save him from a fast-spreading cancer. As he copes with his blindness and proves to be a prodigy, his mother counsels him that all things happen for a reason and that every person’s life has an effect on every other person’s, in often unknowable ways. At thirteen, Bartholomew regains his sight. How he regains it, why he regains it, and what happens as his amazing life unfolds and entwines with others results in a breathtaking journey of courage, heart-stopping suspense, and high adventure.


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>The runaway bestseller about the ultimate reality show The year is 2025. The Running Man is America's favorite television game show. Ben Richards is the program's latest contestant-and the Hunters' latest target in a rigged game of death...</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
There are no rules in the dark, no place to feel safe, no escape from the shadows. But to save the day, you must...Seize the Night.

At no time does Moonlight Bay look more beautiful than at night. Yet it is precisely then that the secluded little town reveals its menace. Now children are disappearing. From their homes. From the streets. And there's nothing their families can do about it. Because in Moonlight Bay, the police work their hardest to conceal crimes and silence victims. No matter what happens in the night, their job is to ensure that nothing disturbs the peace and quiet of Moonlight Bay....

Christopher Snow isn't afraid of the dark. Forced to live in the shadows because of a rare genetic disorder, he knows the night world better than anyone. He believes the lost children are still alive and that their disappearance is connected to the town's most carefully kept, most ominous secret—a secret only he can uncover, a secret that will force him to confront an adversary at one with the most dangerous darkness of all. The darkness inside the human heart.


text:
SUMMARY:
Kristen Kroiter was sixteen, a high-school sophomore injured in a car accident. Dr. Ted Cogan saved her life when he treated her in the ER six months ago -- but now the police are questioning Cogan about her. What's going on; What has she told them; The problem is Kristen didn't tell the cops anything. She's dead -- an apparent suicide. But her diary suggests that she and the good doctor were intimate -- which puts the good doctor in a heap of trouble. Tense and twisting, Knife Music is the story of a doctor struggling to clear his name after being accused of raping and causing the suicide of a young girl. Pitted against Cogan is handicapped veteran detective Hank Madden, who tries to suppress his prejudices while investigating the case of a 43-year-old self-described womanizer.


text:
<div><p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW:</p>
<p class="description">It's a fear more paralyzing than falling. More terrifying than absolute darkness. More horrifying than anything you can imagine. It's the one fear you cannot escape, no matter where you run...no matter where you hide.  It's the fear of yourself.  It's real.  It can happen to you.  And facing it can be deadly.False MemoryFear for your mind.</p></div>


text:
SUMMARY:
Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight Bay, different from anyone you've ever met. For Christopher Snow has made his peace with a very rare genetic disorder that leaves him dangerously vulnerable to light. His life is filled with the fascinating rituals of one who must embrace the dark. He knows the night as no one else can -- its mystery, its beauty, its terrors, and the eerie silken rhythms that seduce one into believing anything -- even freedom -- is possible.

Until the night Christopher Snow witnesses a series of disturbing incidents that sweep him into a violent mystery only he can solve, a mystery that will force him to rise above all fears and confront the many-layered secrets of Moonlight Bay and its strange inhabitants. A place, like all places, that looks a lot different after dark.


If you think you've got it tough, meet Christopher Snow, the hero of Dean Koontz's novel Fear Nothing. Not only did his parents die under mysterious circumstances, but he's also being stalked by shadowy characters who want Snow to stop trying to find out how they died--or else they'll bump off his remaining loved ones (his supersmart, beer-lapping dog Orson; his best surfing buddy Bobby; and his late-night deejay girlfriend Sasha). And as if being on the lam in his own hometown, Moonlight Bay, California, isn't bad enough, Snow has to outrun his pursuers without leaving town. He has XP--xeroderma pigmentosum--a rare genetic affliction that forces him to avoid light. Cumulative exposure to sun, fluorescent lights, and the like will give him cancer eventually, and he doesn't dare leave the place where he's skillfully "done the mambo with melanoma" for all of his 28 years. Koontz makes the night-town of Moonlight Bay come alive in this sometimes pulse-pounding, sometimes funny, but mostly rather lyrical thriller. Fans of Koontz's legendary 1986 novel Watchers will love this book's similar theme: our hero and a loveable super-dog deal with a genetic engineering laboratory run amok. Horror fans will savor the evil mutant rhesus "millennium monkeys" who hunt Snow, the few scenes of eloquent gore, and the plight of certain mutating townsfolk who are, as they put it, "becoming" something very creepy. 

Koontz gives Snow and Bobby a lingo that does for surfer talk what Austin Powers did for the Swinging '60s, and his metaphors are almost as madcap as Tom Robbins's: "As the chains of the swinging light fixture torqued, the links twisted against one another with enough friction to cause an eerie ringing, as if lizard-eyed altar boys in blood-soaked cassocks and surplices were ringing the unmelodious bells of a satanic mass." Sometimes Koontz's style goes over the top and wipes out, surfer-style, but for the most part, Fear Nothing will have readers bellowing "Cowabunga!" 


YA-Christopher Snow understands the night. He, like the owl, is nocturnal, living on the mysterious darker edge of society. Snow is afflicted with xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare and often-fatal genetic disease that makes ultraviolet rays-even those from lamps and televisions-deadly. His condition makes him a pariah in the isolated small town of Moonlight Bay where the ignorant and insensitive fear what they do not know. As the action begins, Snow's father dies, leaving him with only a handful of offbeat but fiercely loyal friends to turn to for understanding. At the morgue, Snow accidentally witnesses his father's body being replaced with the mutilated corpse of a vagrant. Before he can find out what is behind this scandal, he receives a frantic summons from a friend who is brutally murdered before she can finish explaining a strange story about monkeys and a secret project at the government compound at the edge of town. What begins as a disturbing puzzle quickly becomes a sinister conspiracy as Snow uncovers evidence of uncanny intelligence in many of the local animals and inhumanely vicious tendencies in some of the human residents of the Bay. They are "becoming" he learns, but becoming what? Chilling chase scenes steadily increase the breakneck pace as Snow, assisted by his remarkable dog, is pursued through the night by unseen forces. Despite some clunky and unnecessary surfer slang, fans will go wild for this well-plotted thriller.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Robin Deffendall, Prince William Public Library System, VA


Bantam brags that it is launching the biggest Koontz campaign ever with this thriller, whose protagonist lives by night (he has a genetic order that makes him highly sensitive to light) until he witnesses a murder.

  
length: (cm)17.8    　　　            　　　　　            　　　　　 width:(cm)10.7


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered the mysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: *phi*, or 1.6180339887...This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio," was discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties had been attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to the shape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted that the creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to feature in works of art from Leonardo da Vinci's *Mona Lisa *to Salvador Dali's *The Sacrament of the Last Supper*, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has even been found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market!*The Golden Ratio* is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physics and mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, including the followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand of God; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry; such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such masters of the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger Penrose.  Wherever his quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a place where order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.*From the Hardcover edition.*


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?**



 Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In *From Eternity to Here*, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions *before* the Big Bang itself-a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net.



 *From Eternity to Here* uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like *Elegant Universe* and *A Brief History of Time*.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact**



In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design," there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned-the *evidence*, the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studies, have not focused on the evidence itself. Yet the proof is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of science. Scientists are observing species splitting into two and are finding more and more fossils capturing change in the past-dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs.



 *Why Evolution Is True* weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the "indelible stamp" of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, *Why Evolution Is True* dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Bestselling author T. R. Reid guides a whirlwind tour of successful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible paths toward U.S. reform.**



 In *The Healing of America, New York Times* bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can't seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost.



 In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada-where he finds inspiration in example. Reid shares evidence from doctors, government officials, health care experts, and patients the world over, finding that foreign health care systems give everybody quality care at an affordable cost. And that dreaded monster "socialized medicine" turns out to be a myth. Many developed countries provide universal coverage with private doctors, private hospitals, and private insurance.



 In addition to long-established systems, Reid also studies countries that have carried out major health care reform. The first question facing these countries-and the United States, for that matter-is an ethical issue: Is health care a human right? Most countries have already answered with a resolute yes, leaving the United States in the murky moral backwater with nations we typically think of as far less just than our own.



 *The Healing of America* lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate. Reid sees problems elsewhere, too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain, spartan facilities in France. Still, all the other rich countries operate at a lower cost, produce better health statistics, and cover everybody. In the end, *The Healing of America* is a good news book: It finds models around the world that Americans can borrow to guarantee health care for everybody who needs it.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**An accessible look at the hottest topic in physics and the experiments that will transform our understanding of the universe**    

    The biggest news in science today is the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle-smasher, and the anticipation of finally discovering the Higgs boson particle. But what is the Higgs boson and why is it often referred to as the God Particle? Why are the Higgs and the LHC so important? Getting a handle on the science behind the LHC can be difficult for anyone without an advanced degree in particle physics, but you don't need to go back to school to learn about it. In *Collider*, award-winning physicist Paul Halpern provides you with the tools you need to understand what the LHC is and what it hopes to discover.            Comprehensive, accessible guide to the theory, history, and science behind experimental high-energy physics      Explains why particle physics could well be on the verge of some of its greatest breakthroughs, changing what we think we know about quarks, string theory, dark matter, dark energy, and the fundamentals of modern physics      Tells you why the theoretical Higgs boson is often referred to as the God particle and how its discovery could change our understanding of the universe      Clearly explains why fears that the LHC could create a miniature black hole that could swallow up the Earth amount to a tempest in a very tiny teapot      "Best of 2009 Sci-Tech Books (Physics)"*-Library Journal*      "Halpern makes the search for mysterious particles pertinent and exciting by explaining clearly what we don't know about the universe, and offering a hopeful outlook for future research."-*Publishers Weekly*      Includes a new author preface, "The Fate of the Large Hadron Collider and the Future of High-Energy Physics"          

    The world will not come to an end any time soon, but we may learn a lot more about it in the blink of an eye. Read *Collider* and find out what, when, and how.


text:
SUMMARY:
A catastrophic, unexplainable plane crash leaves three hundred and thirty dead -- no survivors. Among the victims are the wife and two daughters of Joe Carpenter, a Los Angeles Post crime reporter.A year after the crash, still gripped by an almost paralyzing grief, Joe encounters a woman named Rose, who claims to have survived the crash. She holds out the possibility of a secret that will bring Joe peace of mind. But before he can ask any questions, she slips away.Driven now by rage (have the authorities withheld information?) and a hope almost as unbearable as his grief (if there is one survivor, are there others?), Joe sets out to find the mysterious woman. His search immediately leads him into the path of a powerful and shadowy organization hell-bent on stopping Rose before she can reveal what she knows about the crash.Sole Survivor unfolds at a heart-stopping pace, as a desperate chase and a shattering emotional odyssey lead Joe to a truth that will force him to reassess everything he thought he knew about life and death -- a truth that, given the chance, will rock the world and redefine the destiny of humanity.From the Trade Paperback edition.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Now with a new afterword by the #1 *NEW YORK TIMES* BESTSELLING AUTHOR... And a brand-new package.**



 In the privacy of her own home, and against her will, Susan Harris will experience an inconceivable act of terror. She will become the object of the ultimate computer's consuming obsession: to learn everything there is to know about human flesh.


text:
<div><p class="description">EDITORIAL REVIEW:</p>
<p class="description">Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist, living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. It's a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.  That night, Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the doll's heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phan's reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he can't destroy. It wants Tommy's life and he doesn't know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chance--or by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommy's computer screen: The deadline is dawn.**Ticktock**Time is running out.</p></div>


text:
SUMMARY:
Past midnight, Chyna Shepherd, twenty- six, gazed out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend's family.  Instinct proves reliable.  A murderous sociopath, Edgler Forman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside.  A self-proclaimed "homicidal adventure," Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immense himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with intensity.  Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.

Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect.  Now she will be tested as never before.  At first her sole aim is to get out alive-until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess's next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save.  Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl—as moment by moment, the terrifying threat Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.


text:
SUMMARY:
Garnering comparisons to Anne Rivers Siddons and Pat Conroy, Patti Callahan Henry has woven her lyrical Southern voice throughout the Lowcountry landscape. Now, as two women from opposite sides of the same sea meet, a tale unfolds that will draw readers into the heart's remembrances-and the tender awakenings of first love. 

 Though bogged down in the stress of planning her elaborate wedding to a professional golfer, twenty-seven-year-old Kara Larson still makes time to visit ninety-six-year-old Maeve Mahoney at her nursing home. And as Maeve recounts the rambling story of her first love back in Ireland, Kara is driven to remember her own first love: childhood neighbor Jack Sullivan.


text:
SUMMARY:
One of the most popular and prolific writers of our time, Dean Koontz has penned many classic New York Times bestsellers, but nothing quite like this. STRANGE HIGHWAYS is Koontz's  spellbinding  collection of tales interconnected by the strange highways of human experience-the adventures, terrors, failures, and  triumphs encountered on the roads that are chosen, and on those detoured by fate. As profound as it is mesmerizing, STRANGE HIGHWAYS is a remarkable achievement.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as *Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, *and* Oblivion* for, literally, days. If you are reading this flap copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know. Until recently, Bissell was somewhat reluctant to admit to his passion for games. In this, he is not alone. Millions of adults spend hours every week playing video games, and the industry itself now reliably outearns Hollywood. But the wider culture seems to regard video games as, at best, well designed if mindless entertainment. *Extra Lives* is an impassioned defense of this assailed and misunderstood art form. Bissell argues that we are in a golden age of gaming—but he also believes games could be even better. He offers a fascinating and often hilarious critique of the ways video games dazzle and, just as often, frustrate. Along the way, we get firsthand portraits of some of the best minds (Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking, Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux) at work in video game design today, as well as a shattering and deeply moving final chapter that describes, in searing detail, Bissell’s descent into the world of *Grand Theft Auto IV*, a game whose themes mirror his own increasingly self-destructive compulsions. Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, *Extra Lives* is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, *Extra Lives* is required reading.


text:
SUMMARY:
A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, What is wrong with me? They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it on some level, restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer. A healthy young man suddenly loses his memory, making him unable to remember the events of each passing hour. Two patients diagnosed with Lyme disease improve after antibiotic treatment, only to have their symptoms mysteriously return. A young woman lies dying in the ICU, bleeding, jaundiced, incoherent, and none of her doctors know what is killing her. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving these and other diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in human history have doctors had the knowledge, the tools, and the skills that they have today to diagnose illness and disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows us that knowledge, while essential, is not sufficient to unravel the complexities of illness. She presents an unflinching look inside the detective story that marks nearly every illness, the diagnosis, revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting patients who are sick or dying. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders portrays the absolute necessity and surprising difficulties of getting the patient's story, the challenges of the physical exam, the pitfalls of doctor-to-doctor communication, the vagaries of tests, and the near calamity of diagnostic errors. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Sanders chronicles the real-life drama of doctors solving these difficult medical mysteries that not only illustrate the art and science of diagnosis, but often save the patients' lives.


text:
This collection of (surprise!) six stories was a trade paperback published in a limited number (1000) by King's own Philtrum Press. The stories are:
"Lunch at the Gotham Cafe"
"L.T.'s Theory of Pets" 
"Luckey Quarter"
"Autopsy Room Four" 
"Blind Willie" 
"The Man in the Black Suit"


text:
SUMMARY:
More than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: •How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:•More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point•Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal•How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times•The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either


text:
SUMMARY:
A gripping new series combines Steampunk, spying, and a fantastic Victorian London.The mysterious Mr. Socrates rescues Modo, a child in a traveling freak show. Modo is a hunchback with an amazing ability to transform his appearance, and Mr. Socrates raises him in isolation as an agent for the Permanent Association, a spy agency behind Brittania’s efforts to rule the empire. At 14, Modo is left on the streets of London to fend for himself. When he encounters Octavia Milkweed, another Association agent, the two uncover a plot by the Clockword Guild behind the murders of important men. Furthermore, a mad scientist is turning orphan children into automatons to further the goals of the Guild. Modo and Octavia journey deep into the tunnels under London and discover a terrifying plot against the British government. It’s up to them to save their country.


text:
ULLSAARD HAS CONQUERED THE KNOWN WORLD. 

All have fallen before his armies.

Now it's time to take the long journey home, back to the revered heart of the great Empire he had helped create for his distant masters. But when he returns to the capital, life there is so very different from what he had believed. Could it be that everything he has fought for, has conquered and killed for, has been a lie?


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

'You've never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?' said Ron incredulously. 'You're kidding, right?' (From Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)  Published by the charity Lumos in association with Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is the first new book from J. K. Rowling since the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The Tales of Beedle the Bard played a crucial role in assisting Harry, with his friends Ron and Hermione, to finally defeat Lord Voldemort. Fans will be thrilled to have this opportunity to read the tales in full. An exciting addition to the canon of Harry Potter, the tales reveal the wonderful versatility of the author, as she tackles with relish the structure and varying tones of a classic fairy tale. There are five tales: 'The Tale of the Three Brothers', recounted in Deathly Hallows, plus 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune', 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart', 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot', and 'Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump'. Each has its own magical character and will bring delight, laughter and the thrill of mortal peril.  Translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, the tales are introduced and illustrated by J. K. Rowling. Also included are notes by Professor Albus Dumbledore, which appear by kind permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters' Archive.  Lumos is a charity founded by J. K. Rowling which aims to make life better for disadvantaged children.  Registered Charity Number: 1112575.


text:
SUMMARY:
Presents facsimile editions of two books from the world of Harry Potter--the text for Hogwarts' Care of Magical Creatures class and a book on the origins and development of the wizarding game of Quidditch.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Bakha is a young man, proud and even attractive, yet none the less he is an outcast in India's caste system: an Untouchable. In deceptively simple prose this groundbreaking novel describes a day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, as he searches for a meaning to the tragic existence he has been born into - and comes to an unexpected conclusion. Mulk Raj Anand poured a vitality, fire and richness of detail into his controversial work, which led him to be acclaimed as his country's Charles Dickens and one of the twentieth century's most important Indian writers.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Percentile is destiny in America.”So says Walter Kirn, a peerless observer and interpreter of American life, in this whip-smart memoir of his own long strange trip through American education. Working his way up the ladder of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and class rankings, Kirn launched himself eastward from his rural Minnesota hometown to the ivy-covered campus of Princeton University. There he found himself not in a temple of higher learning so much as an arena for gamesmanship, snobbery, social climbing, ass-kissing, and recreational drug use, where the point of literature classes was to mirror the instructor's critical theories and actual reading of the books under consideration was optional. Just on the other side of the “bell curve's leading edge” loomed a complete psychic collapse.LOST IN THE MERITOCRACY* *reckons up the costs of a system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within. It's a remarkable book that suggests the first step toward intellectual fulfillment is getting off the treadmill that is the American meritocracy. Every American who has spent years of his or her life there will experience many shocks of recognition while reading Walter Kirn’s sharp, rueful, and often funny book—and likely a sense of liberation at its end.


text:
SUMMARY:
Acclaimed authors Holly Black (Ironside)and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) have united in geekdom to edit short stories from some of the best selling and most promising geeks in young adult literature: M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr.With illustrated interstitials from comic book artists Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley, Geektastic covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you're a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic will help you get your geek on!


text:
SUMMARY:
James Herbert transcends the horror medium with '48, a blistering tale of post-World War II London overrun with fear and blood. Delivering not only terrifying imagery, but pulse-pounding action and historical adventure, it is destined to become a classic.It is a London Too Terrifying to Imagine. Already crippled by the relentless Nazi bombing, this once-beautiful city has been depopulated by a hideous blood plague unleashed in the final convulsive collapse of the German regime. Now, human vampires wander the rubble-strewn streets, desperately searching for the only thing that can cure them...But not all survivors have been afflicted, and Hoke -- a lone hero accompanied only by his trusty dog and bitter memories -- is relentlessly pursued for the clean blood that courses through his veins. Yet his flight soon takes on a different meaning as he saves two women and a former German soldier. Banding together, they flee into the city's underground tunnels where an unexpected betrayal that delivers them right into the hands of their deadly adversaries prompts Hoke to take a stand against these monsters once and for all."With '48, James Herbert delivers another triumphant thriller that blends two-fisted action with the supernatural". -- Douglas E. Winter


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**"A superbly creepy, twisty thriller about obsessive love, psychological torture, and the darkest chambers of the human heart." 

 -*The Times* (UK) ** 



 Naomi Jenkins knows all about secrets: three years ago something so terrible happened to her that she's never told anyone about it. Now, Naomi has another secret: her relationship with the unhappily married Robert Haworth. When Robert vanishes without explanation, Naomi knows he must have come to harm. But the police are less convinced, particularly when Robert's wife insists he is not missing. In desperation, Naomi decides that if she can't persuade the detectives that Robert is in danger, she'll convince them that he is a danger to others. Naomi knows how to describe the actions of a psychopath; all she needs to do is dig up her own traumatic past.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Sometimes it takes a leap of faith in order to soar . . .    

A gifted teacher, Lily Robinson adores her students, but fiercely guards her independent lifestyle. Deep inside, she is afraid of loving too deeply for fear of getting hurt. Only her best friend, Crystal, has ever been able to get close. Now an unthinkable tragedy has drawn Lily into the shattered lives of Crystal's family -- a family that suddenly needs her.    

Sean McGuire is a rolling stone used to living in the shadow of his famous brother, Derek. He's made his own way in life, playing by his own rules. Then one April night everything changes when a fatal car crash orphans Derek and Crystal's three children. In an instant, Sean finds himself in the role of guardian.    

Sean and Lily are brought together by tragedy, joined in their grief and their mutual love for these children. But raising three kids is a monumental job, and Sean realizes he's in over his head. And though Lily has been the unofficial aunt to these children since they were born, planting emotional roots means taking risks -- and Lily's not sure she can.    

The ups and downs of love and family life can be a roller-coaster ride -- thrilling, unpredictable and downright terrifying, yet filled with incredible delight. and Sean and Lily are about to discover the possibilities that make everything seem worthwhile -- a future filled with hope, happiness and the certainty that trusting love is the best choice of all.    

Susan Wiggs is the acclaimed, bestselling author of many poignant, unforgettable novels, including *Summer by the Sea*, *The Ocean Between Us* and *Home Before Dark*. she lives with her husband and daughter on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where she is currently at work on her next novel.


text:
SUMMARY:
In 1978, the first group of space shuttle astronauts was introduced to the world -- twenty-nine men and six women who would carry NASA through the most tumultuous years of the space shuttle program. Among them was USAF Colonel Mike Mullane, who, in his memoir Riding Rockets, strips the heroic veneer from the astronaut corps and paints them as they are -- human.Mullane's tales of arrested development among military flyboys working with feminist pioneers and post-doc scientists are sometimes bawdy, often comical, and always entertaining. He vividly portrays every aspect of the astronaut experience, from telling a female technician which urine-collection condom size is a fit to hearing "Taps" played over a friend's grave. He is also brutally honest in his criticism of a NASA leadership whose bungling would precipitate the Challenger disaster -- killing four members of his group. A hilarious, heartfelt story of life in all its fateful uncertainty, Riding Rockets will resonate long after the call of "Wheel stop."


text:
SUMMARY:
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters.It begins with a murder.And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself.Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture.Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality.It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether. SURFACE DETAIL is Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction.


text:
SUMMARY:
The prizewinning author of The Outcast delivers the emotionally searing story of a marriage in crisis, an unflinching look at lives irrevocably altered by one of history's ""small wars."" Hal Treherne is a major in the British Army, a young and dedicated soldier on the brink of a brilliant career. When he is transferred to the British colony of Cyprus in 1956, Hal is joined by Clara, his beautiful and supportive wife, and their baby daughters. The Trehernes quickly learn that the Mediterranean is no ""sunshine posting,"" however, and soon Hal is caught up in the battle to defend the island against Cypriots seeking enosis, union with Greece. Leading his men in difficult and bloody skirmishes, after years of peaceful service, Hal at last tastes triumph. But his confidence and pride quickly fade: traumatized by the brutality he witnesses-and thwarted again in his attempts to do the right thing-Hal finds himself well trained in duty but ill equipped for moral battle. A seasoned army wife, Clara shares her husband's sense of obligation. She knows to settle in quickly, make no fuss, smile. But as she struggles to trust her own maternal instincts and resist the anxiety that surges with Hal's frequent absences, Clara grows fearful of her increasingly distant husband. When she needs him most, Clara finds the once-tender Hal a changed man-a betrayal that is only part of the shocking personal crisis to come. What place is there for honor amid cruelty, and what becomes of intimacy in the grinding gears of empire? A passionate and brilliantly researched novel about the effects of war on the men who wage it and the families they leave behind, Small Wars raises important questions that resonate for our own time.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

“CARRION COMFORT is one of the three greatest horror novels of the 20th century. Simple as that.” --**Stephen King**



"Epic in scale and scope but intimately disturbing, CARRION COMFORT spans the ages to rewrite history and tug at the very fabric of reality. A nightmarish chronicle of predator and prey that will shatter your world view forever.  A true classic." --**Guillermo del Toro**

"CARRION COMFORT* *is one of the scariest books ever written.  Whenever I get the question asked *Who's your favorite author? *my answer is always Dan Simmons." --**James Rollins**

"One of the few major reinventions of the vampire concept, on a par with Jack Finney’s *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*, Richard Matheson’s *I Am Legend*, and Stephen King’s *Salem’s Lot*. --**David Morrell**

THE PAST...  Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp.  Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves…

THE PRESENT...  Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of 20th century history to reveal a secret society of beings who may often exist behind the world's most horrible and violent events.  Killing from a distance, and by darkly manipulative proxy, they are people with the psychic ability to 'use' humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, feed off their emotions, force them to acts of unspeakable aggression.  Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their ongoing campaign of induced bloodshed and deliberate destruction.  But this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Saul’s quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind’s attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself…


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north.  But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky.  There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king.  But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had.  As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably together.


text:
SUMMARY:
When Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography, spending all her free time at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers a deeply hidden secret–a story that leads her far from her old life, and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her. 

In a tale that travels between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century, between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian has written his most extraordinary novel yet.


text:
SUMMARY:
#1New York Timesbestselling author Vince Flynn returns with yet another explosive thriller, introducing the young Mitch Rapp, as he takes on his first assignment.Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terroristrs"s worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world . . . and then tragedy struck.Two decades of cutthroat, partisan politics has left the CIA and the country in an increasingly vulnerable position. Cold War veteran and CIA Operations Director Thomas Stansfield knows he must prepare his people for the next war. The rise of Islamic terrorism is coming, and it needs to be met abroad before it reaches America's shores. Stansfield directs his protEacute;Eacute;, Irene Kennedy, and his old Cold War colleague, Stan Hurley, to form a new group of clandestine operatives who will work outside the normal chain of command-men who do not exist. What type of man is willing to kill for his country without putting on a uniform? Kennedy finds him in the wake of the Pan Am Lockerbie terrorist attack. Two-hundred and seventy souls perished that cold December night, and thousands of family and friends were left searching for comfort. Mitch Rapp was one of them, but he was not interested in comfort. He wanted retribution.Six months of intense training has prepared him to bring the war to the enemy's doorstep, and he does so with brutal efficiency. Rapp starts in Istanbul, where he assassinates the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the Pan Am attack. Rapp then moves onto Hamburg with his team and across Europe, leaving a trail of bodies. All roads lead to Beirut, though, and what Rapp doesnrs"t know is that the enemy is aware of his existence and has prepared a trap. The hunter is about to become the hunted, and Rapp will need every ounce of skill and cunning if he is to survive the war-ravaged city and its various terrorist factions.As action-packed, fast-paced, and brutally realistic as it gets, Flynn's latest page-turner shows readers how it all began. Behind then; steely gazen of the nation's ultimate hero is a young man primed to become an American Assassin.


text:
SUMMARY:
Sara Douglass has won leagues of fans worldwide for her epic tales of sorcery, forbidden love, and heart-pounding action. She revealed her biggest story yet with the DarkGlass Mountain saga, and now, at last, the dramatic finale to the epic trilogy!  Tencendor is no more. The land is gone. But a few SunSoars still remain, and a new foe walks the world.  Ishbel Brunelle, priestess of the Serpent Coil, and Maximilian, the Lord of Elcho Falling, have raised the magic of Elcho Falling, and found new allies against the darkness in the mysterious Lealfast. And more crucially still, Axis SunSoar, former god and current hero, has rediscovered the magical Star Dance and revived his legendary Strike Force to push back the evil hordes commanded by the DarkGlass Mountain.  But their enemy grows stronger through blood and betrayal, the Lealfast have their own agenda, and when unexpected treachery threatens, Axis SunSoar must face a darkness greater than any he has ever known.


text:
SUMMARY:
A fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realismThe world is only half made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared—the Red Republic that once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they’re just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope. To the west lies a vast, uncharted world, inhabited only by the legends of the immortal and powerful Hill People, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to the edge of themade world to a spiritually protected mental institution in order to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, a man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.


text:
SUMMARY:
For centuries, emperors, historians, and even the Vatican have tried to locate Ivan the Terrible’s magnificent Library of Gold — a long-missing archive containing gold-covered, bejeweled books dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks.  Now one of the volumes, The Book of Spies, has surfaced, and along with it the highly secret book club that owns the Library of Gold.  They form a cabal of the globe’s most powerful men – men who will do anything to achieve their aims and protect their interests.  When the CIA discovers a connection between the legendary library and a bank account linked to terrorists, they turn to rare books curator Eva Blake for help.  Soon an attempt is made on Eva’s life. Determined not only to survive but to uncover the truth, Eva turns to the only person she can trust—Judd Ryder, a former intelligence agent with his own agenda and a troubled past.  Together, Judd and Eva embark on an international adventure from London to Rome, Istanbul, and Athens.  Somehow they must do what no one else has been able to do – find the library and stay alive.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**A car crashes in Wyoming:** A young mother is thrown clear of the devastating car crash. Dazed, she sees a figure pull her infant son from the flames. Or does she? The police believe it's a case of trauma playing cruel tricks on the mind, until the night the grief-stricken woman hears a voice through the phone: "Your baby is alive."

**A bomb explodes in a Rio de Janeiro café:** The heinous act kills ten people, including two journalists with the World Press Alliance news agency. Jack Gannon's first international assignment is to find out whether his colleagues were innocent victims or targets who got too close to a huge story.

**A Caribbean cruise ends in horror:** Doctors are desperate to identify the mysterious cause of a cruise ship passenger's agonizing death. They turn to the world's top scientists, who fear that someone has resurrected their long-buried secret research. Research that is now being used as a deadly weapon.

With millions of lives at stake, experts work frantically against time. And as an anguished mother searches for her child and Jack Gannon pursues the truth, an unstoppable force hurls them all into the panic zone.


text:
SUMMARY:
Tracy Waterhouse leads a quiet, ordered life as a retired police detective-a life that takes a surprising turn when she encounters Kelly Cross, a habitual offender, dragging a young child through town. Both appear miserable and better off without each other-or so decides Tracy, in a snap decision that surprises herself as much as Kelly. Suddenly burdened with a small child, Tracy soon learns her parental inexperience is actually the least of her problems, as much larger ones loom for her and her young charge. Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, the beloved detective of novels such as Case Histories , is embarking on a different sort of rescue-that of an abused dog. Dog in tow, Jackson is about to learn, along with Tracy, that no good deed goes unpunished.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

***“Smart, scathing, and verbally inventive to an astonishing degree, David J. Schow is one of the most interesting writers of his generation.”—Peter Straub 



***“Inter-what?” When advertising executive Conrad Maddox returns from a redeye flight and finds a mysterious locker key waiting in his rental car, he discovers a briefcase loaded with guns and money. Several hours later, his entire life tumbles down a rabbit hole when he meets Dandine, owner of the case and former contract assassin for a shadowy organization called Norco, which is now out to nail both of them. 

“Internecine” means conflict, mutual destruction, and slaughter—or, as Dandine tells Conrad, they are now inadvertently at play in a field of “terrorism, counter-assassination, military coups, dirty tricks, Watergate, spy vs. spy, murky secret organizations, that sort of thing.” A world in which being innocent can’t save you, the police can’t help you, and your only hope of getting out alive is to risk unheard-of dangers against opponents with nearly unlimited power. To free themselves from the spider web of black ops, murder, madness and betrayal, Dandine and Conrad must delve ever-deeper into the spiraling, dangerous maze that is Norco, where everyone seems to be in on the most lethal of games…except you.


text:
SUMMARY:
You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd 'literary remains' and 'unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author.   Here, for the first time in book form, are twenty-four remarkable pieces by the American master—pieces that have been handpicked by Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. In "Jane Austen," Twain wonders if Austen's goal is to "make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters." "The Privilege of the Grave" offers a powerful statement about the freedom of speech while "Happy Memories of the Dental Chair" will make you appreciate modern dentistry. In "Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture" Twain plasters the city with ads to promote his talk at the Cooper Union (he is terrified no one will attend). Later that day, Twain encounters two men gazing at one of his ads. One man says to the other: "Who is Mark Twain?" The other responds: "God knows—I don't."   Wickedly funny and disarmingly relevant, Who Is Mark Twain? shines a new light on one of America's most beloved literary icons—a man who was well ahead of his time.


text:
SUMMARY:
Before Kendi learned to use his talent of navigating the plane of mental existence known as the Dream, he had to escape his physical existence as a slave.


text:
SUMMARY:
The Dream......is a plateau of mental existence where people are able to communicate by the power of their thoughts alone.The Silent...These people -- known as the Silent -- find that the Dream is threatened by a powerful Silent capable of seizing control of other people's bodies against their will...and may be causing tremors within the Dream itself.The Risk...And if the "normals" learn of this, they will do anything to capture the Silent for use as a weapon -- and the Dream itself may be shattered forever...


text:
SUMMARY:
The third novel in Steven Harper's critically-acclaimed science fiction saga continues ... The telepathic communications net, known as "The Dream; ' has been shattered. And the majority of the Silent who used it are unable to reenter. But Kendi Weaver has more pressing concerns: finding the family that slavers tore from him more than a decade before...


text:
SUMMARY:
The Dream was a telepathic place of existence where a psychic race known as the Silent could twist the laws of reality. But a madman's lust for power has torn the Dream asunder. Now, only a handful of the Silent can enter it. Kendi Weaver is one of them. And it is up to him to protect it as political and personal enemies line up against him.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**The perfect title for the perfect beach read from the *New York Times* bestselling Author**



Jane Green is one of the preeminent authors of women’s fiction today, and with each new novel, her audience grows. Green’s avid and loyal fans follow her because she writes about the true-to-life dilemmas of women—and *The Beach House* will not disappoint.



 Known in Nantucket as the crazy woman who lives in the rambling house atop the bluff, Nan doesn’t care what people think. At sixty-five-years old, her husband died twenty years ago, her beauty has faded, and her family has flown. If her neighbors are away, why shouldn’t she skinny dip in their swimming pools and help herself to their flowers? But when she discovers the money she thought would last forever is dwindling and she could lose her beloved house, Nan knows she has to make drastic changes.



 So Nan takes out an ad: *Rooms to rent for the summer in a beautiful old Nantucket home with water views and direct access to the beach*. Slowly, people start moving into the house, filling it with noise, with laughter, and with tears. As the house comes alive again, Nan finds her family expanding. Her son comes home for the summer, and then an unexpected visitor turns all their lives upside-down.


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>'He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one...' Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czech always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results. &gt;Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment. It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you have less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses. And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30 pm, as Treslove, walking home, hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country, that he is attacked. And after this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change. The Finkler Questionis a scorching story of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.</p>


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Dear Readers,    

There are at   least five good reasons to Tip It! right now.          My daughter Kathy put out *   her*    memoir last year, which was real nice except for the controversial parts. And     it got to be a #1 *    New York     Times* bestseller. Congratulations,     Kathleen! But now it's my turn. I've written my own book. I have things to     say, too, without having to be all controversial like you were. Tip it!        People recognize me on the street a lot now     and come over, nicely, and say "Maggie, you remind me of my own mother." And     they say "Maggie, I love your show"--referring to *Kathy Griffin: My Life on     the D-List *as *    my     *show. Sometimes I correct them, I say,     "Oh, it's not     my     show." But sometimes . . . I don't correct     them. It's kind of fun being a star, isn't it? Tip it!        If you want to know a few things about my     daughter Kathleen that only a mother could know (How the heck did she get this     way? Did she always swear so much, for Chrissake?), you have come to the right     book. Tip it!         You know how a box of wine is never empty just     because the spigot seems to have run dry? (There's always a little more if you     just tip it!) This book is like that. There's so much in     it--never-before-published Griffin family photos!, a love story (me and my dear     departed husband Johnny), a whole guide to good living (including how to     survive on what's in your purse), and a lot of funny business in this book     from Kathleen (she made comments in this book; readers, I was not able to stop     her!). So take this book and Tip It!         And be sure to get the last drop out of     living. Isn't it nice that "Tip It" acts as a toast? I'm 90 years old, and I     think "Tip It!" even works pretty well as a motto for living to the fullest.     So, Tip It! today.      

Yours,    

Maggie Griffin    

A funny thing happened on the   way to Kathy Griffin's skyrocketing stardom. The more she told stories about her   mother, Maggie, in her stand-up act and on her Emmy-winning television show, *  Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,* the more popular her mother became.   (At the mere mention of Maggie, a stadium full of fans will cheer, "Tip It! Tip   It!")    

Shocked by Kathy,   exasperated by Kathy, grudgingly amused by Kathy, and at the end of the day,   always a loving mother to Kathy, Maggie Griffin has become the darling Gracie to   Kathy's George Burns, the wry Cher to Kathy's Sonny Bono, the spry, sweet   Roadrunner to Kathy's Wile E. Coyote.     

Maggie Griffin   grew up in Chicago, the youngest of sixteen children born to Irish immigrant   parents. She met Johnny, the love of her life, in Chicago, started dating him   after high school (while working at the Form Fit Bra factory in the returns   department), and they fell in love and married during the War. Together they   raised five children, the youngest a cutie named Kathleen, who never gave them a   moment's trouble throughout her childhood--though it's been payback time ever   since.     

As Kathy's comedy   career took off, more and more stories of Maggie magically worked their way into   Kathy's routines. And as a regular on *Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List,*   Maggie takes more guff from her daughter than any other mom on national   television. Well, after having her life put on comic display by the loudmouthed   redhead she fed, clothed, and cared for well into the comedian's adulthood,   Maggie finally has the floor, and she has some business to share with you.    

So get out your Franzia, stir up some Hamburger Helper, and dive into the world according to   Maggie.


text:
SUMMARY:
"An extraordinary and compelling meditation about the enduring need for loyalty, love and responsibility."-- Time

"A brilliant fable." -- Maureen Howard, front page, The New York Times Book Review

"Doris Lessing again presents herself as one of the most intelligent of all modern novelists." -- Philadelphia Bulletin

"The most fluid and suggestive of all her books."

-- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A short, easily read novel...part science fiction and part 19th-century realism, its effect is profoundly affecting and mystical... especially moving for those who have responded to Lessing's previous work." -- Houston Chronicle

"A major work, one that well proves her vigor, originality and importance as a novelist." -- Cleveland Free Press -- Review   

      
  "One of her profoundest visionary excursions." --Gail Godwin, Chicago Tribune Book World

"An extraordinary and compelling meditation about the enduring need for loyalty, love and responsibility." --Time

"A brilliant fable." --Maureen Howard, front page, The New York Times Book Review

"Doris Lessing again presents herself as one of the most intelligent of all modern novelists." --Philadelphia Bulletin

"The most fluid and suggestive of all her books." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"A short, easily read novel...part science fiction and part 19th-century realism, its effect is profoundly affecting and mystical... especially moving for those who have responded to Lessing's previous work." --Houston Chronicle

"A major work, one that well proves her vigor, originality and importance as a novelist." --Cleveland Free Press


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Federal authorities thought they were about to shut down the American activities of the lethal MS-13 gang for good. But when the star witness and the prosecuting attorney are murdered, the trial of the gang's leaders is in shambles. With legal avenues exhausted and an undercover agent missing deep within the deadly organization, the situation is critical.

Mack Bolan is called in to fight fire with fire. But MS-13's leaders have a plan to terrorize suburban America. In order to stop them, Bolan will have to follow their trail deep into the Salvadoran jungle, moving fast and striking hard. Using warrior skills honed in another distant land, the Executioner will show no mercy.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

A covert airdrop lands Mack Bolan inside the brutal northern Pakistan border territory. From deep within a terrorist cell an informant has leaked crucial information to Stony Man Farm. He knows the location of two of the highest-ranking members of al Qaeda. They are the most wanted men in the world, and they've spent years dodging American troops and plotting further attacks worldwide.

Now Bolan is in hostile territory on a mission to eliminate men who will stop at nothing in pursuit of vengeance. And he faces government troops determined to protect the terrorists. With time running out and the enemy closing in, the Executioner must do what no one else has--settle the score.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Infiltrating a Dutch human trafficking organization turns deadly when two undercover agents are tortured and shot. Protected by a complex infrastructure and ruthless lawyers, the businessmen behind the crime are untouchable under international law. But Mack Bolan isn't about to play by their rules.

Entering Holland alone, Bolan heads to Rotterdam where he is prepared to seek out his target and destroy the corrupt organization piece by piece. The leaders of the group think they are invincible, but with the lives of women and children at stake, they are about to learn what it's like to be hunted by the Executioner.


text:
SUMMARY:
What do you do if you're a failed music fanzine writer in your early thirties with a dead-end job, and the best moment of your life occurred when you went to your first Thieving Magpies gig as a teenager and suddenly you "belonged" in a way you never had before, and the worst moment of your life occurred about six years later when Lance Webster, the Magpies' lead singer, self-destructed on stage before your eyes--basically taking you with him--and just today you've discovered that Lance lives down the street from you? If you're Clive Beresford--the haplessly obsessed guy at the center of Tim Thornton's wildly comic and energetic debut novel--you get remarkably drunk and write and deliver a note to your idol (the contents of which you can't remember the next morning), which causes two very large bouncer types to appear at your door warning you to back off, which, in turn, causes you to hide your true identity when you do finally meet Lance, totally by accident (he's come a long way since the Magpies, but he is still LANCE F**CKING WEBSTER!) . . . none of which deters you from believing--really believing--that he could still save your life if only you could get that "earth-shattering exclusive" interview with him. With the story shifting between Clive's life-changing Magpies past and his frantic present, we get a headlong, boisterous coming-of-age (if-not-quite-growing-up) romp and a warmhearted, hilarious view of friendship, hero worship, and the full-blast power of music to help us become, at the very least, who we would like to think we are.


text:
SUMMARY:
Newly divorced, Andrew Stratton lives in his head and not with his heart. He teaches architectural theory but has never built a building. He writes about “The Anatomy of Livable Places”– communities where form and material are in harmony–but has no sense of where he belongs. He is capable of deep, tender emotions but is unable to express them. When his wife leaves him for another man and excoriates his cautious nature in the process, Andrew is like a house shaken off a faulty foundation. Sifting through the rubble, he must figure out what should be salvaged and what should be scrapped. Escaping from the predictable routine of his university life in Philadelphia, Andrew travels to England and channels his pain into a weeklong course on building stone walls. In the village of Boscastle, he discovers a magical landscape of dizzying cliffs, jagged coastline, lush valleys, and hills lined with stone hedges that have stood the test of time. At the Stone Academy, Andrew immerses himself in the grueling task of piecing together rock into intricate walls. Under the tutelage of his weathered instructor, he learns there is more to laying stone than hard labor. And he soon falls under the spell of Boscastle’s rhythms and quirks, which include a weekly sing-along, a museum devoted to witchcraft, and a colorful group of residents ranging from a precocious nine-year-old girl who communes with nature to an offbeat reverend who has been known to give referrals to the town witch.Moved by the warmth and connectedness of the village, Andrew begins to shed his sheltered self. But his willingness to open his heart is tested when he falls for Nicola Rhys-Jones, an American expatriate seeking to escape a history of abuse. Thorny, sarcastic, and sexy, Nicola is an artist who paints tranquility panels for hospitals. But her life before Boscastle has been anything but peaceful. As their verbal sparring veers into darker territory, Andrew grapples with his status in Boscastle. Is he just a tourist on holiday or does he now have a stake in the village that has welcomed him? Readers new to Will North’s work as well as fans of The Long Walk Home will be swept away by this bittersweet novel about love, loss, and the power of nature to alter our lives.From the Hardcover edition.


text:
SUMMARY:
Elizabeth has a new job at an unusual libraryA- a lending library of objects, not books. In a secret room in the basement lies the Grimm Collection. ThatA's where the librarians lock away powerful items straight out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales: seven-league boots, a table that produces a feast at the blink of an eye, Snow WhiteA's stepmotherA's sinister mirror that talks in riddles. When the magical objects start to disappear, Elizabeth embarks on a dangerous quest to catch the thief before she can be accused of the crimeA-or captured by the thief. Polly Shulman has created a contemporary fantasy with a fascinating setting and premise, starring an ordinary girl whose after-school job is far from ordinaryA- and leads to a world of excitement, romance and magical intrigue.


text:
SUMMARY:
Special Agent Kylie Donovan knows the evil that men do.  After her sister’s murder went unsolved, she decided to work undercover for the FBI. Now, posing as a college student, she hopes to track down an Internet predator who is murdering teenage girls.  Using herself as bait, Kylie is sure she can lure the killer out of the shadows…until her fascination with a drop-dead gorgeous cop threatens to blow her whole case.With a rock hard body and seductive smile, Lieutenant Perry Flynn is a hard man to ignore.  He makes it very clear that Kylie’s fierce attraction is mutual.  But Kylie can’t afford to let Perry cloud her judgment, especially when she begins to suspect that his dark obsession with the case runs deeper than it should.  Then, when disturbing new evidence points to a cop, Kylie wonders if her sinful thoughts about Perry have thrust her into the strong, sleek arms of a killer…


text:
SUMMARY:
Monique Vicknair has a secret-- she's a medium, dedicated to helping spirits cross to the other side. Unfortunately, she's been so busy, she hasn't taken care of her "own" earthly needs. And it's been a long, "long" time. So when she meets recently deceased-but oh-so-sexy-Ryan Chappelle, she's more than ready for a fling. Even if it is with a ghost! Ryan is no stranger to the pleasures of a woman's body, and his death hasn't changed that. But he's never wanted anyone the way he wants Monique. So he's refusing to leave this world until he makes love to her. And if he has to break all the laws of heaven and earth to do it, he will. "Again and again and again... ."


text:
SUMMARY:
Police officer Eden Rutherford has only one weakness-- bad boy Ben Wilder. With just one wicked glance, he could make her lose control, lose her heart... and lose her panties. Too bad he took all three with him when he hightailed it out of town three years ago. Now Ben's back, and Eden's bracing herself. First, for his assault on her libido. And second, for his reaction to BennettWildersucks.com, the Web site she and Ben's other ex-girlfriends put together to humiliate him. Only, one woman's going too far... . Now Eden has to deal with a stalker and her overwhelming lust. She needs to get Ben out of her system, for good this time! And offering Ben her protection might just be the way to do it... .


text:
SUMMARY:
There's not a man Rachel Westover can't tame. Or at least transform from a sloppy, sports-loving, self-absorbed male into the perfect mate. Then she meets Garret Kelly, aka The Wild Man. Talk about a challenge-- in a gorgeous package, no less. Can her behavior-modification techniques take on a guy this set in his rumpled-- and surprisingly irresistible-- ways? Rachel's hormones, er, "ambitions," are jumping at the chance. If she succeeds in domesticating Garret, she gets her own TV show. If she fails... Well, failure isn't an option. Sure, he's more resistant than she expected. And withholding pleasure as punishment affects "her" so much, she's abandoned that strategy. But she's determined one of them is going to their knees. She just hopes it isn't her!


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Sex didn't scare her** 

Despite the success of her sultry Red Choo sex blog, it would take serious buzz to put Mercedes Brooks's first book of erotic fantasies on the bestseller list. And that meant agreeing to another showdown with her nemesis, the super-sexy TV pundit Sam Porter. 

**This thing beyond seduction did.** 

This time, though, the on-air innuendos were just a dress rehearsal. What happened later between the sheets was actually the main event. If the tabloids got wind of their night together, Sam's career would self-destruct. But the real shocker was that even with a prime-time scandal hanging over their heads, one night was not enough!


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**Wicked**

Audra Walker's old crowd thought she'd turned her back on them and what they liked best-namely hot sex and available men. But they were so wrong….

**Wanton**

And Audra was in the mood to prove it. How? By taking their dare. The challenge? To seduce the very next man through the club door—regardless of who he was…

**Wanted**

What the classy chick at the bar saw in his suspect was anybody's guess. But undercover cop Jesse Martinez would make it his business to find out. Because no guy—unless he was dead from the neck down—would miss the chance to investigate the curvy brunette, too….


text:
SUMMARY:
Working in Hollywood is always about getting to the top. Or "on" top, as feisty producer Claudia Dostis prefers. But when she contends with her outrageously sexy adversary, Leandro Mandalor, the stakes change. Her charming opponent is definitely up to Claudia's challenge. He convinces her they must come together-- in the office "and" in the bedroom. Suddenly getting on top has a whole new meaning... and leads to a new level of sensual satisfaction. But can Claudia let go of her need to succeed long enough to allow someone else to win?


text:
SUMMARY:
Babette Robinson changes careers and lovers as easily as she changes hairstyles. But after losing her last job, she's beginning to see that her feather-to-the-wind mentality can be unsatisfying in the long run. She's been helping a string of friends solve their relationship problems, and when one pal points out to Babette that she could make a career out of curing people's romantic ills, she decides to dub herself "The Love Doctor" -- a match-mender-for-hire. Living in Birmingham, Alabama, with its elite class of wealthy women, Babette has access to the ideal clientele, including the well-known Birmingham socialite Kitty Carelle. Having unceremoniously dumped her lover, Kitty now regrets her hasty decision and wants him back. Trouble is, the man Kitty seeks to recapture is none other than Jeff Eubanks -- Babette's ex! The carefree Babette of three years ago had written him off with a shrug, yet now she can't help remembering that he did give her the absolute best sex of her life...not to mention his charm, good looks, and brains. To save her newfound career and prove she can stick with something--if not someone--Babette is determined to mend Kitty and Jeff's broken relationship, but Jeff has other plans. He was crazy about Babette when she suddenly bailed on their relationship, and after Kitty did the same he became convinced that no woman can ever commit. To prove his point, Jeff issues Babette a challenge: no flirting for a week, and he'll talk to Kitty. That is, if, after seven tempting nights on the beach with Jeff, it's still with Kitty that she wants him to reconcile.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

She's not alive. She's not dead. She's somewhere in between And medium Dax Vicknair wants her desperately! When Dax first met and fell madly in love with teacher Celeste Beauchamp, he knew the attraction was hopeless. But his connection with Celeste was so intense so sexually charged, he couldn't resist. Their relationship was short, sweet and temporary. Or so he thought...  

Now Celeste is suddenly back and she's doing everything she can to stay with Dax as long as possible. She's waited for him, for his touch, her whole life. And nothing, not even her supposed death, is going to stop her from having him. Repeatedly. 

But Celeste and Dax are living -- and loving -- on borrowed time.  

And it might cost them their future...


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

When a spirit from beyond begs Gage Vicknair to rescue a stranger named Makayla, he never expects that stranger to be the same sensuous woman he's been enjoying so thoroughly in his nightly fantasies. But Makayla is very real and she's living a nightmare.  

A vengeful murderer is determined to get her. And Gage is equally determined to save her.  

Because the only way he and Makayla can have the love they've dreamed of is if they're still around to live it....


text:
SUMMARY:
Single thirty-something Marissa, though beautiful and talented, is becoming increasingly skeptical about romance because every man in her life has been a cheater. She creates a website dedicated to exposing serial cheaters, but instead her website ushers back into her life her first boyfriend from adolescence, and he is determined to show her that a man can be true.


text:
SUMMARY:
At OCD the losers are tormented.At Alpha Academy, they're sent home.Skye Hamilton has scored an invitation to the ultra-exclusive Alphas-only boarding school where beta is spelled LBR . What happens when the country's best, brightest, and hawtest begin clawing and scratching their way to the top?


text:
SUMMARY:
From Lisi Harrison, the New York Times bestselling author of The Clique and Alphas, comes a new series with a fresh twist on high school, romance, and the horrors of trying to fit in. They prefer to call themselves RADs, but some call them monsters. So far, the "monster" community has kept a low profile in Salem, Oregon, but this year two new girls enroll at Merston High School, and the town will never be the same.Created just fifteen days ago, Frankie Stein is psyched to trade her father's lonely formaldehyde-smelling basement lab for parties and friends. But with a student body totally freaked out by rumors of monsters stalking the halls, Frankie finds that life in the "normi" world can be rough for a chic freak like her. She thinks she finds a friend in fellow new student Melody Carver--but can a normi be trusted with her big secret?


text:
SUMMARY:
After saving Olympus from the evil Titan lord, Kronos, Percy and friends have rebuilt their beloved Camp Half-Blood, where the next generation of demigods must now prepare for a chilling prophecy of their own: Seven half-bloods shall answer the call, To storm or fire the world must fall. An oath to keep with a final breath, And foes bear arms to the Doors of Death. Now, in a brand-new series from blockbuster best-selling author Rick Riordan, fans return to the world of Camp Half-Blood. Here, a new group of heroes will inherit a quest. But to survive the journey, they#x2019;ll need the help of some familiar demigods.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**The unforgettable story of the 1973 U.S. Open-and the unknown young golfer who astonished the world... ** 



 In 1973, a Who's Who of golf's greats gathered at the Oakmont Country Club for the U.S. Open. Among those favored to win were Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. Instead, Johnny Miller-a 26-year-old one­time phenom from San Francisco-astonished the golfing world by edging out the legends and crafting a record-setting 63 to win by a single stroke. 



 Featuring extensive archival and video research and candid interviews with leading golfers of the era, *Chasing Greatness* beautifully captures one of the unlikeliest victories and dramatic sports triumphs of the past half century. Authors Adam Lazarus and Steve Schlossman also chronicle the careers and the lives of six extraordinary figures during golf's modern-day golden era: Miller, Palmer, Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Tom Weiskopf, and John Schlee.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Doug Lee is undead quite by accident—attacked by a desperate vampire, he finds himself cursed with being fat and fifteen forever. When he has no luck finding some goth chick with a vampire fetish, he resorts to sucking the blood of cows under cover of the night. But it's just not the same.  

 Then he meets the new Indian exchange student and falls for her—hard. Yeah, he wants to bite her, but he also wants to prove himself to her. But like the laws of life, love, and high school, the laws of vampire existence are complicated—it's not as easy as studying *Dracula*. Especially when the star of *Vampire Hunters* is hot on your trail in an attempt to boost ratings. . . .  

 Searing, hilarious, and always unexpected, *Fat Vampire* is a satirical tour de force from one of the most original writers of fiction today.


text:
SUMMARY:
When a young journalist named Bernardo Blanco is killed in the fictional Mexican port city of Paracuán, investigation into his murder reveals missing links in a disturbing multiple homicide case from twenty years earlier. As police officer Ramón “el Macetón” Cabrera discovers, Blanco had been writing a book about a 1970s case dealing with the murder of several young schoolgirls in Paracuán by a man known as el Chacal. Cabrera realizes that whoever killed Blanco wanted to keep the truth about el Chacal from being revealed, and he becomes determined to discover that truth. The Black Minutes chronicles both Cabrera’s investigation into Blanco’s murder and goes back in time to follow detective Vicente Rangel’s investigation of the original el Chacal case. Both narratives expose worlds of corruption, from cops who are content to close the door on a case without true justice to powerful politicians who can pay their way out of their families’ crimes. Full of dark twists and turns, and populated by a cast of captivating—and mostly corrupt—characters, The Black Minutes is an electrifying novel from a brilliant new voice.


text:
SUMMARY:
Tina Evans dreams that her son Danny is still alive. And when she wakes, she finds a message scrawled on Danny's chalkboard: not dead. Tina searches for the truth and learns that there are some things worse than death. Includes a new Afterword by the author. Reissue.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Writer's Digest Hardcover, 1974 2nd printing with 232 pgs., size: 8 3/4" x 5 3/4 approx. - Fan of popular fiction, professional writer, new writer looking for markets-whoever you are, you'll enjoy this book. It takes you behind the publishing scene and shows you how popular novels-science fiction, mysteries, suspense thrillers, Gothic-romances, adult fantasy, Westerns, and erotica are created and how you can write them too. This book offers you, whatever you write, the chance to perfect your craft while earning income, building your reputation, and experiencing the encouragement of seeing your work in print. Dean Koontz has sold since 1967, over twenty-four (copyright of this book 1974) popular novels. Before becoming a full-time free-lance writer, he worked as a supermarket check out clerk, a drummer in a rock band, a foredt ranger, a tutor for underprivileged children with the Appalachian Poverty Program, and as a suburban school English teacher, among other things.


text:
SUMMARY:
He was clinically dead after the accident--but was miraculously revived. Now Hatch Harrison and his wife approach each day with a new appreciation for life.  But something has come back with Hatch from the other side. A terrible presence that links his mind to a psychotic s， so that a force of murderous rage courses through him.


text:
SUMMARY:
The citizens of Moonlight Cove, California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their deepest emotions. Others are surrendering to their wildest urges. And the few who remain unchanged are absolutely terrified--if not brutally murdered in the dead of night...


text:
Dean Koontz is in league with the future.

Follow him as he leads you down the gnarled paths of night descending into the ever-present and terror-filled tomorrow. Come trod the byways to hell and to hope when you journey with:

Mutilated, mutant by-products of America's "Artificial Wombs" created by attempts at producing human weapons . . .

An American team of doctors sent to China to combat the runaway ultimate in biological warfare . . .

The genetically mutated daughter of LSD users, hiding her powers in order to survive society . . .

And Gabe, the vital, young man mistakenly locked in an antiseptic old-age ward . . .


text:
SUMMARY:
A frantic mother, who has been separated from her nine-year-old daughter, Melanie, for six years, strives to rescue her from the people who have been subjecting her to terrifying psychological experiments.


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A haunting nightmare is the key to one woman's mysterious past in the spine-tingling novel from #1 New York Timesbestselling author Dean Koontz.</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
#1 New York Times bestselling authorÂ—now in trade paperback for the first time. On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever, who will let him go no further into the dark woods. That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a friendÂ—a dog of alarming intelligenceÂ—and a threat that could only have come from the darkest corners of manÂ's imaginationÂ…


text:
What exactly was the curse? asked Jenny. Her hands were so cold that they looked like white porcelain. '
    Her aunt spoke slowly. Sarah pledged that every generation of the Brucker family would contain a child haunted-a child possessed. This child would seek the wolfbane, would howl at the full moon, and find a craving for blood.
    A werewolf? That's silly. But she did not feel much like laughing.
    That night Sarah's father died strangely. He grabbed at his own neck, as if struggling against someone or something invisible. He drew his own blood but he died.
    Jenny's eyes strayed to the red volumes of demonic lore. Was this really the answer to Freya's strange spells? Impossible though it seemed could the child really be a werewolf?


text:
People - ordinary people - were afraid of Baker St. Cyr. Patiently the cyberdetective would explain that the computer half of his investigatory symbiosis did not "take over" when his human half joined with it. "A cyberdetective is part man and part computer, meshed as completely as the two can ever be. The highly microminiaturized components of the bio-computer remember and relate things in a perfectly mathematical manner that a human mind could never easily grasp, while the human half of the symbiote gives a perception of emotions and emotional motivations that the bio-computer could never comprehend. Together we make a precise and thorough detective unit."


text:
Blessed shalt though be in the city, and blessed shalt though be in the field.

Thou shalt be blessed above all . . . 

Our holy empire of the Alliance of mankind has fulfilled our destiny. Remember the many heroic humans who have died in conquering the stars for you. Therefore, do not let misguided sympathy toward inferior and conquered animals deter you from your inherent title of divine rulers of the universe. Do not lose this birthright by succumbing to the "attractions" of any alien creature. Remember the penalties imposed by the Supremacy of Man party for this transgression.

Our blessings be with you as you follow in the paths of your brothers and sisters. We have faith in mankind and we have faith in you. But, however, should you falter from the paths of righteousness, we have many willing hands eager to show you the error of your ways . . .


text:
SUMMARY:
From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Thunder and Hideaway. She appeared out of nowhere. And Paul and Carol were drawn to her immediately--the child they had never had. It was a dream come true--until the young girl's mask fell away to reveal the face of terrifying evil.


text:
Mutants from the atomic bomb ridden Earth meet Mankind from the stars who escaped just before the destruction. The mutants won't give up and let space-man rule Earth once again.


text:
SUMMARY:
Aided through many crises by the near miraculous intervention of   a stranger， Laura Shane finally learns the nature of her incredible   destiny when， on her thirtieth birthday， the stranger requests her   help. Reissue.


text:
In Los Angeles, a hot Hollywood director, high on PCP, turns a city street into a fiery apocalypse. Five die. Heroic LAPD officer Jack McGarvey is badly wounded and lands in the hospital for months, uncertain he'll walk again. While he's out of commission, his wife and young son are left to defend themselves against both the criminals that control an increasingly violent city and the dead director's cult fanatic fans.

In a lonely corner of Montana, Eduardo Fernandez, the father of McGarvey's murdered partner, witnesses a strange nocturnal sight. The stand of pines outside his house suddenly glows with eerie amber light, and Fernandez senses a watcher in the winter woods. As the seasons change, the very creatures of the forest seem in league with a mysterious presence. Fernandez is caught up in a series of chilling incidents that escalate toward a confrontation that could rob him of his sanity or his life - or both.

As events careen out of control, the McGarvey family is drawn to Fernandez's Montana ranch. In that isolated place they discover their destiny in a terrifying and fiercely suspenseful encounter with a hostile, utterly ruthless, and enigmatic enemy, from which neither the living nor the dead are safe.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Deepest night, Montana. An eerie light proclaims the arrival of a mysterious watcher in the woods. And one solitary man begins a desperate battle against something unknown -- and unknowable.Broad daylight, Los Angeles. An ordinary morning erupts in cataclysmic violence. A young family is shattered in a heartbeat.Fate will lead this family to an isolated Montana ranch, but their sanctuary will become their worst nightmare. For there they will face a chillingly ruthless enemy, from which no one -- living or dead -- is safe.


text:
Mankind has forgotten their past glories and only legends remain. Some believed in the legends that men posses sed marvels that conquered the skies and space itself. This is their journey back.


text:
Telepath verses alien." Mr. Mullion," one of the triplets said, looming 20 feet away as Pete followed the smooth railing. He stopped, his heart racing, but he felt a break in the rail as he did so. He edged forward a foot or two and felt around with his boot until he discovered a step. In a moment, blood pounding in his temples, he was halfway down toward the lower level, taking 2 risers at a time, no matter what the danger of a fall. He heard the mechanical man start after him as he set foot on the cement floor. Putney=144 pages. A battleground for 2 empires." I opened the glove compartment and took out my papers. They identified me--with a discription, pictures, letters of reference. fingerprints, and voice-prints--as an Arcturian lady of means, a newcomber to Berbidron and something of a hermit back home on Arcturus Ceta lV. "Is this the identity I'd have if I went to live in the city?" "I think so. Don't worry about the authenticity. There really was a Lady Evors Dalant." "Was?" "Well, yes, we killed her as soon as she landed on Berbidron.."


text:
SUMMARY:
Years after leaving the carnival， her hated first husband， and   the child she could never love， Ellen has a new life， a new husband，   and two beautiful children， but now the carnival is coming back to   town， and Ellen is going to have to pay for her sins. Reprint.


text:
A Black Bat Mystery. A "caper book", the second in a suspense series featuring Mike Tucker, art dealer, heir to a large fortune and professional thief. An early Koontz mystery using one of his pseudonyms.


text:
SUMMARY:
With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy—a story that will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and death, and everything in between.

Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth.

Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomal of fused digits—on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance.

What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through.


text:
SUMMARY:
Do you dare step through the red door?
Spencer Grant had no idea what drew him to the bar with the red door. He thought he would just sit down, have a slow beer or two, and talk to a stranger. He couldn't know that it would lead to a narrow escape from a bungalow targeted by a SWAT team. Or that it would leave him a wanted man. Now he is on the run from mysterious and ruthless men. He is in love with a woman he knows next to nothing about. And he is hiding from a past he can't fully remember. On his trail is a shadowy security agency that answers to no one--including the U.S. government--and a man who considers himself a compassionate Angel of Death. But worst of all, Spencer Grant is on a collision course with inner demons he thought he'd buried years ago--inner demons that could destroy him if his enemies don't first.


text:
SUMMARY:
Now repackaged with new cover art, this classic features a new Afterword by Koontz. Mystery writer Marty Stillwater's idyllic life is shattered when a stranger breaks into his house claiming to be the real Martin Stillwater and begins a terrifying campaign to eliminate Marty. Reissue.


text:
SUMMARY:
A historical novel of the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine and the one person she loved more than power-her rival for the throne.  At only nine, Princess Alais of France is sent to live in England until she is of age to wed Prince Richard, son of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alais is an innocent pawn on the chessboard of dynastic marriage, her betrothal intended to broker an uneasy truce between the nations.  Estranged from her husband, Eleanor sees a kindred spirit in this determined young girl. She embraces Alais as a daughter, teaching the princess what it takes to be a woman of power in a world of men. But as Alais grows to maturity and develops ambitions of her own, Eleanor begins to see her as a threat-and their love for each other becomes overshadowed by their bitter rivalry, dark betrayals, conflicting passions, and a battle for revenge over the throne of England itself.


text:
SUMMARY:
For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.”

Now Pulitzer Prize&#8211;winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after 9/ll.

Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times. 

The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.


text:
M*A*S*H* meets CATCH-22 in the most riotous, ribald, WW II military madhouse ever!  It all began when Major Kelly's Army engineers were dropped into Nazi-occupied France and ordered to keep a bridge open until the Allies arrived.  Except the mission was a secret and nobody knew they were there--nobody except the Luftwaffe, which kept bombing the bridge ... which meant the GI's kept rebuilding it ... which meant the Luftwaffe kept bombing it... which meant the tension was doing funny things to Major Kelly's men's minds ... which mean anything could happen.


text:
SUMMARY:
At first the police thought they were dealing with a psychopath or a vicious gangland war. Then, they heard the eerie sounds in the ventilation system and saw the silver eyes in the night. In a city paralyzed by a blizzard, something watches--something whose ultimate victims are young and innocent.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Rachael Leben's request for a quick and clean divorce left her successful husband, Eric, enraged and humiliated. Seething with anger, he stormed off, straight into the path of an oncoming vehicle. 



 Eric is pronounced dead at the scene, but Rachael knows the secrets he's left behind. And when his body disappears from the morgue, she knows that her turbulent marriage is far from over...


text:
SUMMARY:
"The perfect combination for a paranormal investigation."  David Wells, Most Haunted  A unique collection of episodes from the case files of the New England Ghost Project Journey into a world of the unexplained and the unknown, a world where what you can't see captivates all your attention. A trance medium and a paranormal scientist team up in this spellbinding collection of 17 supernatural mysteries, a mere sampling of the spooky episodes in their vast ghost hunting case files. Former skeptic Ron Kolek, with his infrared camera and EMF meter, and fifth-generation psychic Maureen Wood, with her sixth sense and pendulum, have become experts in investigating ghosts, whether they're helping the descendant of an accused witch, checking out the spirits of Lizzie Borden's slain parents, or assisting a monk with an exorcism. Their unique partnership adds a new dimension, and their adventures will test the senses and challenge everyday thinking...and just might make you believe in the paranormal.


text:
SUMMARY:
Welcome to your next chance.   Chaz Dominguez is a professional Babysitter in New Orleans, helping to integrate the recently deceased into their new and improved lives. Though Fresh Start has always been the only game in town, resurrection isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nine lives are all a person can get—and a powerful group of desperate, high-level Nine-Timers will stop at nothing to possess the keys to true immortality.   Now the only hope for Chaz and his family—and the human race—lies in the secrets locked away in the mind of Angelique, the beautiful, mysterious Newbie he must protect . . .


text:
SUMMARY:
A village in Tuscany is the setting for this joyous debut--a novel that defies all our expectations as it puts a fresh, clever, captivating spin on the age-old tale of forbidden love. Rich in literary delights, filled with spectacular wordplay, and rife with the bawdy humor of Shakespeare's comedies, Tomato Rhapsody is the almost-true tale of how the tomato came to Italy--at once a brilliantly inventive fable of love, lust, and longing, and a dazzling feast for the imagination. This is a story born from love--a forbidden love--between Davido, an "Ebreo" tomato farmer, and Mari, a beautiful Catholic girl....But it's not only Davido and Mari who have secrets of the heart. Everyone around them yearns for something--from Davido's grandfather, who tenderly cultivates the tomato plant he stole on his voyages with Columbus, to Mari's villainous stepfather, whose eye is trained on his stepdaughter's virginity and his neighbor's land. Caught in the midst of these passions and machinations is a village full of eccentrics who speak in rhyme, celebrate the Feast of the Drunken Saint, and live a life untouched by the passage of time. The schemes and dreams of these men and women are about to change as what is forbidden becomes too delicious to resist. Tradition, religion, and good taste collide unforgettably in a story about the courage to pursue love and tomato sauce at all costs.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The story of a woman’s search for her brother’s lost son, orphaned in the wake of his sudden death, drives Scott Lasser’s riveting new novel—a work of stunning economy and momentum about a woman’s quest and a family’s longing for wholeness and completion.Cat is a single mother living in Detroit when her brother is killed in New York, and she sets off in search of his child. Her search is still under way when she gets a call from her father. Sam is eighty and carrying the weight of a secret he has kept from her all her life. He asks Cat to visit him in California, intending to make his peace.Cat’s journey—toward her father, and her brother’s infant son—and Sam’s journey toward his daughter, his lost son, and a new relationship to both his future and his past are woven into this superbly realized novel about families and the mysteries and ambiguities that inhere in our most primal relations. The result is a deeply stirring work that explores the complexities of home and heritage, and the bonds that even death is powerless to diminish.


text:
Gothic-romance novel written to meet a publisher's guidelines and "stave off starvation and buy a little time to write what I really cared about."


text:
One hundred thousand years in the future, after man has been fatally humbled by his exploration of the stars and discovery of far more intelligent beings, civilization is struggling to return to the planet's surface.  After man fled the stars, he tried to explore his own genetic frontier, creating horrible races of deformed beings - some scaled, some furred, tiny, winged and huge. Now Jask, a Pure who retains the original human genetic code, and Tedesco, a great bear with a human brain, are thrown together by their one shared and fatal trait - telepath. Hunted like animals by the fearful populace, they go in search of The Black Presence - which may be the key to mankind's place in the cosmos.


text:
SUMMARY:
As Alex and Colin speed toward their new home in San Francisco where Courtney awaits them， they are pursued by a madman who is also eager to see Courtney.


text:
Superman - or Supermonster? Although he was the first successful product of the Artificial Creation laboratory - the government workshop for the production of new talents by tampering with the genes of the unborn - Simeon Kelly would work for them only under compulsion. And the compulsion the generals applied to get him to probe the mind of the thing called Child had to be the greatest. Because Child was anything but that. In that incredibly monstrous infant appeared to be the potential for whole oceans of inventions and an entire cosmos of total creativity. But Child was vicious, insane, and short-lived.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

A handful of people from different backgrounds, living in  different towns and cities across America, they had nothing in  common--except fear.What dark secret bound them together?  Deep in the heart of a sprawling desert, a dark memory called  out to them, drawing them to the Tranquility Motel--where the  terrifying truth was waiting..."This is a book with a capital  B."--John D. MacDonald* A *New York Times* bestseller


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>A tale of an abandoned town and the unimaginable truth behind its silence...  Now with a new afterword， Dean Koontz explains the impact Phantoms had on his career.</p>


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

From the managing editor of the *Washington Post*, a news-breaking account of the CIA's involvement in the covert wars in Afghanistan that fueled Islamic militancy and gave rise to bin Laden's al Qaeda.    For nearly the past quarter century, while most Americans were unaware, Afghanistan has been the playing field for intense covert operations by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies-invisible wars which sowed the seeds of the September 11 attacks and which provide its context. From the Soviet invasion in 1979 through the summer of 2001, the CIA, KGB, Pakistan's ISI, and Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department all operated directly and secretly in Afghanistan. They primed Afghan factions with cash and weapons, secretly trained guerrilla forces, funded propaganda, and manipulated politics. In the midst of these struggles bin Laden conceived and then built his global organization.    Comprehensively and for the first time, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll tells the secret history of the CIA's role in Afghanistan, from its covert program against Soviet troops from 1979 to 1989, to the rise of the Taliban and the emergence of bin Laden, to the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998. Based on extensive firsthand accounts, *Ghost Wars*ok  is the inside story that goes well beyond anything previously published on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It chronicles the roles of midlevel CIA officers, their Afghan allies, and top spy masters such as Bill Casey, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al Faisal, and George Tenet. And it describes heated debates within the American government and the often poisonous, mistrustful relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies.    *Ghost Wars* answers the questions so many have asked since the horrors of September 11: To what extent did America's best intelligence analysts grasp the rising threat of Islamist radicalism? Who tried to stop bin Laden and why did they fail?


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Four years ago, assassin Court Gentry was betrayed by his handlers in the CIA. Now, an old comrade returns to haunt him-and to force him on a mission against his will. 



 With his ruthless employers on one side, his former friends on the other and a doomed mission ahead, Court Gentry would kill to get out of this one alive.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Life sucks, then you die. Period.  

 Unless you're James Stark, a hitman in Hell for eleven years before escaping back up to Hell-on-earth L.A.—looking for revenge, absolution . . . love, maybe.  

 But Hell's not through with Stark.Heaven's not either.


text:
SUMMARY:
Nina, Meredith and Annie have been friends for a long, long time. Like most old friends, they can't quite remember, any more, what initially drew them together. Elegant Meredith, motherly Nina and the determinedly single Annie are as unlikely companions as you could find. But like a matched set of 1950's kitchen canisters of Flour, Sugar and Tea, they always seem to end up together. Now each are facing the various trials of middle age: divorces, less than satisfactory marriages, teenage kids, careers going nowhere and unexpected bouts of tears. One night, over one too many Flaming Sambuccas during a reunion dinner, they somehow find themselves agreeing to take a road trip to Byron Bay in a RoadMaster Royale mobile home, to attend Meredith's daughter's wedding. Fights and friendship, tears and laughter - not to mention the possibility of finding Mr Right in a caravan park in Ulladulla - this trip might tear them apart or it might just save their lives.An effervescent, uproarious story of female friendship, Byron or Bustis the hugely appealing new novel from Australia's favourite comedienne, Wendy Harmer. as warm and light and as welcome as a doona.' The Agea racy read chick lit meets stand-up.' The Weekend Australian


text:
SUMMARY:
What if you found your soulmate... and then discovered you couldn't lose him?When Lucy meets Nate aged 18, it is love at first sight. As far as she's concerned, he's The One. Caught up in the whirlwind of first love, they kiss under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice at sunset and according to the legend are tied together indefinitely. But ten years later, they ve almost forgotten about each other. That is, until fate starts to bring them together. Again. And again. And again. It doesn't seem as wonderful as it had before, but if Nate's not The One then why on earth is it proving so hard to break up with him?A funny and magical romantic comedy about what happens when every girl's dream of finding her dream man comes very true indeed...


text:
SUMMARY:
It is November 25, 1960, and the bodies of three beautiful, convent-educated sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. El Caribe, the official newspaper, reports their deaths as an accident. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Raphael Leonidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everyone knows of Las Mariposas - "The Butterflies." Now, three decades later, Julia Alvarez, also a daughter of the Dominican Republic and long haunted by these sisters, immerses us in a tangled and dangerous moment in Hispanic Caribbean history to tell their story in the only way it can truly be understood - through fiction. In this brilliantly characterized novel, the voices of all four sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and Dede - speak across the decades, to tell their own stories - from hair ribbons to gunrunning to prison torture - and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. The Butterflies were extraordinary women. Minerva, once the object of the dictator's desire, had dared to publicly slap his face. Devout Patria found her calling to the uprising through the church. Alluring - and vain - Maria Teresa joined in pursuit of romance. Only Dede, the practical one, the most diligent in her duty to family and tradition, kept apart. And only she survived to see that their names were remembered. Now, through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again. And Dede joins them as a heroine of equal courage.


text:
SUMMARY:
What if Mary Shelley had not invented Frankenstein's monster but had met him when she was a girl of eight, sitting by her mother's grave, and he came to her unbidden? What if their secret bond left her forever changed, obsessed with the strange being whom she had discovered at a time of need? What if he were still alive in the twenty-first century? This bold, genre-defying book brings us the "monster" in his own words. He recalls how he was "made" and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him. He ponders the tragic tale of the Shelleys and the intertwining of his life with that of Mary (whose fictionalized letters salt the narrative, along with those of her nineteenth-century intimates) in this riveting mix of fact and poetic license. He takes notes on all aspects of human striving--from the music of John Cage to robotics to the Northern explorers whose lonely quest mirrors his own--as he tries to understand the strange race that made yet shuns him, and to find his own freedom of mind. In the course of the monster's musings, we also see Mary Shelley's life from her childhood through her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley, her writing of "Frankenstein, " the births and deaths of her children, Shelley's famous drowning, her widowhood, her subsequent travels and life's work, and finally her death from a brain tumor at age fifty-four. The monster's fierce bond with Mary and the tale of how he ended up in her fiction is a haunted, intense love story, a story of two beings who can never forget each other. "A Monster's Notes" is Sheck's most thrilling work to date, a luminous meditation on creativity and technology, on alienation and otherness, on ugliness and beauty, and on our need to be understood.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away--to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his "Final (and Right) Plan" for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion--to "talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment"--meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for 100 years meant that when they came out, he would be "dead, and unaware, and indifferent," and that he was therefore free to speak his "whole frank mind." The year 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of Twain's death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain's works, UC Press is proud to offer for the first time Mark Twain's uncensored autobiography in its entirety and exactly as he left it. This major literary event brings to readers, admirers, and scholars the first of three volumes and presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.


text:
SUMMARY:
This book recountsthe horror of World War II on the eastern front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer's war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov. His German footsoldier's perspective makes The Forgotten Soldiera unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitorsaid "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished as a hardcover containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her uncommon encounter with a *Neohelix albolabris* —a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater under standing of her own confined place in the world. Intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal.  Told with wit and grace, *The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating* is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence and provides an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.


text:
SUMMARY:
From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinningNew York Timescorrespondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as "reporting of the highest quality imaginable," we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins's narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night's sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero. We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son. Like no other book,The Forever Warallows us a visceral understanding of today's battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America's wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**FROM TRUE-CRIME LEGEND ANN RULE comes this riveting story of a young woman whose life ended too soon—and a determined mother’s eleven-year crusade to clear her daughter’s name. 

**It was nine days before Christmas 1998, and thirty-two-year-old Ronda Reynolds was getting ready to travel from Seattle to Spokane to visit her mother and brother and grandmother before the holidays. Ronda’s second marriage was dissolving after less than a year, her career as a pioneering female Washington State Trooper had ended, but she was optimistic about starting over again. "I’m actually looking forward to getting on with my life," she told her mother earlier the night before. "I just need a few days with you guys." Barb Thompson, Ronda’s mother, who had met her daughter’s second husband only once before, was just happy that Ronda was coming home. 

At 6:20 that morning, Ron Reynolds called 911 and told the dispatcher his wife was dead. She had committed suicide, he said, although he hadn’t heard the gunshot and he didn’t know if she had a pulse. EMTs arrived, detectives arrived, the coroner’s deputy arrived, and a postmortem was conducted. Lewis County Coroner Terry Wilson, who neither visited the death scene nor attended the autopsy, declared the manner of Ronda’s death as "undetermined." Over the next eleven years, Coroner Wilson would change that manner of death from "undetermined" to "suicide," back to "undetermined"—and then back to "suicide" again. 

But Barb Thompson never for one moment believed her daughter committed suicide. Neither did Detective Jerry Berry or ballistics expert Marty Hayes or attorney Royce Ferguson or dozens of Ronda’s friends. For eleven grueling years, through the ups and downs of the legal system and its endless delays, these people and others helped Barb Thompson fight to strike that painful word from her daughter’s death certificate. 

On November 9, 2009, a precedent-setting hearing was held to determine whether Coroner Wilson’s office had been derelict in its duty in investigating the death of Ronda Reynolds. Veteran true-crime writer Ann Rule was present at that hearing, hoping to unbraid the tangled strands of conflicting statements and mishandled evidence and present all sides of this haunting case and to determine, perhaps, what happened to Ronda Reynolds, in the chill still of that tragic December night.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

**In 2008, a Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of Americans believed God had created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. In a Pew Forum poll in the same year, 42 percent believed that all life on earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.**  

 In 1859 Charles Darwin's masterpiece, *On the Origin of Species*, shook society to its core. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke. But he surely would have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed theologians, yet millions of people continue to question its veracity. Now the author of the iconic work *The God Delusion* takes them to task.  

 *The Greatest Show on Earth* is a stunning counterattack on advocates of "Intelligent Design," explaining the evidence for evolution while exposing the absurdities of the creationist "argument." Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence: from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics. Combining these elements and many more, he makes the airtight case that "we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection."  

 *The Greatest Show on Earth* comes at a critical time: systematic opposition to the fact of evolution is menacing as never before. In American schools, and in schools around the world, insidious attempts are made to undermine the status of science in the classroom. Dawkins wields a devastating argument against this ignorance, but his unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master's vision of life, in all its splendor.


text:
SUMMARY:
On an autumn morning the body of a sixteen - year - old girl is found buried in the garden of a country house in Shropshire. She is Natalie Martello and she has been missing for a quarter of a century. The Memory Game is a highly sophisticated psychological thriller based around the controversial theme of recovered memory syndrome. It provides a deeply disturbing and original portrayal of how family secrets can tear the most successful lives apart. It is a thriller of rare power.


text:
SUMMARY:
New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts deftly blends the perfect formula of romance and suspense in this addictively compelling novel of a woman whose career, marriage, and very life may depend on her never learning the truth about her past. . . . Emma McAvoy may have grown up in the limelight, but some secrets are hidden in a darkness no light can reach. Now on the verge of a successful career, and having fallen in love with the man of her dreams, Emma is looking to the future. Yet it's the past that is about to catch her from behind. For Emma, her childhood had been almost like a rags-to-riches fairy tale - until the tragic night that changed her family forever. But what Emma thinks she knows about that terrible night and the man she's about to marry is only half the truth. The other half is locked away in the last place she'd ever think to look: her own memories. It's a mystery a handsome and relentlessly driven homicide detective needs to solve in a case that's haunted him for years . . . and a secret someone will kill to keep.


text:
The New World is a prequel to the award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy, setting the stage for the world we discover in The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men. The story was written while the author served as writer in residence for the Booktrust an independent UK-wide charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to enjoy books. The New World tells of Viola’s journey to the New World, brilliantly capturing the hope and fear of settlers in search of a new life. Patrick Ness told Amazon exclusively that he wrote it “as a huge and deeply-felt thank you to readers. I’ve had so many questions about Viola and what her life was like before that I couldn’t resist the opportunity to reveal just a little bit extra. I knew these things – they’re vitally important to her as a character, even if they’re not directly in the novels – so it felt like a secret trip I could take readers on. The challenge was to make it work on its own, too, so anyone could read it. That was really, really good fun, and I hope the final result is an exciting one.” The New World can be read before or after the trilogy – and some readers may choose to do both. The story works as a standalone piece, but readers already familiar with The Knife of Never Letting Go will learn more about Viola’s life and the events leading to her arrival and first encounter with Todd, while newcomers to the trilogy will discover a white-knuckle ride of an introduction to the series. Whether you’re a new or faithful reader, though, it’s a welcome chance to immerse yourself in the world of Chaos Walking.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

With the same dazzling imagination and love of language that have made Salman Rushdie one of the great storytellers of our time, *Luka and the Fire of Life* revisits the magic-infused, intricate world he first brought to life in the modern classic *Haroun and the Sea of Stories.* This breathtaking new novel centers on Luka, Haroun’s younger brother, who must save his father from certain doom.  For Rashid Khalifa, the legendary storyteller of Kahani, has fallen into deep sleep from which no one can wake him. To keep his father from slipping away entirely, Luka must travel to the Magic World and steal the ever-burning Fire of Life. Thus begins a quest replete with unlikely creatures, strange alliances, and seemingly insurmountable challenges as Luka and an assortment of enchanted companions race through peril after peril, pass through the land of the Badly Behaved Gods, and reach the Fire itself, where Luka’s fate, and that of his father, will be decided.  Filled with mischievous wordplay and delving into themes as universal as the power of filial love and the meaning of mortality,* Luka and the Fire of Life* is a book of wonders for all ages.


text:
SUMMARY:
Britain's most respected sportswriter takes on the greatest football manager of all time. The true biography of Sir Alex Ferguson has yet to be written. Until now. Alex Ferguson is the most fascinating and controversial figure in football today. He is also the most successful. His twenty-five-year tenure of the Manchester United dugout has seen him win everything there is to be won in football, many times over. His reign as manager has led to the rise of Manchester United to become the biggest football club in the world. This book, written by the award-winning and critically acclaimed Patrick Barclay, will fill in the gaps left by Ferguson's own book,Managing My Life. Everyone who bought that book will want Barclay's comprehensive, objective analysis of Ferguson, the good and the bad, and the occasionally ugly and it will also appeal hugely to those outside the Manchester United extended family for whom Ferguson has often acted as a red rag. Having known Ferguson for a quarter of a century, Barclay believes him to be generous-spirited as well as ruthless and relentlessly competitive; in such an almost larger-than-life character, there is room for countless facets. And it is these facets that Barclay seeks to explore and explain. Leaving no stone unturned, Barclay has spoken with everyone who knows Ferguson best; former players, fellow managers, friends and foes. The result is'Football - Bloody Hell!', the definitive, objective account of this fascinating man.


text:
SUMMARY:

 A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it . . . 

 In a novella set two years after the events of American Gods, Shadow pays a visit to an ancient Scottish mansion, and finds himself trapped in a game of murder and monsters . . .

 In a Hugo Award-winning short story set in a strangely altered Victorian England, the great detective Sherlock Holmes must solve a most unsettling royal murder . . .

 Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams-;and nightmares . . .

 In a Locus Award-winning tale, the members of an excusive epicurean club lament that they've eaten everything that can be eaten, with the exception of a legendary, rare, and exceedingly dangerous Egyptian bird . . . 

 Such marvelous creations and more-;including a short story set in the world of The Matrix, and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction-;can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humor. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most unique writers of our time.


text:
EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you.  

 Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers—but always embrace the unexpected:   A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party. A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it. A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living. A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil.  

 These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman's many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.


text:
SUMMARY:
An astounding tale of adventure, danger, magic, science, friendship, spaceships, and, oh yeah, the battle to save all the people in all the worlds in all possible dimensions.   Joey Harker isn't a hero.   In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house.   But one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension.   Joey's walk between worlds makes him prey to armies of magic and science, both determined to harness Joey's power to travel between the dimensions. The only thing standing in their way is Joey—or, more precisely, an army of Joeys, all from different dimensions and all determined to save the worlds.   Now Joey must make a choice: return to the life he knows or join the battle to the end.


text:
SUMMARY:
On the runway of life, Tim Gunn is the perfect life coach.  You’ve watched him mentor talented designers on the hit television show Project Runway. Now the inimitable Tim Gunn shares his personal secrets for “making it work”—in your career, relationships, and life. Filled with delightfully dishy stories of fashion’s greatest divas, behind-the-scenes glimpses of Runway’s biggest drama queens, and never-before-revealed insights into Tim’s private life, Gunn’s Golden Rules is like no other how-to book you’ve ever read. In the world according to Tim, there are no shortcuts to success. Hard work, creativity, and skill are just the beginning. By following eighteen tried-and-true principles, you can apply Tim’s rules to anything you set your mind to. You’ll learn why Tim frowns on displays of bad behavior, like the vitriolic outburst by Martha Stewart’s daughter about her mother’s name-brand merchandise. You’ll discover the downfalls of divadom as he describes Vogue’s André Leon Talley being hand-fed grapes and Anna Wintour being carried downstairs by her bodyguards. And you’ll get Tim’s view on the backstabbing by one designer on Project Runway and how it brilliantly backfired. Then there are his down-to-earth guidelines for making life better—for yourself and others—in small and large ways, especially in an age that favors comfort over politeness, ease over style. Texting at the dinner table? Wearing shorts to the theater? Not in Tim’s book. Living a well-mannered life of integrity and character is hard work, he admits, but the rewards are many: being a good friend, being glamorous and attractive, and being a success— much like Tim himself! He is never one to mince words. But Tim Gunn is always warm, witty, wise, and wonderfully supportive— just the mentor you need to design a happy, creative, and fulfilling life that will never go out of style.


text:
SUMMARY:
'Some of our ideas are not of the most orthodox nature. They would be frowned upon in anbsp;more traditional scientific environment, perhaps even laughed at.' London, 1857 - the Lazarus Club. Some of the finest, most unconventional minds in Victorian Britain - including Charles Darwin, Joseph Bazalgette, Charles Babage and Isambard Kingdom Brunel - are members. Meetings take place behind closed doors: their discussions are revolutionary and their conclusions are sometimes forbidden... Knowing nothing of this secret society, Dr George Phillips, a young and ambitious surgeon, is intrigued to encounter Brunel over a well-used cadaver in the gory pit of his dissection theatre. It soon becomes apparent that the great engineer has mysterious plans for the good doctor. And so Phillips becomes emboiled in the enigmatic machinations of the Lazarus Club, and in its midst encounters a dark conspiracy. Not only is his own life in jeopardy, but as the first mutilated body is washed up on the banks of the Thames so the very foundations of Victorian society are set to be rocked to their core.


text:
SUMMARY:
The new race-against-time bestseller from the British Harlan Coben. When ex-police officer John Cone is found lying wounded in a room full of dead bodies, he has a terrifying story to tell. Three days earlier he was hired by a mysterious client to snatch a suspected serial killer, Andrew Kent (aka the Penthouse Predator) from custody while he's being transferred between prisons. Kent is snatched, but then things immediately go wrong. People start dying, Kent goes missing, and Cone begins to realize that the case against him is not what he was led to believe. Sharing that suspicion is newly promoted DI Tina Boyd, one of the murder squad team who arrested Kent several months earlier. But now Kent's disappeared, and Tina has to find him. And find him fast, because it's clear some very high-powered people want to silence him. "From the Trade Paperback edition."


text:
SUMMARY:
April 2003: As his nation descends into chaos, an Iraqi boy loots an ancient clay tablet from a long-forgotten vault in the Baghdad Museum of Antiquities--unaware that his actions could ignite the war to end all wars.  Years later, on the eve of a historic Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, bodyguards for Israel's prime minister gun down a possible assassin--and discover a blood-stained note clutched in the dead man's hand.  With Middle Eastern tensions rapidly reaching the boiling point--in the wake of a frightening wave of seemingly random revenge killings--Maggie Costello is sent by Washington to try to keep the peace. A government negotiator with old sins to atone for, she immediately comes face-to-face with ancient secrets, extremist violence, and sudden, inexplicable death. For Maggie seems to hold the key to the last unsolved riddle of the Bible--a shocking revelation that could end the world's most bitter conflict . . . or leave the earth in ruins.


text:
SUMMARY:
A high concept conspiracy thriller that delivers every step of the way. It may be Christmas in New York, but for ex-soldier turned eacute;lite bodyguard Ryan Lock it's business as usual: his mission is to protect one of America's most ruthless businessmen. Suddenly gunshots ring out. People run for cover. Innocent people are mown down. Amid the chaos, Lock's hunt for the killers turns into an explosive game of cat and mouse. Lock's search for the truth takes him from the rooftops of a New York skyscraper to a heavily fortified warehouse on the Hudson where he confronts one of the world's most dangerous women. As the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year's Eve, all routes into and out of Manhattan are sealed, and Lock realises that not only is his own life in terrible danger but so are the lives of millions of others.


text:
SUMMARY:
The medicine man from The Manitou has returned for his ultimate revenge on the white race, who decimated his people: People across the country are suddenly struck blind, leaving them helpless against the spirit warriors who have risen to slaughter their oppressors.


text:
SUMMARY:
The acclaimed author of Vinegar Hill returns with a story of two unlikely romances—one historical, the other modern-day—separated by thousands of miles and well over a century.   Battling feelings of loss and apathy in the wake of a painful divorce, novelist Jeanette struggles to complete a book about the long-term relationship between Clara Schumann, a celebrated pianist and the wife of the composer Robert Schumann, and her husband's protÉgÉ, the handsome young composer Johannes Brahms. Although this legendary love triangle has been studied exhaustively, Jeanette—herself a gifted pianist—wonders about the enduring nature of Clara and Johannes's lifelong attachment. Were they just "best friends," as both steadfastly claimed? Or was the relationship complicated by desires that may or may not have been consummated?   Through a chance encounter, Jeanette meets Hart, a mysterious, worldly entrepreneur who is a native of Clara's birthplace, Leipzig, Germany. Hart's casual help with translations quickly blossoms into something more. There are things about men and women, he insists, that do not change. The two embark on a whirlwind emotional journey that leads Jeanette across Germany and Switzerland to a crossroads similar to that faced by Clara Schumann—also a mother, also an artist—more than a century earlier.   Accompanied by photographs, sketches, and notes from past and present, A. Manette Ansay's original blend of fiction and history captures the timeless nature of love and friendship between women and men.


text:
Compilation of stories:

Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) (short story collection):
-Tower of Babel
-Understand
-Division by Zero
-Story of Your Life
-Seventy-Two Letters
-The Evolution of Human Science
-Hell is the Absence of God
-Liking What You See: A Documentary
What's Expected of Us (2006) (short story)
The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate (2007) (novelette)
Exhalation (2008) (short story)
The Lifecycle of Software Objects (2010) (novella)


text:
SUMMARY:
Cat's Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat's Cradle is one of the twentieth century's most important works--and Vonnegut at his very best. "From the Trade Paperback edition."


text:
SUMMARY:
One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.  What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that made us thinking, sentient humans, different from our predecessors.  Neuroscience has been fixated on the life of the psychological self for the past fifty years, focusing on the brain systems underlying language, memory, emotion, and perception. What it has not done is consider the stark reality that most of the time we humans are thinking about social processes, comparing ourselves to and estimating the intentions of others. In "Human," Gazzaniga explores a number of related issues, including what makes human brains unique, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.


text:
SUMMARY:
A Mass Market Paperback OriginalThe New York Times bestselling author of Blood Brothers continues the thrilling trilogy of a town plagued by evil—and the three men and three women brought together by fate to fight it.


text:
SUMMARY:
Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. Sadie lived with her grandparents in London while her brother traveled the world with their father, Egyptologist Dr. Julius Kane. One night, Dr. Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right with his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.


text:
SUMMARY:
Alternate history explores the many possible directions our world could follow if certain key events didn't occur at all or were changed in some crucial way. Is our Earth the only Earth, our reality the only one that exists? Or are there many parallel worlds and societies, some very similar to ours, some barely recognizable? What if Lincoln had never become president, and the Civil War had never taken place? What if Columbus never discovered America, and the Inca developed a massive, technologically advanced empire? What if magic was real and a half-faery queen ruled England? What if Hitler and Germany won the war because America never got involved? What if many of the world's religions were totally commercialized, their temples run like casinos, religions designed purely for profit? What if an author discovered a book written by an alternate version of himself? These are just some of the possible pathways the reader can take to explore the 'Other Earths' that may be waiting just one event away.


text:
SUMMARY:
In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.…The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other. Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own….From the Hardcover edition.


text:
SUMMARY:
In this irresistible novel, Sarah Addison Allen, author of the New York Times bestselling debut, Garden Spells, tells the tale of a young woman whose family secrets—and secret passions—are about to change her life forever.
Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds her closet harboring Della Lee Baker, a local waitress who is one part nemesis—and two parts fairy godmother. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey’s narrow existence quickly expands. She even bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who is hounded by books that inexplicably appear when she needs them—and who has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush. Soon Josey is living in a world where the color red has startling powers, and passion can make eggs fry in their cartons. And that’s just for starters.
Brimming with warmth, wit, and a sprinkling of magic, here is a spellbinding tale of friendship, love—and the enchanting possibilities of every new day.


text:
SUMMARY:
Hugo Award-winning editor Gardner Dozois_ annual anthology has long been considered the standard by which other best-of-the-year SF collections are judged. After two decades_ worth of superlative science fiction, Dozois now presents a retrospective compilation culling from the last 20 years.Here under one banner is some of the finest work by the genre's leading authors, with a star-studded list of contributors that features among others: Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, William Gibson, Terry Bisson, Greg Egan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Reed, Robert Silverberg, Bruce Sterling , Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Gene Wolfe.A number of the selections are now considered classics. Some notable stories include:_Blood Music_, Greg Bear's Hugo-winning exploration of nanotechnology._Bears Discover Fire_, Terry Bisson's tongue-in-cheek consideration of future ursine evolution._The Left Hand of Darkness_, Ursula K. Le Guin_s coming-of-age SF tale._The Winter Market_, in which William Gibson returns to the subject that made him a cultural icon, cyberpunk.With work spanning two decades, this is the most significant science fiction short story anthology published in years.


text:
SUMMARY:
As the apocalyptic leaders of Iran call for the annihilation of Israel and the U.S., CIA operative David Shirazi is sent into Tehran with one objective: use all means necessary to disrupt Iran's nuclear weapons program, without leaving American fingerprints, and without triggering a regional war. At extreme personal risk, Shirazi executes his plan. A native Farsi speaker whose family escaped from Iran in 1979, he couldn't be better prepared for the mission. But none of his training has prepared Shirazi for what will happen next. An obscure religious cleric is suddenly hailed throughout the region as the Islamic messiah known as the Mahdi or the Twelfth Imam. News of his miracles, healings, signs, and wonders spread like wildfire, as do rumors of a new and horrific war. With the prophecy of the Twelfth Imam seemingly fulfilled, Iran's military prepares to strike Israel and bring about the End of Days. Shirazi must take action to save his country and the world, but the clock is ticking. And then, a dark secret from his past comes to light and changes the course of his life forever.


text:
SUMMARY:
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Dashing young Edmond Dantès has everything. He is engaged to a beautiful woman, is about to become the captain of a ship, and is well liked by almost everyone. But his perfect life is shattered when he is framed by a jealous rival and thrown into a dark prison cell for 14 years.The greatest tale of betrayal, adventure, and revenge ever written, The Count of Monte Cristo continues to dazzle readers with its thrilling and memorable scenes, including Dantès’s miraculous escape from prison, his amazing discovery of a vast hidden treasure, and his transformation into the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo—a man whose astonishing thirst for vengeance is as cruel as it is just.Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts. He teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.


text:
SUMMARY:
There was a time when admirers of Stephen King would seek out every scrap from the Master&#146;s work bench, and it was a cause for celebration when it was discovered that the writer Richard Bachman was, in fact, a pseudonym for King. There were more King novels available than we had all thought! And it was even more an occasion for celebration when it was discovered just how good these Bachman books were.
With Blaze (issued here with a new foreword by Stephen King), we have one of the most adroit entries in the series. King had written the book in 1973 and it had subsequently vanished from his personal radar as he busied himself writing Carrie and Salem's Lot, two of the books that were to both make his fortune and establish him as the greatest modern master of horror fiction. When Blaze turned up among his papers in the library of the University of Maine, he looked at it again, and (fortunately for King aficionados) sanctioned its publication.
Clay Blaisdell is a hulking 6' 7'' petty criminal who encounters another lowlife with large ambitions: George Rackley has a fund of criminal schemes, but his Big Idea is to kidnap the children of rich parents and hold them to ransom. What ensues is shot through with the masterly orchestration of tension that is Stephen King's m&#233;tier. If there are some undigested influences here (the two protagonists -- one massive and powerful, the other the brains of the duo -- owe more than a little to George and Lenny in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men), the personality that comes through (leaving aside the Richard Bachman nom-de-plume) is Stephen King, and followers of his work will need no persuasion to pick up this one. --Barry Forshaw   

      
  'BLAZE feels like an essential missing piece in King's oeuvre...compelling'  -- Independent on Sunday   'King's brilliance is in making his readers root for the kidnapper rather than the authorities'  -- Daily Telegraph   'Tightly written and compelling'  -- Daily Express  'Storytelling - the ability to make the listener or the reader need to know, demand to know, what happens next - is a gift. Stephen King, like Charles Dickens before him, has this gift in spades' -- The Times on CELL   'Thrilling, genuinely terrifying, beautifully textured and full of wonderful invention'  -- Daily Mail on LISEY'S STORY   'A consummate and compassionate novel -- one of King's very best'  -- Guardian on LISEY'S STORY   

      
  
'BLAZE feels like an essential missing piece in King's oeuvre...compelling'
 (Independent on Sunday )


'King's brilliance is in making his readers root for the kidnapper rather than the authorities'
 (Daily Telegraph )


'Tightly written and compelling'
 (Daily Express )

'Storytelling - the ability to make the listener or the reader need to know, demand to know, what happens next - is a gift. Stephen King, like Charles Dickens before him, has this gift in spades' (The Times on CELL )


&#x2018;Thrilling, genuinely terrifying, beautifully textured and full of wonderful invention&#x2019;
 (Daily Mail on LISEY'S STORY )


'A consummate and compassionate novel &#x2013; one of King&#x2019;s very best'
 (Guardian on LISEY'S STORY )


text:
SUMMARY:
On the surface, Lena Spencer appears to have it all. She and her wealthy husband Randall have two wonderful children, and they live a life of luxury. In reality, however, Lena finds that happiness is elusive. Randall is emotionally distant, her son has developed a drug habit, and her daughter is disgusted by her mother's "overbearing behavior." When Randall decides that he's had enough of marriage counseling, he offers his wife an ultimatum: "Be grateful for all I've done for you or leave." Lena, realizing that money can't solve her problems and that her husband is no longer the man she married, decides to choose the latter. Drawing strength from Tina Turner's life story, SEARCHING FOR TINA TURNER is Lena's struggle to find herself after 25 years of being a wife and mother.


text:
SUMMARY:
Iris is ready for another hot, routine summer in her small Louisiana town, hanging around the Red Stripe grocery with her best friend, Collette, and traipsing through the cemetery telling each other spooky stories and pretending to cast spells. Except this summer, Iris doesn’t have to make up a story. This summer, one falls right in her lap.Years ago, before Iris was born, a local boy named Elijah Landry disappeared. All that remained of him were whispers and hushed gossip in the church pews. Until this summer. A ghost begins to haunt Iris, and she’s certain it’s the ghost of Elijah. What really happened to him? And why, of all people, has he chosen Iris to come back to?


text:
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novel <strong>Infinite Jest</strong> bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>With its baroque subplots, zany political satire, morbid, cerebral humor and astonishing range of cultural references, Wallace's brilliant but somewhat bloated dirigible of a second novel (after The Broom in the System) will appeal to steadfast readers of Pynchon and Gaddis. But few others will have the stamina for it. Set in an absurd yet uncanny near-future, with a cast of hundreds and close to 400 footnotes, Wallace's story weaves between two surprisingly similar locales: Ennet House, a halfway-house in the Boston Suburbs, and the adjacent Enfield Tennis Academy. It is the "Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment" (each calendar year is now subsidized by retail advertising); the U.S. and Canada have been subsumed by the Organization of North American Nations, unleashing a torrent of anti-O.N.A.N.ist terrorism by Quebecois separatists; drug problems are widespread; the Northeastern continent is a giant toxic waste dump; and CD-like "entertainment cartridges" are the prevalent leisure activity. The novel hinges on the dysfunctional family of E.T.A.'s founder, optical-scientist-turned-cult-filmmaker Dr. James Incandenza (aka Himself), who took his life shortly after producing a mysterious film called Infinite Jest, which is supposedly so addictively entertaining as to bring about a total neural meltdown in its viewer. As Himself's estranged sons?professional football punter Orin, introverted tennis star Hal and deformed naif Mario?come to terms with his suicide and legacy, they and the residents of Ennet House become enmeshed in the machinations of the wheelchair-bound leader of a Quebecois separatist faction, who hopes to disseminate cartridges of Infinite Jest and thus shred the social fabric of O.N.A.N. With its hilarious riffs on themes like addiction, 12-step programs, technology and waste management (in all its scatological implications), this tome is highly engrossing?in small doses. Yet the nebulous, resolutionless ending serves to underscore Wallace's underlying failure to find a suitable novelistic shape for his ingenious and often outrageously funny material. <br />Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
The story starts out simply enough: Jess Aarons wants to be the fastest boy in the fifth grade--he wants it so bad he can taste it. He's been practicing all summer, running in the fields around his farmhouse until he collapses in a sweat. Then a tomboy named Leslie Burke moves into the farmhouse next door and changes his life forever. Not only does Leslie not look or act like any girls Jess knows, but she also turns out to be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. After getting over the shock and humiliation of being beaten by a girl, Jess begins to think Leslie might be okay. Despite their superficial differences, it's clear that Jess and Leslie are soul mates. The two create a secret kingdom in the woods named Terabithia, where the only way to get into the castle is by swinging out over a gully on an enchanted rope. Here they reign as king and queen, fighting off imaginary giants and the walking dead, sharing stories and dreams, and plotting against the schoolmates who tease them. Jess and Leslie find solace in the sanctuary of Terabithia until a tragedy strikes and the two are separated forever. In a style that is both plain and powerful, Katherine Paterson's characters will stir your heart and put a lump in your throat.


text:
The Plant is a serial novel published in 2000 as an e-book by Stephen King.
The American author Stephen King wrote a few parts of a story by the same name and sent out as chapbooks to his friends instead of Christmas cards in 1982, 1983, and 1985. Only three installments were produced by Philtrum Press before the story was shelved, and the original editions are hotly sought-after collector's items today.
In 2000, King picked up The Plant again and started to publish it as an electronic serial. The first part (matching the 1982 story) was put on his own web site for anyone to download. He also said that he wanted everyone that downloaded the story to pay him $1 either before or after reading it.
The idea was that if enough people paid up, more parts would be published in the same way. The limit was set at 75% of payers versus downloaders. The rate of paying customers decreased over time, but at least the first parts were over the set limit. As of mid-2001, six parts have been published (making up the first somewhat self-contained part of the novel). King has said that there will be more, but that some other projects will be finished first. To date there has been no further mention of the story.
The story tells of a person working as editor on a paperback publishing house. One day he gets a manuscript from what seems like a crackpot. It's about magic, but it also contains photographs that seem very real. He writes a rejection slip about the book, but on grounds of the photographs, he also notifies the police where the author lives. This enrages the author who sends a mysterious plant to the editor's office.
The story is told in epistolary format, consisting entirely of letters, memos, and so on.


text:
SUMMARY:
Loosely based on the lives of 19th-century explorer Alexander von Humboldt and a contemporary, mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, Kehlmann's novel, a German bestseller widely heralded as an exemplar of "new" German fiction, injects musty history with shots of whimsy and irony. Humboldt voyages to South America to map the Orinoco River, climb the Chimborazo peak in Ecuador and measure "every river, every mountain and every lake in his path." Gauss is the hedgehog to Humboldt's fox, leaping out of bed on his wedding night to jot down a formula and rarely leaving his hometown of Göttingen. The two meet at a scientific congress in 1828, when Germany is in turmoil after the fall of Napoleon. Other luminaries appear throughout the novel, including a senile Immanuel Kant, Louis Daguerre and Thomas Jefferson. The narrative is notable for its brisk pacing, lively prose and wry humor (curmudgeonly Gauss laments, for instance, how "every idiot would be able to... invent the most complete nonsense" about him 200 years hence), which keenly complements Kehlmann's intelligent, if not especially deep, treatment of science, mathematics and reason at the end of the Enlightenment.


text:
SUMMARY:
Denny is a secretary who has just begun an affair with her boss, while also maintaining a friendship with his wife. Invited to the family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, she enters into a chain of events that will change everyone's lives in ways that none can imagine. Hilarious, scorching, and full of surprises, The Body of Jonah Boyd is a tribute to the power of home, the lure of success, and, above all, the sisterhood of secretaries.


text:
SUMMARY:
In recent novels, which have been called “hypnotic,” “stunning,” and “exhilarating,” David Markson has created his own personal genre. In this new work, The Last Novel, an elderly author (referred to only as “Novelist”) announces that since this will be his final effort, he has “carte blanche to do anything he damned well pleases.” 

Pressed by solitude and age, Novelist's preoccupations inevitably turn to the stories of other artists — their genius, their lack of recognition, and their deaths. Keeping his personal history out of the story as much as possible, Novelist creates an incantatory stream of fascinating triumphs and failures from the lives of famous and not-so-famous painters, writers, musicians, sports figures, and scientists.

As Novelist moves through his last years, a minimalist self-portrait emerges, becoming an intricate masterpiece from David Markson's astonishing imagination. Through these startling, sometimes comic, but often tragic anecdotes we unexpectedly discern the entire shape of a man's life.


text:
SUMMARY:
Tom Franklin's extraordinary talent has been hailed by the leading lights of contemporary literature—Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Lee Smith, and Dennis Lehane. Reviewers have called his fiction "ingenious" (USA Today) and "compulsively readable" (Memphis Commercial Appeal). His narrative power and flair for character-ization have been compared to the likes of Harper Lee, Flannery O'Connor, Elmore Leonard, and Cormac McCarthy.   Now the Edgar Award-winning author returns with his most accomplished and resonant novel so far—an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.   More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.


text:
SUMMARY:
From the internationally best-selling author Daniel Kehlmann, a provocative and wickedly funny novel about two unpredictable menone an artist and the other a journalist, who together embark on an unexpected adventure with uproarious results. Sebastian Zollner's failure as a journalist is matched only by his personal failures: his girlfriend is moving in a new lover before Sebastian even knows he's been dumped. Searching for the break that will redeem him in the eyes of his peers, he heads off on a wild goose chase into the mountains to interview the eccentric, legendary painter Manuel Kaminski, with the hope of writing his biography. Kaminski is going blind and is living in seclusion with his daughter. He could be working on his next masterpiece or easing into his final days, and his inconsistent career raises the question of whether he has been a fraud or a genius. His artistic reputation hinges on any number of factors but most prominently on a definitive biography. Enter Zollnerwho has no intention of writing a puff piece. He's out to dig dirt and to force Kaminski to confront the legacy of his work. But the secrets he uncovers will lead Kaminski, and Zollner himself, to places neither of them ever expected to go. With edgy wit and intelligence, Daniel Kehlmann dives into the problems of what is "truth" in our celebrity-crazed times and embraces the energy and humanity that lie beneath the pretensions of the art and journalistic worlds. A firecracker of a novel. From the Hardcover edition.


text:
SUMMARY:
Questions for Charles Yu on How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe    
 
    
 You’re a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award-winner and this is your debut novel. When and why did you start writing, and what advice do you have for other young writers out there trying to get published?     I wrote poems and essays as a kid, and in college, I dreamed of becoming a professional writer, whatever I thought that meant, although, for a lot of reasons, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.  Mostly, my parents were going to murder me if I tried to apply to an MFA program.  First-degree murder.      So I didn’t actually start writing until 2002, shortly after I began my career as a lawyer.  Working in a high-pressure environment was squeezing me pretty hard, and all that pressure found its way out in the form of little things I was jotting down, in the margins of receipts, on the backs of business cards.  I wrote a series of physics problems about a married couple’s life together.  I wrote some instructions for how to play a metaphysical video game.  Stuff like that.      But I didn’t think I was actually writing, let alone writing what anyone would call fiction, until I read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders.  That book blew the doors off the empty little space that had previously housed my puny imagination.      Up until that point, I’d had no clue as to what a story could be.  And it was because my ideas were assumptions.  Tacit, limiting, ultimately false assumptions, which added up to a severely impoverished conception of what was possible in fiction.  After reading CivilWarLand, I knew I wanted that feeling, wanted to be surprised like that, and flattened onto the floor, and embarrassed my by own narrowness.  I wanted to have my doors blown off again and again.  It was a short distance to go from wanting to have that feeling to also wanting to see if maybe I could ever give that feeling to someone else.    As for advice, it would be to transfer all the anxiety about publication into anxiety about whether the story works, whether a reader is going to care about the characters.  I break down the process into four components: writing, rewriting, submitting, and worrying.  My ideal, not at all realistic, scenario, would be to make the proportion of time spent on each of those activities something like: 19 percent, 80 percent, 1 percent, 0 percent.  This is very hypocritical of me to say, of course, as I’ve never done this myself, I’ve never even been close.  But I do know that the farther from zero the last two numbers get, the more I’m in trouble.  And that the second number should be much bigger than the first.
    
 How has your interest in and knowledge of science and science fiction contributed to and inspired your writing of this book?     I read and collected comics as a kid, read pretty much everything I could find of Asimov, including the whole Foundation series in one semester in eighth grade (to the detriment of my English grade), and so much else, too much to list or even remember.  Then, at some point in high school, I got the idea that there were serious books we read in school, and there was science fiction, and there was not a lot of overlap.  That lasted until my senior year in college, when I stumbled on Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2, which wasn’t exactly science fiction, it was this amazing love story. It also handled actual science (cognitive science, artificial intelligence) without watering it down, and yet was still clearly Serious Fiction, whatever that meant to me back then, the kind that was in the Sunday book review sections.  After that, I began to search out more writing like that, more Powers, and Jonathan Lethem.    Currently, I read more science than I do anything else, including fiction.  I especially enjoy reading books written by scientists for lay folk, like me.  I was a biochem major in college, and so part of it is that I am interested in the science itself, but I’m just as interested in the process of explanation, how the author, an expert in a specialized field, tries to explain difficult concepts through simplification and creative analogy.  I am fascinated by that process of distilling something really complex into something most people can understand.  There are so many examples of great books that do this, but the one that still stands out for me is Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe.  After finishing that book, I was convinced I had a working knowledge of string theory.  I was like, I can do this stuff; I could hang with string theorists at a cocktail party.  Of course, when I tried to explain even the simplest concept from the book to someone else, I realized how much Greene had been holding my hand.  I was like a baby who thought he could walk, until I tried on my own.
    
 Your book deals with time travel in a more serious and even tragic way than most stories about the subject, though you mask the severity with humor to keep the dialogue light and amusing. What made you decide to write about this complicated topic, and how did you come to write about it in this unique manner?     I knew I wanted the novel to be a family story, mostly about a father and son, but also about a marriage, and a son-mother story, too.  But I could not find the right frame for the story.  At the same time, I kept coming back to this idea that had been floating around in my head and on my laptop for years, but one that I could never find a home for.  It was about of a man who keeps popping up in different hypothetical universes, trying to find the universe where he belongs.  I’d been messing around with that conceit, on and off, for close to five years.  Then I remembered a book I’d read years earlier, called The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch (which sets out, among other things, Deutsch’s multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics), and in particular, one specific sentence from that book:  “Other times are just special cases of other universes.”  That sentence was a bridge for me.  I realized I didn’t want to write a story about hypothetical universes. I wanted to write a time travel story.      Once I decided that the novel would be about time travel, the book started to take shape.  Not quickly, more like, I had a frame, and now little pieces started sticking to the frame, just odd scraps here and there, but the frame was the right one, and I could hang things on it.  Most important, what happened was that the two vocabularies—the emotion of a father-mother-son story and the technical glossary of a time travel story--started to interact; like two dry wool blankets, they started to rub up against each other and crackle a bit. Things would pop out of that, phraselets and new words and little surprises of grammar and language and emotion, and science fiction would fall out from that interaction.      Whatever humor there is in there, if any, is probably also a product of that process, of smashing together two sub-languages, emotional and science fictional, and seeing what weird tonal particles are produced from the collision.  I knew that the story needed weight, because if it were just whimsical, a reader might wonder why any of it mattered, and of course, the most important thing that I am trying to do is create characters who matter to the reader.  I do hope that there are at least a few laughs in there. 
       
 Your protagonist, a time travel technician attempting to save people from trying to alter their pasts, is named Charles Yu. How did you come to name him after yourself?     It was originally a placeholder, to be honest.  So was the father’s name, which is my father’s name.  I tried different names for the son and the father, but none of them would take, so I just put in my real name (and my dad’s) so I could get going with the writing, but when I did that, a strange thing happened: the story started moving, fast, in a different direction.  Suddenly, it was about a self meeting his self, and the details of the character’s life started to come together, as did the relationship between the son and the father.  I think having my actual name in there gave me a straw man, a straw story, that I could write in reaction to.  For some reason, once the name of the character became Charles Yu, I stopped slipping in autobiographical or semi-autobiographical information, and actually started removing it.  I think I realized, wow, if this character is going to have my name, I’d better take some of this stuff out.  There is still a fair amount of it in there, semi- or pseudo-autobiographical, but much of it is more emotionally resonant than factually resonant. 
     
 Though there is a definite science fictional aspect to your novel, it is also heavily literary and much more about real life than it at first appears. How, then, would you characterize your novel? Fiction, science fiction, or something outside the realm of typical genre classifications?     I was hoping it would be characterized as a time machine, although I realize there is no section for time machines in most bookstores.  In terms of topology, I think of it as a stable, looped, four-dimensional object with chronodiegetic properties.  In terms of genre, I would be happy for it to be shelved in both fiction and in science fiction.  Or maybe under a new category, where they would put books that resist either classification.  A lot of my favorite books would be in that category.
     
 What’s next for you?   I’m working on a new novel that takes place in “America,” i.e., not America, but a dream-and-desire-fueled holographic projection of the collective mental environment of Americans, which exists as a geographical place that happens to overlap the physical America.  It’s also a story about a man looking for his ex-wife and daughter.  I hope I can figure out a way to make that make sense.
    (Photo &#169; Michael Zara)


text:
SUMMARY:
 This compelling, centuries-spanning novel brilliantly interweaves the lives of two women—a writer working in the heart of modern academia and a daring young Sioux Indian on an incredible journey in the eighteenth century. The result is an unforgettable story of courage in the face of the unknown.At the age of thirty-eight, Brigitte Nicholson has a job she likes, a man she loves, and a book on the women’s suffrage movement that she will finish—someday. Someday is Brigitte’s watchword. Someday she and Ted, a rising star in the field of archaeology, will clarify their relationship. Someday she will have children. Someday she will stop playing it so safe. Then, on a snowy day in Boston, Brigitte’s life is jolted. Suddenly everything she counted on has changed and she finds herself questioning every choice she has made along the way. As she struggles to regain her balance and plot a new course, Brigitte agrees to help her mother on a family genealogy project. In Salt Lake City at the Family History Library, she makes a stunning discovery—reaching back to the French aristocracy. How did Brigitte’s mysterious ancestor Wachiwi, a Dakota Sioux, travel from the Great Plains to the French court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette—and into the arms of a French marquis? How did she come to marry into Brigitte’s family? What is the truth behind the tantalizing clues in the fragmented, centuries-old records? Following the threads of Wachiwi’s life, Brigitte travels to South Dakota, then on to Paris, irresistibly drawn to this brave young woman who lived so long ago. And as she comes closer to solving the puzzle of Wachiwi’s journey, her previously safe, quiet life becomes an adventure of its own. A chance meeting with a writer of historical fiction, a new opportunity, and a difficult choice put Brigitte at last in the forefront of her own story. With a complex and powerful family legacy coming to life around her, someday is no longer in the future. Instead, in Danielle Steel’s mesmerizing new novel, someday is now.


text:
SUMMARY:
Lois McMaster Bujold’s best-selling Vorkosigan series is a publishing phenomenon, winning record-breaking sales, critical praise, four Hugo Awards and a Nebula award. And the thousands of devotees of the series now have a book that will be a goldmine of information, background details, and little-known facts about the Vorkosigan saga. Included are an all-new interview with Bujold as well as essays by her on crafting the Vorkosigan universe, articles on the biology, technology and sociology of the planet Barrayar, appreciations of the individual novels by experts, maps, a complete timeline of the series, and more. Readers can’t get enough of the Vorkosigan series and they’ll jump at the chance to read this story behind the stories. Baen has a new novel in the Vorkosigan series under contract.


text:
SUMMARY:
Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thing she'd ever do-- until she embarked on the voyage recounted in her new memoir, CLEAVING. Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way to Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs--tough, physical work that only sometimes distracts her from thoughts of afternoon trysts. The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellow butchers around the world-- from South America to Europe to Africa. At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart.


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Just in time for the ABC television event! Here comes a first: a new series of novels for young adults starring a team of troubleshooting teens--the Net Force Explorers--that knows more about cutting-edge technology than its teachers! The year is 2010, computers are superpowers. Those who control them, control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBI: Net Force. When the director of Net Force is assassinated, Deputy Director Alex Michaels is thrust into one of the most powerful and dangerous positions in the world.</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
“Sometimes having company is not all it’s cracked up to be.” Fifteen-year-old Finn is a loner, living with his dad and his amazing dog, Dylan. This summer he’s hoping for a job where he doesn’t have to talk to anyone except his pal Matthew. Then Johanna moves in next door. She’s 10 years older, cool, funny, and she treats Finn as an equal. Dylan loves her, too. Johanna’s dealing with breast cancer, and Matthew and Finn learn to care for her, emotionally and physically. When she hires Finn to create a garden, his gardening ideas backfire comically. But Johanna and the garden help Finn discover his talents for connecting with people.


text:
SUMMARY:
An atmospheric new Fry and Cooper thriller for fans of Peter Robinson and Reginald Hill.A May Bank Holiday in the Peak District is ruined by the tragic drowning of an eight-year-old girl in picturesque Dovedale. For Detective Constable Ben Cooper, a helpless witness to the tragedy, the incident is not only traumatic, but leads him to become involved in the tangled lives of the Neilds, the dead girl's family.As he gets to know them, Cooper begins to suspect that one of them is harbouring a secret - a secret that the whole family might be willing to cover up.Meanwhile, Detective Sergeant Diane Fry has a journey of her own to make - a journey back to her roots. As she finds herself drawn into an investigation of her own among the inner-city streets of Birmingham, Fry realises there is only one person she can rely on to provide the help she needs.But that man is Ben Cooper, and he's back in Derbyshire, where his suspicions are leading him towards a shocking discovery on the banks of another Peak District river.


text:
SUMMARY:
As a good girl waiting for her chance to be bad, Grace McAllen felt lost and discontented. But all that changed one day when a gorgeous stranger with ocean blue eyes rode into tiny Edenville, Texas, on a Harley. Grace knew in her heart that the chance meeting was just the beginning of a grand new adventure....Don't miss this prequel story to bestselling author Susan Wiggs's novel, "The Ocean Between Us"!


text:
SUMMARY:
The stunning continuation of the timeless classic The Phantom of the Opera.In The Phantom of Manhattan, acclaimed, bestselling suspense novelist Frederick Forsyth pens a magnificent work of historical fiction, rife with the insights and sounds of turn-of-the-century New York City, while continuing the dramatic saga which began with Gaston Leroux's brilliant novel The Phantom of the Opera....More than two decades have passed since Antoinette Giry, the mistress of the corps de ballet at the Paris Opera, rescued a hideously disfigured boy named Erik from a carnival and brought him to live in the labyrinthine cellars of the opera house. Soon thereafter, his intense, unrequited love for a beautiful chorus girl set in motion a tragic string of events, forcing him to flee Paris forever. Now, as she lies dying in a convent, Madam Giry tells the untold story of the Phantom and his clandestine journey to New York City to start anew, where he would become a wealthy entrepreneur and build the glorious Manhattan Opera House....all so he could see his beloved, now a famous diva, once again. But the outcome of her visit would prove even more devastating than before-- and yet, would allow the Phantom to know, for the first time in his brutal life, the true meaning of love....


text:
SUMMARY:
Ingrid Betancourt tells the story of her captivity in the Colombian jungle, sharing powerful teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith. Born in Bogotį, raised in France, Ingrid Betancourt at the age of thirty-two gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader in a country that was being slowly destroyed by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. Nothing could have prepared her for what came next. She would spend the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as a prisoner of the FARC. Even Silence Has an Endis her deeply personal and moving account of that time. Chained day and night for much of her captivity, she never stopped dreaming of escape and, in fact, succeeded in getting away several times, always to be recaptured. In her most successful effort she and a fellow captive survived a week away, but were caught when her companion became desperately ill; she learned later that they had been mere miles from freedom. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt's indomitable spirit that drives this very special account, bringing life, nuance, and profundity to the narrative. Attending as intimately to the landscape of her mind as she does to the events of her capture and captivity, Even Silence Has an Endis a meditation on the very stuff of life-fear and freedom, hope and what inspires it. Betancourt tracks her metamorphosis, sharing how in the routines she established for herself-listening to her mother and two children broadcast to her over the radio, daily prayer-she was able to do the unthinkable: to move through the pain of the moment and find a place of serenity. Freed in 2008 by the Colombian army, today Betancourt is determined to draw attention to the plight of hostages and victims of terrorism throughout the world and it is that passion that motivates Even Silence Has an End. The lessons she offers here-in courage, resilience, and humanity-are gifts to treasure.


text:
SUMMARY:
"It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach."So begins Iain Banks’ The Crow Road, the tale of Prentice McHoan and his complex but enduring Scottish family. Prentice, preoccupied with thoughts of sex, death, booze, drugs, and God, has returned to his home village of Gallanach full of questions about the McHoan past, present, and future.When his beloved Uncle Rory disappears, Prentice becomes obsessed with the papers Rory left behind — the notes and sketches for a book called The Crow Road. With the help of an old friend, Prentice sets out to solve the mystery of his uncle’s disappearance, inadvertently confronting the McHoans’ long association with tragedy — an association that includes his sister’s fatal car crash and his father’s dramatic death by lightning. The Crow Road is a coming-of-age story as only Iain Banks could write — an arresting combination of dark humor, menace, and thought-provoking meditations on the nature of love, mortality, and identity.


text:
SUMMARY:
Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks' celebrated first novel is a work of extraordinary originality, imagination and horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; and compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all.


text:
In "The Quest for Meaning", Tariq Ramadan, philosopher and Islamic scholar, invites the reader to join him on a journey to the deep ocean of religious, secular, and indigenous spiritual traditions to explore the most pressing contemporary issues. Along the way, Ramadan interrogates the concepts that frame current debates including: faith and reason, emotions and spirituality, tradition and modernity, freedom, equality, universality, and civilization. He acknowledges the greatest flashpoints and attempts to bridge divergent paths to a common ground between these religious and intellectual traditions. He calls urgently for a deep and meaningful dialogue that leads us to go beyond tolerant co-existence to mutual respect and enrichment. Written in a both direct and meditative style this is an important, timely and intelligent book that aims to direct and shape debate around the most important questions of our time.


text:
SUMMARY:
Getting your dream job in the arts is no mean feat these days. In this book, the author explores the world of museums and galleries, focusing on contemporary issues and current options for employment in this field. This down-to-earth guide will help you work out what kind of job you would be best suited to, and how to prepare for a career in your chosen field. Featuring many case studies and real life examples, this book takes a practical approach to finding the right job for you. It includes advice on creating an eye-catching CV, applying for an advertised post, finding work experience, the interview itself, and creating the career you really want. The book features a foreword by Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery.


text:
SUMMARY:
Centenarian Heywood Floyd, survivor of two encounters with mysterious monoliths, once again confronts Dave Bowman, an independent HAL, and an unseen alien race


text:
SUMMARY:
One thousand years after the Jupiter mission to explore the mysterious Monolith had been destroyed, after Dave Bowman was transformed into the Star Child, Frank Poole drifted in space, frozen and forgotten, leaving the supercomputer HAL inoperable. But now Poole has returned to life, awakening in a world far different from the one he left behind--and just as the Monolith may be stirring once again. . . . A Main Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club®Selected by the Literary Guild® and Doubleday Book Club®


text:
SUMMARY:
Sent to unravel the mystery of an enigmatic monolith left on the moon by an unknown alien intelligence, two astronauts aboard the spacecraft Discovery find their journey into space and their very lives jeopardized by the jealousy of an extraordinary computer named Hal. Reissue.


text:
2010: Odyssey Two is a best-selling science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke, which was published in January 1982. It is the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983.[1] The novel was adapted for the screen and released as a film in 1984.

The story is set nine years after the failure of the Discovery One mission to Jupiter.[4]

A joint Soviet-American crew,[5] including Heywood Floyd from 2001, on the Soviet spaceship Alexei Leonov (named after the famous cosmonaut) arrives to discover what went wrong with the earlier mission, to investigate the monolith in orbit around the planet, and to resolve the disappearance of David Bowman. They hypothesize that much of this information is locked away on the now-abandoned Discovery One. The Soviets have an advanced new "Sakharov" drive which will propel them to Jupiter ahead of the American Discovery Two, so Floyd is assigned to the Leonov crew.

However, a Chinese space station rockets out of Earth orbit, revealing itself to be the interplanetary spacecraft Tsien, also aimed at Jupiter. The Leonov crewmembers think the Chinese are on a one-way trip due to its speed, but Floyd surmises that due to the large water content of Europa they intend to land there and use the water content to refuel. The Tsien's daring mission ends in failure, when it is destroyed by an indigenous life-form on Europa. The only survivor radios the story to the Leonov; it is presumed that he dies when his spacesuit air supply runs out.


text:
SUMMARY:
Frostmourne.It was caught in a hovering, jagged chunk of ice, the runes that ran the length of its blade glowing a cool blue. Below it was a dais of some sort, standing on a large gently raised mound that was covered in a dusting of snow. A soft light, coming from somewhere high above where the cavern was open to daylight, shone down on the runeblade. The icy prison hid some details of the sword's shape and form, exaggerated others. It was revealed and concealed at the same time, and all the more tempting, like a new lover imperfectly glimpsed through a gauzy curtain. Arthas knew the blade -- it was the selfsame sword he had seen in his dream when he first arrived. The sword that had not killed Invincible, but that had brought him back healed and healthy. He'd thought it a good omen then, but now he knew it was a true sign. This was what he had come to find. This sword would change everything. Arthas stared raptly at it, his hands almost physically aching to grasp it, his fingers to wrap themselves around the hilt, his arms to feel the weapon swinging smoothly in the blow that would end Mal'Ganis, end the torment he had visited upon the people of Lordaeron, end this lust for revenge. Drawn, he stepped forward.The uncanny elemental spirit drew its icy sword. "Turn away, before it is too late," it intoned.* * *His evil is legend. Lord of the undead Scourge, wielder of the runeblade Frostmourne, and enemy of the free peoples of Azeroth. The Lich King is an entity of incalculable power and unparalleled malice -- his icy soul utterly consumed by his plans to destroy all life on the World of Warcraft.But it was not always so. Long before his soul was fused with that of the orc shaman Ner'zhul, the Lich King was Arthas Menethil, crown prince of Lordaeron and faithful paladin of the Silver Hand.When a plague of undeath threatened all that he loved, Arthas was driven to pursue an ill-fated quest for a runeblade powerful enough to save his homeland. Yet the object of his search would exact a heavy price from its new master, beginning a horrifying descent into damnation. Arthas's path would lead him through the arctic northern wastes toward the Frozen Throne, where he would face, at long last, the darkest of destinies.


text:
SUMMARY:
Thrall, wise shaman and the warchief of the Horde, has sensed a disturbing change . . . Long ago, Azeroth’s destructive native elementals raged across the world until the benevolent titans imprisoned them within the Elemental Plane. Despite the titans’ intervention, many elementals have ended up back on Azeroth. 

Over the ages, shaman like Thrall have communed with these spirits and, through patience and dedication, learned to soothe roaring infernos, bring rain to sun-scorched lands, and otherwise temper the elementals’ ruinous influence on the world of Azeroth. Now Thrall has discovered that the elementals no longer heed the shaman’s call. The link shared with these spirits has grown thin and frayed, as if Azeroth itself were under great duress. While Thrall seeks answers to what ails the confused elements, he also wrestles with the orcs’ precarious future as his people face dwindling supplies and growing hostility with their night elf neighbors. 

Meanwhile, King Varian Wrynn of Stormwind is considering violent action in response to mounting tensions between the Alliance and the Horde, a hard-line approach that threatens to alienate those closest to him, including his son, Anduin. The conflicted young prince has set out to find his own path, but in doing so, he risks becoming entangled in political instability that is setting the world on edge.The fate of Azeroth’s great races is shrouded in a fog of uncertainty, and the erratic behavior of the elemental spirits, troubling though it is, may only be the first ominous warning sign of the cataclysm to come. 
SUMMARY:
In this follow-up to her NY Times bestseller, ARTHAS, Christie Golden delivers a sensational tie-in to the newest World of Warcraft game expansion!


text:
SUMMARY:
In present-day Manhattan， four masked horsemen dressed as Templar  Knights stage a bloody raid on the Metropolitan Museum of Art during an exhibit of Vatican treasures. Emerging with a strange geared device， they disappear into the night. What follows is an investigation that will draw an archaeologist and FBI agent into the dark， hidden history of the crusading Knights-and into a deadly game of cat and mouse with ruthless killers-as they race across three continents to recover the lost secret of the Templars.


text:
SUMMARY:
When his parents are kidnapped, whats ten-year-old Charlie Ashanti to do? Rescue them, thats what! He doesnt know who has taken his parents, or why. But he does know that one special talent will aid him on his journeyhis amazing ability to speak Cat. Charlie calls on his clever feline friendsfrom stray city cats to magnificent caged lionsfor help. With them by his side, Charlie uses wit and courage to try to find his parents before its too late.  With its whirlwind action and suspense, Lionboy is a nonstop page-turner. Already being compared to J. K. Rowling, this mother-daughter writing team will fascinate readers of all ages with their Cat-speaking hero!


text:
SUMMARY:
在线阅读本书

  A beautiful, haunting evocation of the medieval Japan of Lian Hearn's imagination, this thrilling follow-up to Grass for His Pillow and Across the Nightingale Floor delves deeper into the complex loyalties that bind its characters from birth. Filled with adventure and surprising twists of plot and fortune, this final volume travels beyond the Three Countries, to the outside influences that threaten to intrude upon this isolated realm.


text:
SUMMARY:
The surprise fourth installment, the epic conclusion of Lian Hearn's beloved, bestselling Tales of the Otori. <br/><br/> The Harsh Cry of the Heron: The Last Tale of the Otori is a truly epic novel. It is the rich and satisfying conclusion to the Tales of the Otori series that both completes the characters' lives-prophesied and otherwise-and brilliantly illuminates unexpected aspects of the entire Otori saga. The Harsh Cry of the Heron is the only fitting end to such a stirring series: a book that takes the storytelling achievement of Lian Hearn's fantastic medieval Japanese world to startling new heights of drama and action. <br/><br/> Hearn's Otori series is the best (and only) literary expression of a cultural phenomenon that has swept through cinema (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), comics (manga), and popular culture at large. And, with this book, Hearn delivers in full ninja vs. samurai fashion the kinetic, simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting resolution that the Otori's hundreds of thousands of fans richly deserve-whose epic satisfaction will surely draw even more readers into the fold.


text:
SUMMARY:
Lord Shigeru, heir to the Otori clan, faces hostility from the shrewdly ambitious Iida family in the East and base treachery at home from his uncles. His noble education and training as a warrior have prepared him for leadership and combat, but fate and Shigeru's youthful determination bring the Three Countries to war, and he must endure terrible and tragic defeat at thebattle of Yaegahara... and its brutal consequences.  Heaven's Net is Wide is the first and last Tale, which both closes the circle and introduces new readers to the strange and beautiful world of the Otori. It is an epic historical fantasy of revenge and betrayal, honour and loyalty, beauty and passion and the overwhelming power of love.


text:
SUMMARY:
在线阅读本书

  This is the first book in a new epic trilogy that has already become a bestselling sensation in England and Australia, earning comparisons to The Lord of the Rings. It begins with the legend of a nightingale floor in a black-walled fortress-a floor that sings in alarm at the step of an assassin. It will take true courage and all the skills of an ancient Tribe for one orphaned youth named Takeo to discover the magical destiny that awaits him...across the nightingale floor.


text:
SUMMARY:
Both Takeo and Kaede have visions of their future. Takeo works to escape the Tribe and fulfill the last wishes of his adoptive father, Lord Shigeru Otori. And Kaede, heir to two seats of power, moves forward step by step, aided by her own wits and a precarious alliance with Lord Fujiwara. In their separate worlds, the two long for each other, knowing that they are meant to be together, wondering if they will ever see each other again. . . .  'The beauty, savagery and strangeness of Hearn's gripping tale is heightened by her exquisite, crystalline prose. The second instalment in the "Tales of the Otori" is, astonishingly, even better than " Across the Nightingale Floor"' - Amanda Craig, " Independent on Sunday"


text:
<div><p class="description">SUMMARY:</p>
<p class="description">In the year 2010, computers are the new superpower.  Those who control them control the world.  To enforce the New Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency with the FBI: the Net Force.</p>
<p class="description">Instructions on how to make a bomb...a list of every U.S. spy in the Euro-Asian theater...Someone with access to classified information is posting it on the Internet-and it's costing lives.  Net Force Commander Alex Michaels is in the hot seat.  Now, before a hostile Senate committee, he must justify the very existence of the Net Force.</p>
<p class="description">Meanwhile, a virus is unleashed that throws the federal financial systems into chaos.  And the Net Force operatives must hunt the wily hacker through the twists and turns of cyberspace-down a path that leads them dangerously close to home...</p></div>


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>When Op-Center's budget is cut, General Mike Rodgers finds himself out of a job until he is propositioned by a Senator Donald Orr, who, making a run for president as the head of his own third party, needs a military advisor, but his new position comes with a high price - murder. Original.</p>


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Updated with new material on Seawolf and Virginia    "Takes readers deeper than they ve ever gone inside a nuclear submarine." (Kirkus Reviews)    A rare glimpse inside a Los Angeles-class (SSN-688) nuclear submarine with Tom Clancy as your guide...    Only the author of The Hunt for Red October could capture the reality of life aboard a nuclear submarine. Only a writer of Mr. Clancy s magnitude could obtain security clearance for information， diagrams， and photographs never before available to the public. Now， every civilian can enter this top secret world and experience the drama and excitement of this stunning technological achievement...the weapons， the procedures， the people themselves.    Submarine includes:  * Exclusive photographs， illustrations， and diagrams  * Mock war scenarios and weapons launch procedures  * An inside look at life on board， from captain to crew， from training exercises to operations  * The fascinating history and evolution of submarines  * Tom Clancy s controversial views on submariner tactics and training methods.</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
CIA superagent Mitch Rapp s cover has been blown -- just when the world needs him more than ever....EXECUTIVE POWERReturning from a covert mission， Mitch Rapp was publicly hailed by the president for his role in the fight against terrorism. After years of working in the shadows， Rapp was caught in the media spotlight -- and marked for death by virtually every terrorist in the world. Now a CIA advisor， Rapp is ready to battle terror far from the front lines. But when a Navy SEAL team in the Philippines is ambushed， all evidence points to a leak within the U.S. State Department. And a greater threat still lurks -- a ruthless assassin working for the most powerful men in the Middle East， who are bent on igniting a world war. With the world watching， Rapp must hold back the flames of Armageddon....


text:
SUMMARY:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR VINCE FLYNN RETURNS WITH HIS MOST EXHILARATING POLITICAL THRILLER TO DATE, A PULSE-POUNDING TALE OF ESPIONAGE, COVERT INTELLIGENCE, AND COUNTERTERRORISM.The action begins six days after a series of explosions devastated Washington, D.C., targeting the National Counterterrorism Center and killing 185 people, including public officials and CIA employees. It was a bizarre act of extreme violence that called for extreme measures on the part of elite counterterrorism operative Mitch Rapp and his trusted team member, Mike Nash. Now that the initial shock of the catastrophe is over, key Washington officials are up in arms over whether to make friends or foes of the agents who stepped between the enemy's bullets and countless American lives regardless of the legal consequences. Not for the first time, Rapp finds himself in the frustrating position of having to illustrate the realities of national security to politicians whose view from the sidelines is inevitably obstructed.Meanwhile, three of the al Qaeda terrorists are still at large, and Rapp has been unofficially ordered to find them by any means necessary. No one knows the personal, physical, and emotional sacrifices required of the job better than Rapp. When he sees Nash cracking under the pressure of the mission and the memories of the horrors he witnessed during the terrorist attack, he makes a call he hopes will save his friend, assuage the naysayers on Capitol Hill, and get him one step closer to the enemy before it's too late. Once again, Rapp proves himself to be a hero unafraid "to walk the fine line between the moral high ground and violence" (The Salt Lake Tribune) for our country's safety, for the sake of freedom, for the pursuit of honor.


text:
SUMMARY:
Taking America back...one politician at a time   TERM LIMITS In one bloody night， three of Washington s most powerful politicians are executed with surgical precision. Their assassins then deliver a shocking ultimatum to the American government: set aside partisan politics and restore power to the people. No one， they warn， is out of their reach -- not even the president. A joint FBI-CIA task force reveals the killers are elite military commandos， but no one knows exactly who they are or when they will strike next. Only Michael O Rourke， a former U.S. Marine and freshman congressman， holds a clue to the violence: a haunting incident in his own past with explosive implications for his country s future.... "Ingenious....Outpaces anything recently published， including Baldacci and Clancy."  -- Florida Times-Union Includes an excerpt from Memorial Day， Vince Flynn s electrifying new hardcover


text:
SUMMARY:
Huck is a page-turning, unforgettable true story of the tenacity of one small dog, the unexpected, extraordinary kindness of strangers, and a family's devotion to each other. Michael was four when his relentless campaign for a dog began. At seven he made a PowerPoint presentation, "My Dog," with headings like "A Childhood Without a Dog is a Sad Thing." His parents, Janet and Rich, were steadfast; bringing a dog into their fast-paced New York City lives was utterly impractical. However, on a trip to Italy, a chance happening leads Janet to reconsider, a decision then hastened by a diagnosis of breast cancer. Janet decides the excitement of a new puppy would be the perfect antidote to the strain on the family of months of arduous treatments for her illness. The prospect of a new puppy would be an affirmation of life, a powerful talisman for them all. On Thanksgiving weekend, soon after the grueling months of treatments are over, Huck, a sweet, mischievous, red-haired, toy poodle joins the family and wins everyone's heart. A few months later the family ventures to baseball's spring training, leaving Huck with Janet's sister in Ramsey, New Jersey. Barely twenty-four hours into the trip, Janet receives the dreaded phone call: Huck has slipped through the backyard fence and run away. Broken-hearted and frantic, the family catches the first plane to New Jersey to begin a search for their lost puppy. It is a race against time, for little Huck is now lost in an area entirely unfamiliar to him, facing the threat of bears and coyotes, swamps and freezing temperatures, rain and fast cars. Moved by the family's plight, strangers - from school children to townspeople to the police lieutenant - join the search, one that proves to be an unyielding test of determination and faith. Touching and warm-hearted, Huck is a spirit-lifting story about resilience, the generosity of strangers, and hope.


text:
SUMMARY:
Before turning to high-tech fertility treatments, the 15 percent of all  couples who experience fertility problems might consider reading and trying  the many conception tips in Winifred Conkling's highly helpful Getting  Pregnant Naturally: Healthy Choices to Boost Your Chances of Conceiving  Without Fertility Drugs. Conkling, an experienced medical and natural  health writer and mother of two children (one who took a long time to  conceive), differentiates between "infertile" and "subfertile" couples, and  asserts that more than half of all couples who have failed to conceive in a  year or more of trying can go on to get pregnant and have healthy babies.  Her book describes how.
    Conkling begins with a clear description of the complicated mechanics of  conception and the basics of enhancing conception chances.  Combining  accessible and straightforward information with simple checklists, she  then presents dietary suggestions (men should avoid cottonseed oil, a  natural antifertility agent), herbal remedies, homeopathy, acupressure  (complete with pressure-point maps), and stress-reduction techniques  (including enjoying good orgasms, biofeedback, meditation, visualization,  massage, and refraining from adopting a child as a means to reduce  infertility stress). For each suggestion and remedy, a complete,  easy-to-follow description is provided. Getting Pregnant Naturally  concludes with lifestyle suggestions such as losing weight gradually (if  needed) and avoiding bicycling (for men), as well as quitting smoking and  recreational drugs, minimizing air travel, and limiting computer use (there  may be a link between computer use and miscarriage). A 27-page appendix  listing resources rounds out this highly helpful guide.  --Ericka Lutz


text:
<p class="description">SUMMARY:<br>Newly promoted to sergeant， Philadelphia detective Matt Payne finds himself in the middle of three assignments at once: trying to nail down a cop killer， a serial rapist， and a murderer who fled to France 20 years ago. It s enough to burn out any cop. But Payne s not just any cop. And he s about to show the bad guys that there s no place they can hide from him-or from justice...</p>


text:
SUMMARY:
A cop has been shot--cold-bloodedly gunned down while trying to prevent a holdup. Regulations say the investigation is to be handled like any other homicide. But when a cop is killed in the line of duty， it is different. And the brotherhood in blue will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice. Original.


text:
SUMMARY:
A vicious madman is on a kidnapping and rape spree. Inspector Peter Wohl, commander of the new Special Operations task force, is determined to stop the maniacal reign of violence, facing off against a desperate public, a hostile press and reluctant witnesses.


text:
SUMMARY:
A perfectly typed bomb threat makes its way to the Philadelphia Police Department--the calling card of a political assassin on the loose. It couldn't happen at a worse time, since a rogue cop has brought corruption into the force. The police can't trust their own people as seconds tick away toward an explosion that could rock the nation.


text:
SUMMARY:
A brutal crime...A group of urban terrorists...An investigation of dirty cops...  The leads in these supposedly unconnected cases have become tangled in some very ugly--and dangerous--knots. Now Special Operations detective Matt Payne and his colleagues find themselves fearing not only for their jobs， but also for their very lives...


text:
SUMMARY:
A vice cop is shot dead in his home. A bar owner and his wife are gunned down during a robbery. And in a mansion, a young woman dies of a heroine overdose. The crimes seem unconnected. But these deaths are about to trigger a convergence of corruption, cops, and the mob that could tear the Philadelphia Police Department apart from the inside out.


text:
SUMMARY:
Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is paired with a Texas Ranger to bring down a murderer with Mexican cartel connections. The odd couple of the Philly cop and the Texas lawman must run down the killer and his gang-before the body count rises again.


text:
SUMMARY:
Tony the Zee DeZego is found dead and bleeding on the concrete， and it is clear that it was a Mafia hit. But one puzzling fact remains: Penny Detweiler， a wealthy debutante involved with DeZego， was also shot. Policeman Matt Payne is a prime suspect--even by the police! Original.


text:
SUMMARY:
The dramatic new novel in Griffin's New York Times- bestselling chronicle of the Philadelphia police force. There's a sudden spike in murders in Philadelphia, but no one seems to mind much because the victims all seem to be lowlifes. The more Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne investigates, however, the more he gets a bad feeling-one that only gets worse when vigilante groups spring up claiming credit for some of the hits, even though Payne knows it can't be true. As the targets get bigger and events start moving out of control, Payne realizes that if he and his colleagues can't figure out who's behind this very soon, the violence could overtake them all. Filled with authentic color and detail, this is a riveting novel of the men and women who put their lives on the line-storytelling at its absolute best.


text:
SUMMARY:
Officer Matt Payne is assigned to protect a witness to a robbery and murder of an innocent bystander by terrorists. In a deadly confrontation， Payne kills one of the terrorists . . . and his hame is added to their hit list. "(Griffin) captivates you with characters the way few authors can."--Tom Clancy. Original.


text:
SUMMARY:
A stirring portrait of the decade when the Steelers became the greatest team in NFL history, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them. In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh was in need of heroes. In that decade the steel industry, long the lifeblood of the city, went into massive decline, putting 150,000 steelworkers out of work. And then the unthinkable happened: The Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial also-rans in the NFL, rose up to become the most feared team in the league, dominating opponents with their famed "Steel Curtain" defense, winning four Super Bowls in six years, and lifting the spirits of a city on the brink. In The Ones Who Hit the Hardest, Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne trace the rise of the Steelers amidst the backdrop of the fading city they fought for, bringing to life characters such as: Art Rooney, the owner of the team so beloved by Pittsburgh that he was known simply as "The Chief"; Chuck Noll, the headstrong coach who used the ethos of steelworkers to motivate his players; Terry Bradshaw, the strong-armed and underestimated QB; Joe Green, the defensive tackle whose fighting nature lifted the franchise; and Jack Lambert, the linebacker whose snarling, toothless grin embodied the Pittsburgh defense. Every story needs a villain, and in this one it's played by the Dallas Cowboys. As Pittsburgh rusted, the new and glittering metropolis of Dallas, rich from the capital infusion of oil revenue, signaled the future of America. Indeed, the town brimmed with such confidence that the Cowboys felt comfortable nicknaming themselves "America's Team." Throughout the 1970s, the teams jostled for control of the NFL-the Cowboys doing it with finesse and the Steelers doing it with brawn-culminating in Super Bowl XIII in 1979, when the aging Steelers attempted to hold off the Cowboys one last time. Thoroughly researched and grippingly written, The Ones Who Hit the Hardestis a stirring tribute to a city, a team, and an era.


text:
SUMMARY:
Chris Stewart shot to fame with "Driving Over Lemons" in 1999.  Funny, insightful and real, the book told the story of how he bought a peasant farm on the wrong side of the river, with its previous owner still a resident.  It became an international bestseller, along with its sequels – "A Parrot in the Pepper Tree," and "The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society."In an earlier life, Chris was the original drummer in Genesis (he played on the first album), then joined a circus, learned how to shear sheep, went to China to write the Rough Guide, gained a pilot’s license in Los Angeles, and completed a course in French cooking.  "From the Trade Paperback edition."


text:
<div>
 
 <h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3>
 <div>
 Starred Review. As 18-year-old orphaned actor Will Hawthorne explains early on in this clever page-turner, I don't want you thinking you're going to get a tale about some blue-eyed tyke with a heart of gold in a world where good triumphs over evil. You're not, I'm not, and in my experience it never does. Charged as a rebel after escaping the authorities in a world not unlike Elizabethan England, obnoxious, charming Will joins a small mercenary group and proves himself the least honorable of them all. When the group comes under attack from crimson-armored raiders, Will reluctantly fails to betray the companions he is even more reluctantly growing to like. In small, swift scenes, Hartley (<i>On the Fifth Day</i>) deftly proves that people you shouldn't trust at your back can be the best ones to have at your side. <i>(Mar.)</i> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 
 </div>
 <h3>From </h3>
 <div>
 This fantasy by a Shakespearean scholar tells the story of hapless young actor William Hawthorne in a fictional world that, not unlike Elizabethan England, brims with intrigue. Saving his neck by joining a band of heroes led by a warrior possessed of a magical and powerful sword, Hawthorne unwittingly joins a battle against an evil empire bent on crushing everyone to its will. The subsequent story is at times formulaic, the whole piece a pastiche of clichés and plot twists from better-known movies and adventure fiction. Only someone unfamiliar with the genre may be surprised, for example, that Hartley’s foolish and cowardly protagonist learns, over the course of this ripping yarn, to be wise and brave. Hartley’s prose is so graceful, his narrative so taut, and his battle scenes so exciting and well described, however, that one quickly forgives his betimes paint-by-numbers development. All this is especially true of the compulsively readable second half, which unfolds with remarkable elegance and power. --Jack Helbig
 
 </div>
</div>


text:
<div>
 
 <h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3>
 <div>
 Fans of 2009's <i>Act of Will</i>, Hartley's first tale featuring roguish almost-hero Will Hawthorne, may be disappointed that the adventurers split up early on and two don't reappear until late in the story. Fortunately, all of the fast pacing, outrageous dilemmas, and sharp, cynical humor are back in full force. Will and his intermittently traitorous friends are about to be captured by soldiers of the Diamond Empire when a mysterious ambassador smuggles them out of the city and possibly the world. They're almost immediately enmeshed in a war between goblins and the eerily humanlike Fair Folk, where nothing is certain except Will's ability to make a bad situation worse. Fans will dive in with the gusto of Will quaffing a tankard of beer, and new readers should have no problem keeping up. <i>(Feb.)</i> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 
 </div>
 <h3>Product Description</h3>
 <div>
 <div><div><div>While on the run from Empire guards, Will Hawthorne and his band of thieves are transported to a mysterious land that none of them recognize or know how to get home from. Turns out that they've landed right in the middle of a battle between goblins and humans. Their human allies are practically storybook counterparts to the rough sorts they knew in Stavis, speaking in high-flown prose, dressed to the height of fashion, and dripping with wealth and social propriety. Will's companions are quite taken by these fine folks, but the Fair Folk are appalled by Will's unorthodoxy.<br><br>At first Will does whatever he can to try to squirm into their good graces, but just when his efforts are feeling totally futile, he begins to wonder if these too-perfect courtiers and warriors have anything to offer beyond their glamour and their burning hatred of the goblins. But is there any recourse for Will and his friends once it turns out that the humans who are sheltering them may not be on the right side of their eternal conflict?<br><br>Will Power is a funny and fleet-footed stand-alone fantasy featuring the characters readers grew to love in <i>Act of Will </i>in an all-new adventure about the danger of first impressions.</div></div></div>
 
 </div>
</div>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Furst ( Night Soldiers ) will make his mark with this intelligent, provocative and gripping novel. In 1933, Andre Szara, a highly regarded Polish-born foreign correspondent for Pravda , is asked to perform small espionage tasks by the NKVD. These assignments escalate, until Szara finds himself responsible for obtaining vital production figures from a German-Jewish industrialist who fabricates steel wire essential to airplanes. Inevitably, Szara's integrity as a journalist is also compromised. During this period of Stalinist purges, clearly and chillingly described by Furst, only unpredictability is certain. Szara senses the precariousness of his position, which is compounded by an urgent appeal from a wealthy Jewish Frenchman for Szara to honor his own Jewish heritage by trading his steel wire information to the British in exchange for desperately needed immigration certificates to mandated Palestine. Furst depicts the historical, geographic and political context in lucid and highly readable prose; his observation that Russia annexed Lithuania and Estonia while the world's attention was focused on France's struggle with Germany has an eerie timeliness. As darkness descends over Europe, Szara clings to life while simultaneously attempting to make some meaning of it. His story is not a pretty one; but it is beautifully and compellingly told. <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From Library Journal</h3><p>This is an intriguing combination of spy story and historical novel. It is about a Pravda journalist forced to become a Soviet intelligence agent in the years immediately before World War II. It is also about a Europe being driven into war, not simply by supposedly irresistible social forces but by the genuinely evil men who manipulate and direct events. Seen in this way, Stalin is as responsible for the coming of war as Hitler, and Stalin's Russian purges signal the future deaths of millions in Central Europe. Agents in this novel are not just spies but metaphors for the actors, large and small, on the stage of history. Entertaining, exciting, and thought-provoking reading.<br /><em>- Charles Mi chaud, Turner Free Lib., Randolph, Mass.</em><br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Grilling is a science, and it's only when you understand the science of grilling that you can transform it into an art. That's what makes <em>Mastering the Grill</em> a standout on the cookbook shelf. From equipment (grill types and tools) to fire (wood, charcoal, or gas) to ingredients (meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables), the authors have shared their impressive grilling know-how to explain the whys and the hows and guarantee the wows clearly and comprehensively. In addition to hundreds of tips and techniques, this ultimate guide is packed with how-to illustrations and mouthwatering photographs plus 350 surefire recipes everything from rubs and marinades to appetizers, entrees, side dishes, and desserts. <em>Mastering the Grill</em> is a master class in cooking, destined to become a sauce-stained, well-thumbed classic. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Andrew Schloss is a well-known teacher, food writer, cookbook author, and food industry consultant. He lives in Pennsylvania.  </p><p>David Joachim has authored, edited, or collaborated on more than 25 cookbooks. He lives in Pennsylvania. </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>At the start of this tepid stand-alone from Vachss (Haiku), professional thief Tim "Sugar" Caine finds himself in an interesting dilemma--a rape victim has mistakenly identified him as her attacker, but he hesitates to tell the cops the truth because he was participating in a jewel robbery at the time. The canny ex-con figures that if he does time for the sex crime, he will evade scrutiny for the crime he did commit. Caine ends up serving a five-year sentence for sexual assault before he's back on the New York City streets, where he reconnects with Solly Vizner, the man who put the jewel heist together. Most of the book concerns Caine's efforts to track down another member of the crew who Vizner fears could squeal on everyone else, but a less than exciting lead and a slow-moving plot make this one of Vachss's weaker crime novels. (Nov.) (c) <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Andrew Vachss can always be depended on to deliver powerful fiction, and his new novel, <em>The Weight</em>, is no exception."<br />-Chet Williamson  </p><p>--chetwilliamson.com/2010/09/andrew-vachsss-the-weight-due-in-november-first-review/  </p><p>"[Andrew Vachss'] new book, <em>The Weight</em>, may be his finest hour to date. [It] works on the surface as a stunning mystery. Compulsively readable."<br />-Ken Bruen --mulhollandbooks.com/2010/11/04/ken-bruen-reviews-the-weight-by-andrew-vachss/  </p><p>"Andrews Vachss at his best" --_Los Angeles Times_ --latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book-20101120,0,7958452.story  </p><p> “The hardest-boiled crime fiction this side of Sing Sing.” <br />—_USA Today_   </p><p>“Many writers try to cover the same ground as Vachss. A handful are as good. None are better.” <br />—_People_  </p><p>“Vachss is red hot and as serious as a punctured lung.” <br />—_Playboy_  </p><p>“[Vachss writes] some of the cleanest, meanest, stripped-down-and-sparkling prose ever penned.” <br />—_The Austin Chronicle_  </p><p>“Vachss’s writing is like a dark roller-coaster ride of fear, love, and hate.” <br />—New Orleans <em>Times-Picayune</em>  </p><p>“There’s no way to put a [Vachss book] down once you’ve begun.” <br />—_Detroit Free Press_  </p><p>“Andrew Vachss is a contemporary master.” <br />—_The Atlanta Journal-Constitution_</p>


text:
<div>
 
 <h3>Product Description</h3>
 <div>
 Separate from the government; outside the police, beyond the United Nations; Torchwood sets its own rules. A team of investigators, using alien technology to solve crime - both alien and human. This new British sci-fi crime thriller, created by Russell T. Davies, sees them delve into the unknown. A group of people fighting the impossible. The series stars Captain Jack Harkness, last seen in Doctor Who. This novel is a brand-new Torchwood story.
 
 </div>
 </div>


text:
<h3>Review</h3><p>“Addictive… Packed with wild action and revealing tradecraft.”<br />_–Daily Telegraph  </p><p>_“McNab is a terrific novelist. When it comes to thrills, he’s Forsyth class.”<br /><em>–Mail on Sunday</em>  </p><p><em>From the Paperback edition.</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>The stunning new thriller from the master of the genre.  </p><p>Nick Stone seems to be living his dream, not a care in the world as he steers his camper van round the surfing and parachuting centres of Australia, a board on the roof, freefall rig behind him, and a beautiful young backpacker at his side. But when he witnesses on TV the massacre of children in a terrorist siege on the other side of the world, long-suppressed memories are triggered and Nick finds himself catapulted once more into working for the American secret services — only this time, of his own free will.  </p><p>As events unfold in the bleak, medieval villages of Azerbajhan, and the teeming streets of modern Istanbul, it isn’t long before Nick discovers the true objective of the mission on which he has embarked. His talents are being misused by those who stalk the corridors of power, and he is determined to make a stand.  </p><p>Hurtled at breakneck pace through a deadly landscape of greed, violence and ever-shifting allegiances, the reader will be left in no doubt that McNab is the master of the genre — and <strong>Aggressor </strong>is McNab at his searing, blockbusting best.  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The Weavers’ grip on Saramyr’s rulers has grown ever more powerful, and all the while, the blight they have brought grows harsher. The land is slipping into civil war. In the mounting chaos, Kaiku and the orphaned heir-Empress must fight for their destiny and their survival, as Saramyr succumbs to the twisting of the Weave and the unknowable ambitions of the secretive Weavers.</p><p>Written by young publishing phenomenon Chris Wooding, <em>The Braided Path</em> is a dark, manga-influenced fantasy of a terrifying world—a world across which plays a spellbinding plot of power, violence, and betrayal. Still in his twenties, Chris Wooding has published 18 books, including the <em>Broken Sky</em> series, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in the U.S. alone. He is also a winner of Britain’s prestigious Silver Smarties Prize for his acclaimed novel, <strong>The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray</strong>, which he is now adapting for a Hollywood film. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Chris Wooding is 26. He has had more than a dozen novels published including the Silver Smartie Award-winning THE HAUNTING OF ALAIZABEL CRAY and the much praised POISON. HAUNTING has been bought by Hollywood and Chris has been employed to write the screenplay. He lives in North West London. </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
Christopher Hitchens, described in theLondon Observeras "one of the most prolific, as well as brilliant, journalists of our time" takes on his biggest subject yetthe increasingly dangerous role of religion in the world. In the tradition of Bertrand Russell'sWhy I Am Not a Christianand Sam Harris's recent bestseller,The End Of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix. From the Hardcover edition.


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>In this sequel to Bram Stoker's <em>Dracula</em>, his great-grandnephew offers one of the rowdiest revisionist treatments of the most influential vampire novel ever written. In 1912, as Stoker labors to adapt <em>Dracula</em> for the stage, its characters are dying gruesomely all over London. It turns out they are as real as Stoker himself, who learned their secret story on the sly and took creative liberties when turning it into his popular penny dreadful. Dracula's true story involves the passing of his blood line through Mina Harker to her son; a malignant Dr. Van Helsing, who Scotland Yard suspects had a hand in the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper; and the exploits of a 16th-century vampire countess, Dracula's former lover, who cuts a bloody swath through London seeking the survivors of Dracula's last stand in Transylvania. Energetically paced and packed with outrageously entertaining action, this supernatural thriller is a well-needed shot of fresh blood for the Dracula mythos. <em>(Oct.)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"Energetically paced and packed with outrageously entertaining action, this supernatural thriller is a well-needed shot of fresh blood for the Dracula mythos." <br />--_Publisher's Weekly_   </p><p>"The authors (Stoker is a descendant of Bram, and Holt is a noted Dracula historian) skillfully explore the nature of evil while weaving together several complex plotlines throughout this mesmerizing story. Readers who enjoy dark fantasy with fast-paced action will plow through this book, not wanting to stop." <br />--_Library Journal_</p>


text:
<h3>From</h3><p>Timothy doesn’t really know what to make of Abigail, the new girl in his seventh-grade class. After she is humiliated before her classmates, bad things start happening. Timothy’s best friend sees the clawed monster from his favorite video game at the bottom of a pool. Their teacher begins to get paranoid about the creepy specimen jars surrounding his classroom. But it’s not Abigail’s fault; in fact, she is seeing visions of the Nightmarys—two sinister little girls who beckon her to come play with them. It’s a marvelously disorienting setup, and Poblocki has a knack for cornering his characters in the most unlikely of vulnerable places: a laundry room, a changing room, a hospital bed. As the plot begins to hammer sense into the horrific happenings—it all has to do with a mystical jawbone, an insane professor, and a demon called the Daughter of Chaos—the scares get bigger, though often less impactful. More than anything, this is a mystery, complete with clues and secret codes, and Poblocki’s deft handling of the multiple threads makes this a devilish delight. Grades 6-10. --Daniel Kraus </p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>Timothy July has been having nightmares. About his brother, who is in a coma after being wounded in Iraq; about his best friend, Stuart, who is behaving like a jerk; about the old biology specimens in jars lining the walls of his classroom; and about Abigail, the new girl who seems to be a magnet for trouble. Or perhaps she is the cause.  </p><p>Suddenly Timothy’s nightmares are coming true. His brother, his face decaying, approaches Timothy on the street. Stuart ends up in the hospital, terrified that monsters are stalking him. And the specimen jars are tormenting not only Timothy but his teacher as well.   </p><p>What is the secret in Abigail’s past that is the key to these horrors? And can Timothy figure it out before his nightmares become a deadly reality?  </p><p>A follow-up to the well-received <em>Stone Child</em>, Dan Poblocki’s second novel will have his readers mesmerized until the last page—and sleeping with the lights on. </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3>
<p>Traversing broiling deserts, snowy mountain passes and dank rain forests on its crooked way from Mexico to Canada, the Pacific Coast Trail is an epic challenge for die-hard backpackers. White and his girlfriend, Melissa, set out, late in the season and bereft of experience, to tread all 2,650 miles of it, leaving behind lousy reporting jobs and hoping to find self-definition and a deepened relationship. (They call their trek the Lois and Clark Expedition.) Hilarious greenhorn misadventures ensue—including the author's ill-advised chomp, while dizzy with dehydration, into a reputedly moisture-laden prickly-pear cactus—that tested their survival skills and commitment as a couple. The trail becomes less an itinerary than a world unto itself, full of squalor, discomfort and majestic scenery, and peopled by charismatic misfits and an austere cult of ultra-light speed-hikers, as the couple rely on arcane camping gear and bizarre gummy-bear-and-marshmallow diets. The wilderness authenticity the author seeks proves elusive; all journey and no destination, the story itself eventually trails off with the hero even more callow and confused than when he started. Still, White's vivid prose and hangdog humor make readers want to keep up. <em>(June)</em> <br />
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 
</p>

<h3>Review</h3>
<p>"Drawing on diaries he kept at the time, White polishes up these memories, serving them forth with brio and dash…[The Cactus Eaters] brings a fresh perspective to the timeworn adventure-travel genre." -- <em>Kirkus Reviews</em>  
</p>
<p>"In the well-written, laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating spirit of Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods and Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally, Dan White takes us along for a walk on the wild side of adventure and love. I could not put it down." -- <em>Eric Blehm, National Outdoor Book Award-winning author of THE LAST SEASON.</em>  
</p>
<p>"It is a funny, frequently harrowing, and altogether mesmerizing memoir about just how wrong a backpacking expedition can go….‘The Cactus Eaters’ is far more than a Sierra Club-approved romp. It’s gorp for the soul, a fascinating and surprisingly moving testament to the call of the wild." -- <em>Steve Almond, Boston Globe</em>
</p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Daniel Okrent has proven to be one of our most interesting and eclectic writers of nonfiction over the past 25 years, producing books about the history of Rockefeller Center and New England, baseball, and his experience as the first public editor for the <em>New York Times</em>. Now he has taken on a more formidable subject: the origins, implementation, and failure of that great American delusion known as Prohibition. The result may not be as scintillating as the perfect gin gimlet, but it comes mighty close, an assiduously researched, well-written, and continually eye-opening work on what has actually been a neglected subject.There has been, of course, quite a lot of writing that has touched on the 14 years, 1919–1933, when the United States tried to legislate drinking out of existence, but the great bulk of it has been as background to one mobster tale or another. Okrent covers the gangland explosion that Prohibition triggered—and rightly deromanticizes it—but he has a wider agenda that addresses the entire effect enforced temperance had on our social, political, and legal conventions. Above all, Okrent explores the politics of Prohibition; how the 18th Amendment, banning the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating beverages, was pushed through after one of the most sustained and brilliant pressure-group campaigns in our history; how the fight over booze served as a surrogate for many of the deeper social and ethnic antagonisms dividing the country, and how it all collapsed, almost overnight, essentially nullified by the people.Okrent occasionally stumbles in this story, bogging down here and there in some of the backroom intricacies of the politics, and misconstruing an address by Warren Harding on race as one of the boldest speeches ever delivered by an American president (it was more nearly the opposite). But overall he provides a fascinating look at a fantastically complex battle that was fought out over decades—no easy feat. Among other delights, Okrent passes along any number of amusing tidbits about how Americans coped without alcohol, such as sending away for the Vino Sano Grape Brick, a block of dehydrated grape juice, complete with stems, skins, and pulp and instructions warning buyers not to add yeast or sugar, or leave it in a dark place, or let it sit too long, lest it become wine. He unearths many sadly forgotten characters from the war over drink—and readers will be surprised to learn how that fight cut across today's ideological lines. Progressives and suffragists made common cause with the Ku Klux Klan—which in turn supported a woman's right to vote—to pass Prohibition. Champions of the people, such as the liberal Democrat Al Smith, fought side-by-side with conservative plutocrats like Pierre du Pont for its repeal.In the end, as Okrent makes clear, Prohibition did make a dent in American drinking—at the cost of hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries from bad bootleg alcohol; the making of organized crime in this country; and a corrosive soaking in hypocrisy. A valuable lesson, for anyone willing to hear it._Kevin Baker is the coauthor, most recently, of_ Luna Park_, a graphic novel published last month by DC Comics._ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Okrent, who has rescued an important, relevant, and colorful chapter of American history, explores Americans' relationship with the bottle dating back to the colonial era and analyzes the long-term effects of Prohibition on everything--from the rise of the Mafia and the Ku Klux Klan to language, art, and literature. Fast-paced and fascinating, his narrative assembles a wide collection of comical stories and outrageous personalities, such as the hatchet-wielding Carrie Nation. He explodes clichés and bypasses widely known tales of bootlegging and bathtub gin in favor of more unfamiliar accounts. Critics praised Okrent's elegant writing and careful research--even in all its details--and agreed with the <em>New York Times Book Review</em> that this remarkably fresh take on a forgotten era is "a narrative delight." </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
Having proved his grandfather Fergus’ innocence, Danny Watts and his friend Elena have now been recruited by the British government for a dangerous assignment. Elena must impersonate a would-be suicide bomber to win the confidence of Black Star, the master computer hacker who is behind the rash of teenage bombings that have swept the globe. When Black Star sends Elena to New York, Danny and Fergus come along to keep an eye on her. But Fergus knows that once this mission is over, the government will have them all eliminated. As Elena begins to fall under Black Star’s spell, it will take all of Danny’s survival training to find a way out. Having scored smash bestsellers in Britain with Traitor and Payback, the adventure continues in Avenger with all the authentic Special Ops details that made the previous books stand out.


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>Danny Watts's grandfather, Fergus, was a traitor. One of the worst sort. An SAS explosives expert who betrayed his country and his regiment for money. Drug money. He was arrested and left to rot and die in a Columbian jail. At least, that's what seventeen year-old Danny is told when his hopes of becoming a soldier are destroyed for ever. But he knows something the army doesn't seem to know. Fergus Watts is alive and in the UK, living in secret under an assumed name - but where? Fergus is Danny's only living relative. Burning with fury and desire for revenge, Danny sets out to track down his grandfather and expose him. In doing so he sets in train an explosive sequence of events which throw Danny and Fergus together on the run from the people who want Fergus, and now Danny, dead. Packed with breathtaking action, SAS procedures, surveillance and survival techniques, this is a fast-moving, action-packed thriller for teenagers. There will be several books in the BOY SOLDIER sequence. TV rights have been sold to Zenith, makers of Inspector Morse, Hamish McBeth and Byker Grove. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in two phenomenal bestsellers, Bravo Two Zero, which was filmed in 1998 starring Sean Bean, and Immediate Action. He is the author of the bestselling novels, Remote Control, Crisis Four, Firewall, Last Light, Liberation Day and Dark Winter. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK. Robert Rigby began his career as a journalist, then spent several years in the music business as a songwriter and session musician. He turned to writing for radio, television and the theatre and has also directed and performed in children's theatre throughout the country. He has become an established young people's playwright and his award-winning work with youth theatre companies has been seen in Britain, Europe, the USA and Africa. He now works mainly in television and his scripts include the long-running BBC children's drama series Byker Grove. </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
The breathtaking new thriller from the author ofBravo Two Zero. Body guarding a TV crew on the streets of war-torn Basra, ex-deniable operator Nick Stone's life is saved by a reporter's swift action as a roadside bomb explodes. When the man later vanishes, Stone is asked to find him. The trail leads from Iraq to Bermuda, London and Kabul, the dark and brutal city where governments, terrorism and big business inexorably collide. Caught in the crossfire, his nightmare is only just beginning, for the hunter has suddenly become the hunted. . .


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>A new Quick Read title from the author of<strong> Bravo Two Zero</strong>.  </p><p>Afghanistan, 2009. A Rifle section is halfway through their six-month tour of duty in Helmand Province. Sixteen men from their Battalion have already been killed. Forty-seven others have been wounded and flown back home.  </p><p>The last three months have been tough and it shows. Their kit is in a bad way. They are in a bad way. Young men with tans, scruffy beards, peeling noses and lips burnt raw by the Afghan sun. Despite the hardships they are enjoying their time out here learning how to fight the Taliban. The lads are on their way to becoming the best soldiers in the Army.  </p><p><strong>Last Night Another Soldier</strong>... is the story of four of the young men in this Rifle section, partly told from the point of view of eighteen-year-old squaddie, David 'Briggsy' Briggs. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>ANDY McNABB joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in three books: the phenomenal bestseller <strong>Bravo Two Zero</strong>, <strong>Immediate Action</strong> and <strong>Seven Troop</strong>. He is also the author of the bestselling Nick Stone thrillers, several novels for children and a previous Quick Read novel, <strong>The Grey Man</strong>. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK. </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
A lethal new drug with devastating side effects, known as Meltdown, is threatening to destabilize society. Dudley knows that the security services have to act fast, and when his 4 x 4 arrives at their remote hideout in the Canadian lakes, eighteen-year-old Danny and his grandfather, ex-SAS hero Fergus Watts, are once again sucked into a deadly undercover operation and a race against time. Their search for the mastermind behind a pair of murderous gangland twins takes them from the clubs of Manchester to Spain and Germany, and Danny needs all his newly learned expertise when he comes up against an old adversary someone he hoped never to encounter again. And this time, when the battle is joined, it is a battle to the end.


text:
<h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 7-10–In this sequel to <em>Traitor</em> (Putnam, 2005), Danny and his ex-SAS grandfather, Fergus Watts, survive an attempt on their lives while hiding out in Spain. They stop running and return to the UK with the hope of clearing their names and resuming a normal life, and are recruited to help uncover a corrupt MI5 agent who, at the same time, is trying to have them killed. Danny enlists the help of his friend Elena so that he and Fergus can accomplish the impossible: breaking into the heavily secured British Ministry of Defense in order to get official proof of Fergus's background and save their lives. The police are on high alert because of a series of suicide bombings carried out by teenagers, and MI5 tries to frame Danny as a terrorist. Adventure and suspense drive this plot. Despite some weak character development, the book will find a ready audience._–Michael Giller, South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>This sequel to <em>Traitor</em> (2005) opens with Danny Watts and his former secret-service-agent grandfather, Fergus, hiding out in Spain. An attempt on their lives, however, sends them back to England, where the country is in turmoil after a series of suicide bombings. After Fergus is seriously wounded, he and Danny enlist Danny's friend Elena to help unravel the mystery of the attackers' identities. Despite many loose ends, young spy-fiction fans will enjoy entering Danny's murky world, where things are not as they initially seem. Teens will also enjoy the fast-paced, action-laden plot and the wealth of details about tricks of the spy trade. Some may find the thicket of English phrases and place-names a little dense, but a glossary at the front of the book will help them sort out vocabulary questions. This second book in the Danny Watts series will pull in plenty of new fans. <em>Todd Morning</em><br /><em>Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved</em></p>


text:
<h3>Review</h3><p>“A gripping account of special forces at work . . . a tremendous adventure story.”–_Daily Telegraph_  </p><p>“The best account yet of the SAS in action.”–_Sunday Times_  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p><h3>Product Description</h3><p>In 1983 Andy McNab was assigned to B Squadron, one of the four Sabre Squadrons of the SAS, and within it to Air Troop, otherwise known as SEVEN TROOP.  </p><p>This is Andy McNab’s gripping account of the time he served in the company of a remarkable group of men — from the day, freshly badged, he joined them in the Malayan jungle, to the day, ten years later, that he handed in his sand-coloured beret and started a new life. The links they forged then bound them inextricably together, but the things they saw and did during that time would take them all to breaking point — and some beyond — in the years that were to follow. He who dares doesn’t always win . . .  </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p>


text:
SUMMARY:
The biggest military author introduces real-life voices from the battlefields of Afghanistan. Spoken from the Frontis the story of the Afghan Campaign, told for the first time in the words of the servicemen and women who have been fighting there. With unprecedented access to soldiers of all ranks, as well as pilots, reservists, engineers, medics, Royal Military police, mechanics, cooks and other military personnel, Andy McNab has assembled a portrait of modern conflict like never before. This is the full experience of British troops on the ground and in the air. The horrors, cruelties, drudgery, excitement and banter of these soldiers' lives combine to form a chronological narrative of all the major events in Helmand during the British Army's time there. From their action-packed, dramatic, moving and often humorous testimonies in interviews, diaries, letters and emails written to family, friends and loved ones, merges a 360-degree picture of guerrilla warfare up close and extremely personal. It is as close to the real thing as you can get.


text:
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>In this debut novel, veteran journalist Silva mines the reliable territory of World War II espionage to produce a gripping, historically detailed thriller. In early 1944 the Allies were preparing their invasion of Normandy; critical to the invasion's success was an elaborate set of deceptions--from phony radio signals to bogus airfields and barracks--intended to keep Hitler in the dark about when and where the Allied troops would arrive. Catherine Blake is the beautiful, ruthless spy who could bring the whole charade crashing down; Alfred Vicary is the brilliant but bumbling professor Churchill has tapped to protect the operation. Along with a teeming cast of other characters, real and fictional, they bring the chase to a furious and satisfying climax. </p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Will Nazi spies escape from Britain with Allied plans for the imminent invasion of Normandy? As history tells us, obviously not?so the challenge for veteran journalist and CNN producer Silva in his first novel is to brew up enough intrigue and tension to make readers forget the obvious. While Silva employs multiple characters and settings, his key players are an English counterintelligence officer and a beautiful Nazi spy. Alfred Vicary is an academic recruited to work for MI5. The intelligence reports he fabricates and sends to Germany are designed to persuade the Nazis that their utterly compromised spy network, the Abwehr, is still fully operational. MI5 learns, however, that the Abwehr has been keeping a few sleeper operatives under deep cover throughout the war. Now they pose a serious threat to the invasion plans. One of these operatives is Catherine Blake, a ruthless assassin and spy. Her assignment is to become romantically involved with Peter Jordan, an American engineer working on a top-secret D-Day project. Will Vicary be able to stop her? Silva's characters are strong; but, despite occasional bursts of high suspense and a body count to remember, his overall pacing is uneven, and most readers won't forget that D-Day succeeded. The final plot twist, moreover, while unpredictable, seems more logical than shocking. Silva's debut will find an audience among devoted readers of WWII thrillers, and deservedly so, but he's not yet on a par with such masters of the genre as Ken Follett, Robert Harris and Jack Higgins. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; BOMC alternate selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection; simultaneous BDD audio; foreign rights to 16 countries; author tour. <br />Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>The territory Evans covers in her debut collection may be small, but she owns it. Her main characters are almost all teen girls and young women who struggle with disorder, and the reader is given close access to each one's interior, from which the muted plots originate. "Jellyfish," one of the better stories, starts out with the plight of middle-aged William, whose roof has just collapsed, before settling on his adult daughter, Eva, and examining her life. The two friends in "Virgins," the opening and best story, maneuver unsteadily through the minefield of casually predatory men and boys. "Snakes" looks back on a consequential summer in the lives of two little girls. "The King of a Vast Empire" is the biggest departure from form and is narrated by good son Terrence, who frustratedly tells the story of his free-spirited sister, Liddie. The stories are beautifully observed, though their similarities in theme and voice make them better read individually than together. Evans has some great chops that would really shine with a little more narrative breadth. <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Evans’ first collection of short stories deals thoughtfully and incisively with considerations of class, race, and coming-of-age. That six of the stories are told in their female or male protagonists’ first-person voices brings them immediacy and emotional resonance. Sometimes, though, this device results in narrative voices that sound too much alike while the stories they tell lack thematic originality. Interestingly, two of the best stories—“Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go,” about a deeply troubled veteran of the Iraq War, and “Jellyfish,” about the fraught relationship of a young woman and her father—are told in third person. Yet, whether told in first or third person, what all of the stories share is a demonstration of the profound influence of the past on the present-day lives of their characters and the intricacies of relationships among African American, white, Hispanic, and mixed-race young people. Clearly, Evans lives up to her reputation as an important new voice in literary fiction. --Michael Cart </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
A fully illustrated edition of the international best-seller "Longitude." "The Illustrated Longitude" recounts in words and images the epic quest to solve the greatest scientific problem of the eighteenth and three prior centuries: determining how a captain could pinpoint his ship's location at sea. All too often throughout the ages of exploration, voyages ended in disaster when crew and cargo were either lost at sea or destroyed upon the rocks of an unexpected landfall. Thousands of lives and the fortunes of nations hung on a resolution to the longitude problem. To encourage a solution, governments established prizes for anyone whose method or device proved successful. The largest reward of 20,000-- truly a king's ransom-- was offered by Britain's Parliament in 1714. The scientific establishment-- from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-- had been certain that a celestial answer would be found and invested untold effort in this pursuit. By contrast, John Harrison imagined and built the unimaginable: a clock that told perfect time at sea, known today as the chronometer. Harrison's trials and tribulations during his forty-year quest to win the prize are the culmination of this remarkable story. "The Illustrated Longitude" brings a new and important dimension to Dava Sobel's celebrated story. It contains the entire original narrative of "Longitude," redesigned to accompany 183 images chosen by William Andrewes-- from portraints of every important figure in the story to maps and diagrams, scientifc instruments, and John Harrison's remarkable sea clocks themselves. Andrewes's elegant captions and sidebars on scientific and historical events tell their own story of longitude, paralleling and illuminating Sobel's memorable tale. Dava Sobel is the author of the best-sellers "Longitude" and "Galileo's Daughter," and the editor and translator of "Letters to Father." She lives in East Hampton, New York. William J. H. Andrewes is a museum consultant specializing in the history of scientific instruments and time measurement. He is the editor of "The Quest for Longitude" and lives in Concord, Massachusetts. Praise for "The Illustrated Longitude" "Two respected tellers of the longitude tale have teamed up! Sobel 's compelling prose is coupled with colorful and detailed illustrations provided by Andrewes. This edition responds to entreaties by readers who loved Sobel's "Longitude" but who wanted pictures to go with it."-- "Mercator's World" "Enormous care has been devoted to the illustrations and captions. Readers will finish this book considerably more educated about geography and navigation."-- "USA Today" "This new illustrated edition of Sobel's 1995 study of Harrison's remarkable instrument strikingly illuminates this largely unknown but crucial discovery."-- "Dallas Morning News" Praise for "Longitude" "As much a tale of intrigue as it is of science .... A book full of gems for anyone interested in history, geography, astronomy, navigation, clockmaking, and-- not the least-- plain old human ambition and greed."-- "Philadelphia Inquirer" "Intricate and elegant .... No novelist could improve on the elements of Dava Sobel's "Longitude.""-- "Newsweek" "Anyone with an interest in history or things maritime should consider "Longitude." This fascinating volume brings alive the eighteenth century."-- "USA Today" "Nearly perfect prose and a magnificent story, an extraordinary book."-- "Washington Post Book World"


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>"A STUNNING ACTION THRILLER FROM A REAL-LIFE HERO. Kevin Dodds leads a dull, uneventful life. He has a steady job at the bank, a nice house and car. His wife goes to Bingo on a Saturday night, but he usually stays in to save money. But Kevin has spent enough quiet nights in watching TV and decides he'd like a night out himself. And he's not talking about a pint and a packet of peanuts down at the local. He's going to attempt to pull off a daring bank robbery single handed. Kevin is about to take a heart-thumping step into the unknown. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>Andy McNab joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in two phenomenal bestsellers, Bravo Two Zero, which was filmed in 1998 starring Sean Bean, and Immediate Action. He is the author of the bestselling novels, Remote Control, Crisis Four, Firewall, Last Light, Liberation Day and Dark Winter. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK. </p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>The first in an exciting new series from the bestselling author of Bravo Two Zero.  </p><p>Set both in Afghanistan and the UK, <strong>War Torn</strong> revolves around a close knit group of soldiers and their friends, families, and loved ones. <strong>War Torn</strong> has been optioned by the BBC for an eight part television series. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>ANDY MCNAB joined the infantry as a boy soldier. In 1984 he was 'badged' as a member of 22 SAS Regiment and was involved in both covert and overt special operations worldwide. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, 'will remain in regimental history for ever'. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army's most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS in February 1993. He wrote about his experiences in three books: the phenomenal bestseller <strong>Bravo Two Zero</strong>,<strong> Immediate Action</strong> and <strong>Seven Troop</strong>. He is the author of the bestselling Nick Stone thrillers. Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK. He is a patron of the Help for Heroes campaign. </p>


text:
SUMMARY:
A code which will jam every item of military hardware from Kabul to WashingtonOn 5 September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear installation in northeastern Syria. Syrian radar supposedly state-of-the-art had failed to warn the target of the incoming assault.A system on the verge of collapseUnknown to anyone but the Israelis and the radars manufacturers, the commercial, off-the-shelf microprocessors within it contained a remotely accessible kill switch. A terrorist group who nearly have it in their handsNow British Intelligence has discovered that the same switches are at the heart of every electronic device in the UK and US arsenal. It will take years to replace the components. So they must deactivate the man who controls them instead. And a soldier who wants to go down fightingEx-SAS deniable operator Nick Stone is tasked to find and kill him but this time hes not on receive. For once, his life is under threat for another reason from within. And now he really is a man with nothing to lose...


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>From David Weber to David Feintuch to David Drake, military writers have exploded onto the science fiction scene and continue to leave their mark. Now, bestselling Hammer's Slammers creator David Drake pays homage to his own sub-genre by gathering 10 classic tales of men at arms by SF greats, including Hary Harrison, Joe Haldeman, Richard C. Matheson, Gene Wolfe, Keith Laumer, and David Drake himself. </p><p>A stronghold of bestselling authors </p><p>Contributors to this collection include such notable authors as Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Richard C. Matheson, and many more. </p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p><strong>On September 15, 1946, a biological weapon created by an alien race was accidentally detonated above the streets of New York City, killing countless numbers of men, women, and children. But those who survived the initial explosion soon began to wish they had died also, once they discovered they had been forever mutated by the virus unleashed in the blast. . . . </strong></p><p>When the first volume in the Wild Cards series made its debut in 1986, it caused a sensation in the science fiction and fantasy communities. Here were stories of superpowered beings in a real world setting, detailing the lives of Â³AcesÂ²?those given superhuman powers by the Â³Wild CardsÂ² virus?and Â³JokersÂ²?those whom the virus transformed into freaks and monsters. Over the course of fifteen volumes, the world created by editor George R.R. Martin and some of SFÂ¹s most talented writers was explored through the eyes of both Aces and Jokers across the globe. </p><p>In this all-new collection of Wild Cards stories, the spotlight is on the most unusual Wild Cards of them all?the Deuces. As youÂ¹ll discover in this thrilling collection, their role in the Wild Cards Universe is just as important as that of the Aces and the Jokers. In fact, their actions have affected the course of Wild Cards history. </p><p>Set in an alternate, shared-world universe, Deuces Down is the one place youÂ¹ll find such never-before-told tales as John J. MillerÂ¹s exciting 1969 World Series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; Michael CassuttÂ¹s first moon landing, when the whole world wasnÂ¹t watching; Walton SimonsÂ¹ Great New York City Blackout of 1977; Melinda M. SnodgrassÂ¹s account of Grace KellyÂ¹s mysterious disappearance during the filming of The French LieutenantÂ¹s Woman. ItÂ¹s a strange and terrifying world, where anything can happen. A world of Wild Cards. </p>


text:
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>A fool and his money are soon parted--and nowhere so quickly as in the stock market, it would seem. In David Liss's ambitious first novel, <em>A Conspiracy of Paper</em>, the year is 1719 and the place London, where human greed, apparently, operated then in much the same manner as it does today. Liss focuses his intricate tale of murder, money, and conspiracy on Benjamin Weaver, ex-boxer, self-described "protector, guardian, bailiff, constable-for-hire, and thief-taker," and son of a Portuguese Jewish "stock-jobber." Weaver's father, from whom he has been estranged, has recently died, the victim of a horse-drawn carriage hit and run. Though his uncle has suggested that the accident wasn't quite so accidental, Benjamin doesn't give the idea much credence: </p><blockquote><p>I blush to own I rewarded his efforts to seek my opinion with only a formal reply in which I dismissed his ideas as nonsensical. I did so in part because I did not wish to involve myself with my family and in part because I knew that my uncle, for reasons that eluded me, had loved my father and could not accept the senselessness of so random a death. </p></blockquote><p>But then Benjamin is hired by two different men to solve two seemingly unrelated cases. One client, Mr. Balfour, claims his own father's unexpected death "was made to look like self-murder so that a villain or villains could take his money with impunity," and even suggests there might be a link between Balfour senior's death and that of Weaver's father. His next customer is Sir Owen Nettleton, an aristocrat who is keen to recover some highly confidential papers that were stolen from him while he cavorted with a prostitute. Weaver takes on the first case with some reluctance, the second with more enthusiasm. In the end, both converge, leading him back to his family even as they take him deep into the underbelly of London's financial markets. </p><p>Liss seems right at home in the world he's created, whether describing the company manners of wealthy Jewish merchants at home or the inner workings of Exchange Alley--the 18th-century version of Wall Street. His London is a dank and filthy place, almost lawless but for the scant protection offered by such rogues as Jonathan Wilde, the sinister head of a gang of thieves who profits by selling back to their owners items stolen by his own men. Though better connected socially, the investors involved with the shady South Sea Company have equally larcenous hearts, and Liss does an admirable job of leading the reader through the intricacies of stock trading, bond selling, and insider trading with as little fuss, muss, and confusion as possible. What really makes the book come alive, however, are the details of 18th-century life--from the boxing matches our hero once participated in to the coffee houses, gin joints, and brothels where he trolls for clues. And then there is the matter of Weaver's Jewishness, the prejudices of the society he lives in, and his struggle to come to terms with his own ethnicity. <em>A Conspiracy of Paper</em> weaves all these themes together in a manner reminiscent of the long, gossipy novels of Henry Fielding and Laurence Stern. Indeed, Liss manages to suggest the prose style of those authors while keeping his own, less convoluted style. This is one conspiracy guaranteed to succeed. <em>--Alix Wilber</em></p><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This remarkably accomplished first novel, by a young man still completing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia, has a great deal going on. It is at once a penetrating study of the beginnings of stock speculation and the retreat from a mineral-based currency in early 18th-century London, a sympathetic look at the life of a Jew in that time and place and a vision of the struggle between the Bank of England and the upstart South Sea Company to become the repository of the nation's fiscal faith. If all that sounds daunting, it is above all a headlong adventure yarn full of dastardly villains, brawls, wenches and as commanding a hero as has graced a novel in some time. He is Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish former boxer who had once abandoned his family, and virtually his faith, too, for a life on the fringes of criminal society as a kind of freelance bailiff who brings debtors to book for their creditors. When his uncherished father dies suddenly, however, and he has reason to suspect the apparent accident was actually murder, he plunges himself into a hunt for those responsible, and in the process changes his life. With his native cunning and his brawling skills, he soon finds himself deeply embroiled with the villainous Jonathan Wild, thief-taker par excellence, who has institutionalized criminal mayhem. He also becomes the pawn of some powerful financial giants lurking in the shadows (much like the corporate villains in contemporary thrillers), comes to suspect his glamorous cousin Miriam of actions unbecoming a lady and employs the wiles of his philosophical Scottish friend Elias to decode the mysterious ways of finance and the laws of probability. The period detail is authentic but never obtrusive; the dialogue is a marvel of courtly locution masking murderous bluntness; and the plot, though devious in the extreme, never becomes opaque. It seems clear that Weaver is being set up as a series hero, which can only be good news for lovers of the best in dashing historical fiction. Agent, Liz Darhansoff. (Feb.) <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p>In this candid and gripping account, President George W. Bush describes the critical decisions that shaped his presidency and personal life.  </p><p>George W. Bush served as president of the United States during eight of the most consequential years in American history. The decisions that reached his desk impacted people around the world and defined the times in which we live._  </p><p>Decision Points_ brings readers inside the Texas governor's mansion on the night of the 2000 election, aboard Air Force One during the harrowing hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, into the Situation Room moments before the start of the war in Iraq, and behind the scenes at the White House for many other historic presidential decisions.  </p><p>For the first time, we learn President Bush's perspective and insights on:  </p><ul> <li>     His decision to quit drinking and the journey that led him to his Christian faith </li> <li>     The selection of the vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, Supreme Court justices, and other key officials </li> <li>     His relationships with his wife, daughters, and parents, including heartfelt letters between the president and his father on the eve of the Iraq War </li> <li>     His administration's counterterrorism programs, including the CIA's enhanced interrogations and the Terrorist Surveillance Program </li> <li>     Why the worst moment of the presidency was hearing accusations that race played a role in the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and a critical assessment of what he would have done differently during the crisis </li> <li>     His deep concern that Iraq could turn into a defeat costlier than Vietnam, and how he decided to defy public opinion by ordering the troop surge </li> <li>     His legislative achievements, including tax cuts and reforming education and Medicare, as well as his setbacks, including Social Security and immigration reform </li> <li>     The relationships he forged with other world leaders, including an honest assessment of those he did and didn’t trust </li> <li>     Why the failure to bring Osama bin Laden to justice ranks as his biggest disappointment and why his success in denying the terrorists their fondest wish—attacking America again—is among his proudest achievements  </li></ul><p>A groundbreaking new brand of presidential memoir, <em>Decision Points</em> will captivate supporters, surprise critics, and change perspectives on eight remarkable years in American history—and on the man at the center of events.  </p><p>Since leaving office, President George W. Bush has led the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. The center includes an active policy institute working to advance initiatives in the fields of education reform, global health, economic growth, and human freedom, with a special emphasis on promoting social entrepreneurship and creating opportunities for women around the world. It will also house an official government archive and a state-of-the-art museum that will open in 2013. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>George W. Bush is the 43rd President of the United States. </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p><em>Sex and the City</em> meets London's Roaring '20s in Davis's satisfying fifth novel. Grace Rutherford leads a double life: by day she's an advertising copywriter supporting a widowed sister and mother. By night, she's Diamond Sharp—a newspaper gossip columnist and glamorous lady about town. She adores her single status until she meets mysterious American author Dexter O'Connell, with whom she begins a steamy cat-and-mouse affair that turns her world upside down. The trouble? She's concurrently swept off her feet by her charming and equally delicious neighbor John Cramer—Dexter's bitter enemy. Grace is determined to get to the bottom of their hatred for each other. But whose story should she believe? To make matters worse, her sister is possibly falling for John, too. When Grace delves into their closets looking for skeletons, she realizes she must ultimately face her own. Davis, best known for <em>The Shoe Queen</em>, delights once again with this romp through pre-Manolo chick lit turf. <em>(June)</em> <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Grace is an iconic flapper in the Roaring Twenties, burning the candle at both ends between her job as a copywriter in a London ad agency and a newspaper columnist under the pen name Diamond Sharp. Her frantic pace and upbeat writing keep her from thinking about the responsibilities at home, where she takes care of her mother, widowed sister, and young niece and nephew. Things become even more hectic when she spots a gorgeous American author, and taunts him in her columns until they start a fiery love affair. Dexter is as mysterious and dramatic as the book that made him famous. In contrast to her tempestuous relationship with Dexter, she meets her neighbor John Cramer, also an American, who writes for the New York Times. There is bad blood between the two men, and Grace is torn between her “Devil” Dexter and his antagonist, John, who may have captured her sister’s heart. Davis presents a rip-roaring read filled with enticing characters emulating the American literati living it up overseas after the First World War. --Patty Engelmann </p>


text:
<h3>Product Description</h3><p><em></em>Piper Hecht’s first and greatest secret is that he knows <strong></strong>how to kill gods. What’s not a secret is that he knows how to win wars   </p><p><em></em>Piper Hecht’s secrets make him dangerous, but his skill and his  reputation put him in danger—from his enemies, who fear what he might do, or who want revenge for what he has already done; and from his friends, who want to use his military gifts for their own purposes. His sister Heris and his living ancestor  Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Hecht part  of their fight against the return of the dark god Kharoulke the Windwalker. At the same time, the half-mad Empress Katrin wants  him to lead the armies of the Grail Empire eastward on a crusade  against his old coreligionists the Praman.   </p><p>Meanwhile, all around them, the world is changing. The winters are growing longer and harder every year, and the seas are  getting shallower. The far north and the high mountain ranges are  going under the ice, and fast. The Wells of Power, everywhere,  keep getting weaker. And the old evils, the Instrumentalities from the Time Before Time, have begun to ooze back into the world.  As ever, the genius of Glen Cook’s storytelling lies in his common  touch: in soldiers who are like real soldiers, in men and women  who love and laugh and sweat, with real hopes and real fears, united only in their determination to face the oncoming night. </p><h3>About the Author</h3><p>GLEN COOK, author of the bestselling Black Company series, lives in St. Louis, Missouri.</p>


text:
<div>
 
 <h3>Review</h3>
 <div>
 <span>"A sprawling epic...action packed and romantic...twists through vast swathes of time, space and metaphysics. A great read for sci-fi lovers everywhere." </span> --award winning filmmaker and author Martin Simpson<br><br>"This is a really interesting novel that touches on a number of subjects, including very ancient history, religion and racial prejudice. Yes, it's very much worth reading." --Dead Trees Review
 
 </div>
 <h3>Product Description</h3>
 <div>
 In the far future, the last free humans have fled to a massive space station in Earth's orbit. On the planet below lurk their oppressors: a race of vampires who seek to breed and harvest them like animals. Orphaned as a child, Alex grows to manhood in the shadow of his legendary father who united the scattered remnants of humanity. But as he takes up his father's banner, he uncovers a frightening secret about himself: he is the Falsifier, fated to bring down the Vampire Empire. As he struggles with his destiny, the vampires abduct him in a surprise raid. With humanity's survival at stake, Alex must find and fight his way back and take his place in history.
 
 </div>
</div>


text:
<h3>Amazon.com Review</h3><p>The year is 1929. New York is ruled by the Bright Young Things: flappers and socialites seeking thrills and chasing dreams in the anything-goes era of the Roaring Twenties. </p><p>Letty Larkspur and Cordelia Grey escaped their small Midwestern town for New York's glittering metropolis. All Letty wants is to see her name in lights, but she quickly discovers Manhattan is filled with pretty girls who will do anything to be a star… </p><p>Cordelia is searching for the father she's never known, a man as infamous for his wild parties as he is for his shadowy schemes. Overnight, she enters a world more thrilling and glamorous than she ever could have imagined—and more dangerous. It's a life anyone would kill for . . . and someone will. </p><p>The only person Cordelia can trust is Astrid Donal, a flapper who seems to have it all: money, looks, and the love of Cordelia's brother, Charlie. But Astrid's perfect veneer hides a score of family secrets. </p><p>Across the vast lawns of Long Island, in the illicit speakeasies of Manhattan, and on the blindingly lit stages of Broadway, the three girls' fortunes will rise and fall—together and apart. From the <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Luxe</em> comes an epic new series set in the dizzying last summer of the Jazz Age. </p><hr /><p><strong> Anna Godberson’s Playlist </strong><br /><strong> </strong> _<br />Bright Young Things_ may take place during the Jazz Age, but author Anna Godberson shows us that the tunes she prefers range from Cat Power to Prince. Check out what she loves and why. (Click on the song name to listen to a sample) <em></em>  </p><p><em></em><br />I spend a lot of time in a chair in front of my computer obsessively reworking sentences. This song is ecstatic and full of life and whenever I hear it I want to get up and move.  </p><p><hr />This song sounds to me like the wise, sad, tired, wired, voice of experience, the kind of beauty that you can only see after you’ve been worn down. That’s what <em>Bright Young Things</em> is all about.   </p><p><hr />This one is like an exquisite <em>New Yorker</em> story, perfect in its simplicity and specificity but universal in what it expresses.   </p><p><hr />That’s where I’m from, and this is the soundtrack of my homesickness. Plus, the lyrics are literary and whip-smart and impossible for a California girl to forget.   </p><p><hr />People like to make fun of Liz Phair these days, but her voice was the voice of my young womanhood, and “Go West” was the anthem of all to-hell-with-men, bridge-burning episodes.   </p><p><hr />The title says it all, and it just gets better from there.   </p><p><hr />Awesome plea for romantic decency, but in that raw, lusty, commanding voice. After at least four thousand listens, I still nod along like the first time.   </p><p><hr />Not to date myself, but around the time I graduated from college, this was the coolest band to mock. Who cares? In my opinion, this is the ultimate jogging song.   </p><p><hr />This is also an instant dance party number for me—is anyone as weird and cool as Prince?   </p><p><hr />To me, this is the ultimate expression of an artist’s belief in self. There is something bleak, but also really clear-eyed and uplifting about. Plus, it’s gorgeous.   </p><p><hr />If I could curl up in Sam Cooke’s voice and sleep forever, I’d do it. This one is just so desperate and romantic and it sounds just like what it means.   </p><p><hr />My parents were hippies, and I grew up in the Church Of Dylan. For a guaranteed good time, get on the freeway, roll the window down, step on the gas, and turn the volume up on this number. Please be prepared to sing along.   </p><hr /><h3>Review</h3><p>Praise for the Luxe series:“Characters are vividly sketched, and the suspenseful story is propelled by interwoven scandals and well–supported plot twists. A compulsively readable romance about young women who strain against societal conventions.” (ALA Booklist )  </p><p>“Mystery, romance, jealousy, betrayal, humor, and gorgeous, historically accurate details. I couldn’t put The Luxe down!” (Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Gossip Girl series )  </p><p>“Readers will clamor for this sharp, smart drama of friends, lovers, lies and betrayal.” (Kirkus Reviews ) </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>This debut novel follows the adventures of 14-year-old Princess Emeralda and the talking frog she meets one day in a swamp. The frog begs her to give him a kiss so that he will turn back into Prince Eadric, his identity before an evil witch turned him into an amphibian. When the young royal obliges, she, too, is transformed into a frog, and the two leap off in search of the spell-casting witch to ask her to reverse her handiwork. Describing the duo's futile quest in laborious detail, the author pads her tale with some curiously drab characters, including another witch (who hopes to use Emeralda and Eadric in a spell she's concocting) and a bat and snake who reside in her cottage. The tale occasionally offers peppy dialogue and some comical scenes-particularly as the newly transformed Emeralda adjusts to catching flies with her tongue ("My eye-tongue coordination wasn't very good," she admits). Unfortunately, the plot doesn't make much of the magical elements (for example, the characters' encounters with a dragon and a nymph seem inconsequential), resulting in a disappointingly flat fantasy. Ages 8-14. <br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. </p><h3>From School Library Journal</h3><p>Grade 4-6–In E.D. Baker's twist on the classic fairy tale (Bloomsbury, 2002), Princess Emeralda has quite an adventure when she kisses a prince-turned-frog and everything goes terribly awry. The book follows her exciting quest, along with the frog prince Eadric, to transform themselves back into their human selves. The text itself is weak, with poor story logic, many fruitless tangents, and excessive detail. However, the dialogue between the perky princess, her valiant but foolish prince, and some of the other odd characters they encounter is often genuinely funny. Narrator Katherine Kellgren produces a variety of voices that are well tailored to the characters and their personalities. This romantic comedy and non-violent adventure would appeal to youngsters fond of twisted fairy tales, but some of the jokes and sophisticated vocabulary will be beyond the intended audience.–_Jenna Innes, Edmonton Public Library, Alberta, Canada_ <br />Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Bear (City at the End of Time) sets this difficult but rewarding short novel on an interstellar colony ship gone astray. Teacher was supposed to be awakened just before landfall. What he finds when he gains some semblance of consciousness, however, is a dangerous and chaotic environment, with monsters roaming the ship's corridors and no one in charge. As he and a small band of equally ignorant crew members attempt to reach the gigantic ship's control center, they travel through a series of labyrinthine spaces, uncovering a variety of clues to the disaster that has destroyed large parts of the starship and damaged the controlling AIs. Not for those who prefer their space opera simpleminded, this beautifully written tale where nothing is as it seems will please readers with a well-developed sense of wonder. (Dec.) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. </p><h3>From</h3><p>Never one to play it safe in his consistently inventive fiction, Bear takes the reader for a harrowing ride on a labyrinthine starship in his latest hard-SF-oriented novel. Bear’s protagonist is an amnesiac starship crew member just released from a deep hibernation state called Dreamtime. Naked, disoriented, and forced by extreme temperature and gravity fluctuations to find safety somewhere among a confusing network of passageways, the man eventually receives help from an odd assortment of fellow Dreamtime refugees. Taking stock of their surroundings, while avoiding onboard killing machines, the gang quickly realizes the starship has given them each a unique role to play, including discovering collectively why the ship has been seriously damaged and cast aside from its mission to seek out habitable worlds. Bear’s pithy, occasionally cryptic writing style perfectly captures the chaotic experiences and unsettling revelations the team endures, while putting an intriguing spin on the timeworn SF theme of interstellar planet hunting. One of Bear’s most thought-provoking and well-crafted novels to date. --Carl Hays </p>


text:
<div>
 
 <h3>From Library Journal</h3>
 <div>
 This reading of Anne Perry's sixth Victorian mystery featuring Thomas and Charlotte Pitt (Defend and Betray, Audio Reviews, LJ 6/15/96) is skillfully rendered by David McCallum, who gives an impeccable performance. Here Perry explores the social and moral issues of the day. Unity Bellwood, assistant to Reverend Ramsey Parmenter, falls down a flight of stairs to her death; her last words are: "No, no, Reverend!" He is suspected of pushing the young woman to her death. There are, however, other people in the house. Thomas, commander of the Bow Street police station, will not be satisfied until the whole truth can be unearthed. Engrossing and enjoyable for lovers of traditional mystery novels, although it holds few surprises for the discerning. Recommended for public library collections.?Jacqueline Seewald, Red Bank Reg. H.S., Little Silver, NJ.<br>Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 
 </div>
 <h3>Product Description</h3>
 <div>
 <br>In London's affluent Brunswick Gardens, the battle over Charles Darwin's revolutionary theory of evolution intensifies as the respected Reverend Parmenter is boldly challenged by his beautiful assistant, Unity Bellwood--a "new woman" whose feminism and aggressive Darwinism he finds appalling.<p>When Unity, three months pregnant, tumbles down the staircase to her death, superintendent Thomas Pitt is virtually certain that one of the three deeply devout men in the house committed murder. Could it have been the Reverend Parmenter, his handsome curate, or his Roman Catholic son? Pitt and his clever wife, Charlotte, refuse to settle for less than the truth--and justice. . . .
 
 </p></div>
</div>


text:
<h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3>
<p>Benford (The Martian Race), a physics professor at UC-Irvine and a Nebula winner for his novel Timescape, is one of the leading exponents of hard SFAwhich, no matter how fantastic it might seem, never violates established scientific laws. His newest novel takes one of the oldest SF plotsAfirst contactAand spruces it up with great success using the latest developments in astronomy and, in particular, new information on black holes. In the early 21st century, astronomers observe what appears to be a distant gamma-ray burster, a black hole swallowing another star many light years away. The data is troubling because a second burster occurs only 13 h ours later, which, given the immense distance between stars, should be impossible. Eventually, the astronomers realize that the black hole, rather than being incredibly distant, is on the edge of our solar system, and moving our way at considerable speed. Stranger still, it appears to be under intelligent guidance, or, perhaps, to be intelligent itself. One of Benford's specialties is presenting science the way it's really done, and this is clearly the case here. His three astronomer-protagonistsABenjamin Knowlton; his cancer-stricken wife, Channing; and the British Astronomer Royal, Kingsley Dart, whom Benford has partly based on Freeman DysonAare nicely drawn and highly believable. His alien is, well, incredibly alien and endlessly fascinating. Less successful are Benford's government officials, who can come across as caricaturesAbut this is a minor fault. Full of astronomical pyrotechnics and the kind of intellectual verbal fencing that seems to go along with creative scientific thinking, Benford's latest should delight any serious reader of SF. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. <br />
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
</p>

<h3>From School Library Journal</h3>
<p>YA-Long before there was time, a black hole became a wandering entity, feeding on asteroids, planets, and remnants of the Big Bang. Eventually, it began engulfing ancient civilizations in its never-ending roaming across the expanse of time and space. When it reaches the edge of Earth's solar system, three scientists, Benjamin Knowlton, his wife Channing, and their friend and colleague Kingsley Dart, take on the fight to prevent the black hole, named Eater, from annihilating the Earth. Basing the foundation of the story on scientific knowledge in the fields of physics and astronomy, Benford gives enough background in both areas to elucidate concepts without overstating the obvious. He develops the main characters as the story unfolds, paralleling their personal changes, their shared history, and their heroic interactions with the increasing malevolence of the Eater. Deftly weaving scientific procedure around an exciting plot of adventure and destruction, and inserting the interpersonal relationships of three intense personalities, Benford creates scientific fiction that sounds very real.<br />
<em>Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA </em><br />
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
</p>


